Bulls Reportedly Offering Gibson, Mirotic, McDermott For Love

By Chuck Sudo in News on Jul 23, 2014 6:00PM

It looks as though the Bulls are serious about acquiring Minnesota Timberwolves forward Kevin Love and, if the latest report from Sheridan Hoops’ Chris Sheridan are accurate, two of the teams highly-touted rookies may not even be in town long enough to don the red and black.

Sheridan reports the Bulls are offering a trade package of Taj Gibson, 2011 first-round draft pick Nikola Mirotic and 2014 first-round draft pick Doug McDermott in exchange for the All-Star Love. At one point, Minnesota controlled Mirotic’s draft rights before sending him to the Bulls, so the package is intriguing in that the T-Wolves would receive two talented rookies to develop and an established player in Gibson, who finished second in Sixth Man of the Year voting last season.

The deal does come with a catch. Because the Bulls already signed Mirotic and McDermott to contracts, a trade can’t be completed for 30 days, per NBA rules. This would give the Cleveland Cavaliers an advantage to craft a better package for Love. Currently the Cavs are offering top draft pick Andrew Wiggins, last year's top pick Andrew Bennett and a future first-round pick, but Wiggins is not signed. This would give Cleveland time to put together a more attractive package for Minnesota to act upon immediately. Besides Wiggins and Bennett, Sheridan reports the Cavs could sweeten the deal with a second first-round draft pick and they own the rights to Miami’s and Memphis’ 2015 picks.

Sheridan was one of the few who said Lebron James would return to Cleveland and, although he got many of the details wrong, said he would stake his reputation on that report. It will be interesting to see how this develops further.