With the Bulls season essentially over unless they win out or 3 teams essentially lose out, the focus now should be on finishing the season as bad as possible to get as good a pick as possible. If the season ended today the Bulls would be in 9th. While there will likely still be several good players around #9 I would much rather have the 7th pick or a higher pick.

The Bulls are currently 1.5 games ahead of Charlotte and 3 games ahead of Milwaukee with 8 games to play. But Milwaukee has won 2 straight and appear to be playing a lot better with Bogut back in the linuep. If the Bulls could lose out I think they would for sure move to 8th and would have a good chance of moving into 7th.

Anyway, I'm praying for the #1 or #2 pick but if we don't get that I'd rather have Eric Gordon at 7 if he's still there than take a risk on an unproven big man. And I don't want to get the 3rd pick and draft Brook Lopez b/c I don't think he's a future star so if we get the 3rd pick we better take either Bayless, Mayo, or Gordon if Rose and Beasley are already off the board.

I think the best possible spot we could realistically get is the number 7 but I believe we may be able to trade up in the top 5 and get a better player by trading away either some of our young guy[s] or a Drew Gooden or Ben Gordon.

FYI, Ben Gordon and Luol Deng are on 1 year contracts and can not, as I understand it, be traded until the FA period begins, which happens after the draft.

C'mon Derrick Rose!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Hey i can dream right?

Honestly, after #3 (and yeah, that's counting Lopez, who has a decent chance of not ending up as one of the top-3 players in this class but appears to be the consensus #3 right now) it's basically personal preference. You get to choose either a raw big man (Griffin, Randolph, Jordan, Thabeet, the other Lopez) or undersized 2-guard with good athleticism/scoring ability but fairly questionable ball-handling and/or defense (Mayo, Bayless, Gordon), which we already have two of at the moment. Throw in a couple of talented but not superstar PG's (Augustin, Collison, Westbrook for now though he has a higher ceiling) a couple of foreigners (Gallinari, Batum) and one under-athletic and somewhat undersized big (Love) and you've got a fairly deep but not particularly inspiring group of talent. I just don't see a significant amount of difference with those guys, everyone has their flaws and none is a stellar fit given our current roster (the best probably being the PG's).

I pretty much feel exactly like you. However, I think the undersized SG's are more likely to become star players than the raw big men in this draft. That's why I"m praying for the #1 or #2 pick. We already have one Gordon but the other will be pretty good and Bayless is likely going to be very good. Mayo also has good potential. The best thing about them is they are all really young and all had great freshman years. I pray we get the #1 or #2 either by getting lucky or by trading our pick and any combination of future draft picks and players that include Kirk HInrich. If we get the 1 or 2 I'd then like to trade other parts on our team or future picks to get around the 12th pick to take Love.

If I was going to daft a big man out of this bunch it would be Love. However, I don't think it would take a top 10 pick to get him. I think he will be a very serviceable PF. He can shoot, pass, and score down low and he's very young. The only thing that worries me is his ability to guard athletic fast PF's at the NBA level. But I wouldn't mind having him on the Bulls making ridiculous outlet passes.

I'm thinking if a team like Memphis gets the #2 pick they may consider trading down b/c they already have several point guards not to mention Mike Conley. Either that or they'd be willing to trade Conley. We know that Memphis really likes Nocioni so that's always and option. However, the Grizzlies will probably be looking for a top 5 pick b/c they probably want a scorer like Bayless so the Bulls would probably need to have the 3rd pick in order to trade up. The same is probably also true for the Bucks but I think they'd probably take Rose and consider moving Williams later on. However, th Bucks will likely be looking to improve at the SF spot so they could end up trading down if they land the 2nd or 3rd pick to draft Danillo Gillinari from the Italian leagues.

Finally, I if somehow the New Jersey Nets end up with the #2 pick I think they'd have to trade down or trade Devin Harris both of which I'd like the Bulls to be the front runner for.

I'd agree with that, I'm not really a big fan of any of the bigs. Granted Griffin is drawing comparisons to a young Boozer and Randolph is a damn good athlete, but the last thing this team needs is another non-scoring big. And though they'd be the best fit, I don't really see Augustin or Collison being stars and though Westbrook could be one down the road he's not really a PG yet.

If we move either Hughes or Gordon I'd definitely grab one of those guards since they're clearly talented, though if we don't/can't it's going to be quite a log jam and will hinder their development quite a bit. Actually, even if we deal one of them they could still struggle to get minutes with Hughes/Gordon and Thabo at the position. Sure, they can absorb some time at the point (mostly Hughes or possibly Bayless or Mayo), though that's less than ideal. Despite that talent I am fairly concerned that they'll slide into that Stephon Marbury/Jamal Crawford/Ricky Davis/J.R. Smith (or Larry Hughes for that matter) mold where they put up good/great numbers but don't really maximize their talent and have a marginal/negative effect on the teams' win total. I guess you have to try something though.