Alex Caruso/Josh Giddey Trade Grades
Foolishly adjudicating a trade without patience or context is always a good time
Immediately grading trades is fundamentally stupid. We don’t know what the rest of the offseason will bring for either team, who may make major moves that put this trade in a new light. We don’t know (although we sure can guess!) what pressures there are from ownership on management. We don’t know what other options there were for either party, although we have enough previous reporting to at least make some educated guesses. It can take years to fully understand the ripple effects of swapping players and picks (although, somehow, there were no picks swapped in this transaction).
But passing judgment on people eminently more qualified to make these kinds of decisions is a blast, and frankly, there are some trades that have pretty easily identifiable winners and losers. Who doesn’t love some good armchair general managing? It’s the offseason; let’s have some fun.
Chicago Bulls receive: Josh Giddey
Oklahoma City Thunder receive: Alex Caruso
Well, the Chicago Bulls finally made a move after years of fans begging them to move their vets for a rebuild. It’s just not the one I would’ve made.
Josh Giddey has undeniable talents. He’s one of the five best passers in the league. I called him a wizard of the inbounds pass way before John Hollinger christened him the “SLOB Wizard,” and I’m absolutely not salty that Hollinger’s title was both catchier and went viral.1
He is a legitimate weapon in out-of-bounds situations. Oklahoma City ran some of the best, most creative set plays in the league, and he consistently dropped my jaw with his deliveries. Nobody in the league uses the vertical aspect of passing better. Giddey lobs where others do a drop-off and bounce passes where others would put it in the air. He shines All-Defensive Teamer Evan Mobley’s shoe with this one, perhaps my favorite assist of the year:
Man, that play is beautiful both in design (using three-point bomber Isaiah Joe as a finisher at the hoop) and execution. Who else would even attempt to nutmeg a defender here?
That passing translates to live play, too. An ominous line in Adrian Wojnarowski’s story mentions that the Bulls need someone to “replace” Lonzo Ball’s playmaking, and all sadness for Ball aside, having a 6’8” point forward will fill that bill.
Giddey is also a good rebounder. He’s bulky and has no qualms about physical box-outs. Giddey desperately wants to rebound because it allows him to push the pace and get the offense up the floor in a hurry. His playmaking makes him a menace on the fast break.
So he can pass, and he can board. It’s everything else that concerns me. Winning in the NBA is no longer about showcasing strengths; it’s about mitigating weaknesses. And Giddey’s most significant weaknesses might be unmitigable.
When teams enter the playoffs, two kinds of players are played off the floor: unwilling shooters and bad defenders. Giddey is both.
Despite slowly improving his three-point percentage (up to 34% this season), he’s still below-average on accuracy and launching just 4.4 triples per 36 minutes, too low even for a ballhandling wing. He just got demoted from his starting role in the playoffs this season. That’s the guy Chicago just traded their most valuable chip for?
Giddey also cannot finish at the rack despite his size — 60% at the rim, and that was with OKC’s excellent spacing around him. A weak left hand limits his finishing options. He can bully his way to the hoop but runs out of talent when he gets there, flicking up ugly finger-rolls with less of a prayer than the average Satanic cult:
And the Bulls, unfortunately, do not have excellent spacing. They’re routinely one of the league’s bottom-five three-point teams, and the team’s best shooter, Zach LaVine, is rumored to be the next player out the door. Giddey will have real problems scoring in a more crowded paint, especially since he’s a below-average foul-drawer.
On the other end, Giddey is the exact type of defender that playoff offenses eat alive. We just saw Luka Doncic (at less than 100%, to be fair) get torn apart by the Celtics, and Giddey shares a lot of the same physical limitations. He’s strong, but he’s not quick laterally. He doesn’t have a monster wingspan, and ballhandlers have zero issues going by him. At the rim, Giddey can’t jump (the dude is 6’8” and had four dunks last season despite getting into the paint with reasonable frequency), so he doesn’t provide much low-man help defense.
He tries hard, which counts for something, especially in the regular season. But given his physical limitations, he likely won’t get that much better. He’ll have a target on his back every time he checks into the game (unless the opposing team chooses to target Chicago’s myriad other weak defenders).
There are some reasons for optimism. Giddey is still just 21 years old, and he’s shown signs of improvement year-to-year in both his three-point shooting and his free-throw percentage. He wasn’t a perfect fit in Oklahoma City because of his skill overlap with Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, a down-ballot MVP candidate similarly reluctant to shoot from deep. There are plenty of worlds where Giddey averages something like 16/9/9 next year and routinely puts up triple-doubles.
But to what end? He only has one year left on his rookie scale contract before restricted free agency, and the Bulls wouldn’t make this trade if they didn’t believe he was worth paying. I have no idea how much the Bulls will pony up for Giddey, but it’s likely more than any other team would offer.
I was higher on Giddey at this point last season, when I thought we might see greater strides (and before we knew about his off-court trouble stemming from an incident with an underage girl in 2021). Unless Giddey dramatically changes, most likely by improving his shooting to an unexpected degree, he may well be a weak link on both ends of the floor when games matter.
Maybe that doesn’t matter, though. Giddey is still very young and has a few notable strengths. The Bulls will almost certainly be a lottery team next year; perhaps they wanted to gamble on plausible upside (however unlikely). Next year’s draft is supposed to be loaded, so Chicago fans wouldn’t mind a developmental season that results in a high pick; the Bulls owe their first-rounder to San Antonio if it falls outside the top ten. And Giddey’s flaws are far more magnified the deeper you go into the playoffs. In the regular season, he is a productive (and exciting!) player, albeit one unlikely to carry a team to a high win total. If you view Giddey as a mechanism both to sate a box-score-obsessed, playoff-demanding owner and sneakily tank, then this trade makes a lot more sense.
But the opportunity cost is high. Teams reportedly offered multiple firsts for Alex Caruso. Even mediocre firsts in mediocre drafts can yield useful players; at the least, you can find ballers with modern NBA skill sets. Giddey, in many ways, feels like a throwback to a different era.
Bulls grade: C-
That brings us to Caruso. Caruso is a less complicated player. He’s a defensive destroyer, a guard who has made an All-Defensive Team two years in a row (and, in my opinion, deserved First Team this year).