Why why why? What purpose does he serve other than eating away alot of our cap for next season and beyond? Who knows if we will be able to resign our core guys in Ben and Luol now that a bench player has eaten up the available spending money.

Its only by default Noc is charted as a bench player, but thats because there isn't a spot in the starting lineup for him. If he isn't traded before the season Im going to be even more angry!

Where are the assets then? (Trade bait)

They can't officially sign Noc until July 11th when the salary cap information is released. Until then a sign and trade can still be worked out, but it really doesn't sound like that is what is going to happen.

One interesting thing that I just read... the Noc deal is supposedly front loaded to lessen the salary cap/luxury tax blow at the end of the deal.

yeah they front loaded wallace's hinrich's and noce's contracts on purpose so that would leave them room to back load fat contracts for lu and ben, which is the way most contracts are written in the nba. Something like 10% annual raises is the norm.

I think it was because they front loaded Kirk, Ben and Noc's deals and than they plan on back loading Deng and Gordon's deals to try to keep the team under the luxury tax threshold.

I also know the Bulls could potentially get themselves under the cap for when Lebron enters the market. I also want to point out that Jermaine O'Neal and a few other very good low post players are FA's next year and the Bulls could very well go about a sign and trade for one of those guys (Pax is a patient man and unless he can get a deal that will put him over the top for a number of years, he will just continue to be patient as he knows this squad has a wide open window).

I can only imagine this team with LeBron on it. I absolutely love him, and with those rumors last summer about us acquiring him, I can't help but think he really would love to play in Chicago. How awesome would it be having LeBron and Deng in 3 years (LBJ only has 3 years left on his deal, right?) when they are both in their prime and multiple time all-stars?

Folks worried about the cap...seriously...stop. The only way this hurts our cap situation is if Jerry Reinsdorf is unwilling to spend money. We're going to have to pay the luxury tax one way or another to resign Lu and BG. There's no way around it. And there's no situation I see in the next 5 years where the Bulls would have anything other than the MLE to spend. The Bulls will eventually have BW's expiring contract to trade, but if we want to hold this team together, there's no way we're going to avoid the luxury tax.

We'll still have the MLE each year I believe if we want to spend it. We'll still have some opportunity for sign and trades involving smaller guys or even a few of the big guys. But here's the way I see it: from 1999 to 2003, the Bulls were abjectly awful. Terrible. They spent no money because everyone was kids. Tim Floyd was the damn coach. But the biggest stadium in the NBA still was sold out almost every night. And for 3 years now, the Bulls have had a winning team, and have still been pretty darn far underneath the cap, and therefore have made even more $. There's no reason why JR can't go into the Luxury tax territory to hold this team together. If Cuban can do it, why not us?