Chicago Bulls: Zach LaVine’s contract could be a time bomb ready to blow

The Chicago Bulls came out with such an unmatched pace this NBA free agency, that they ended up getting investigated for league tampering. Lonzo Ball, Nikola Vucevic and DeMar DeRozan drained the Bulls’ whole house of draft picks, three of them being firsts. But with all the wheels moving so fast, one decision could blow everything up and it needs to be made sooner than later.

If you moved in with a motorcycle gang and did everything they did for a couple of weeks, when that time is up, there will be a lasting impact on you. Similarly, eating, sleeping and training with the best players on the planet under Greg Popovich’s supervision with Team USA in the Tokyo Olympics will have an impact on a 26-year-old Zach LaVine.

Zach LaVine’s contract could be a time bomb ready to blow and it appears Lonzo Ball might actually play a part in the demise of the Chicago Bulls.

The aftermath won’t be translated automatically, but like with LeBron training with Dwayne Wade and Kobe Bryant in 2008, or for the opposite effect – Carmelo Anthony training behind Stephon Marbury in 2004, the residue of greatness will change the perspective of LaVine’s commitment to a championship.

But starting at the first of the mega-deals – Lonzo Ball’s four-year, $85 million – means the road to a championship is going to force LaVine to sacrifice. Other than just how good Ball will look in red, you have to point out that with this signing, the Bulls can no longer throw the max-level extension bag at LaVine.

The Bulls took the odds that staying competitive would be enough for LaVine to resign when other NBA teams likely offer LaVine more money. Not necessarily a bad decision since Ball has improved every year and is more efficient from three than the departed Tomas Satoranski and Garrett Temple. But how competitive does this really make them?

DeMar DeRozan’s new contract means he will be in a Chicago Bulls jersey until he is 35. Does that really wipe off more concerns than it brings up?

Here we have a player that has dominated the usage rate for his team nearly every year of his career. Now that this won’t be the case, head coach Billy Donovan needs to find a way to let him hover on the perimeter even though he doesn’t create that much space. But a general rule of thumb is adding an offensively All-NBA level caliber player to the roster will probably just work itself out. The defensive inadequacies are less easy to be just glossed over, especially with Vucevic and LaVine clocking in big minutes.

Another question mark for Billy Donovan includes how he will divide the minutes between new star Lonzo Ball and recent lottery pick Coby White who is just coming off shoulder surgery? Or are the newly acquired Alex Caruso and summer league favorite Patrick Williams enough to make the Bulls at least average on defense? At least Bulls’ fans know Christiano Felicio’s anchor contract is finally over. Seriously, he was paid more in total salary figure ($32 million) in the past four years than he scored in total points last season (23).

But Bulls’ fans also know that Zach LaVine wants the bag or he wouldn’t have just signed somewhere like Klutch Sports, an extremely powerful agency with named clients well beyond LeBron James. That’s like when a hard-nosed trainer raises an innercity boxer until he is ready for the title fight. But all of a sudden some hotshot young agent takes the representation of the fighter, flying him across the world and showing him the best of promoting a fight.

He dazzles the boxer with his champion friends and connections so now the boxer knows he can train and fight with the best of the best if he does decide to leave the trainer. Rich Paul is that guy and the Chicago Bulls had better make a good case for their title fight because LaVine can definitely find it elsewhere. Just ask Anthony Davis.

Chicago has a time bomb that goes off when the season is officially done. But for a team that didn’t even make the playoffs, they could very well not make a top-four seed and be bounced in the first round to the Milwaukee Bucks, Brooklyn Nets, Philadelphia 76ers, Miami Heat or Atlanta Hawks.

They better not because if LaVine walks for nothing, they are just left with expensive complementary pieces and no young emerging franchise cornerstones. When that happens a franchise has only one option – keep competing to the best they can, pray a top-tier free agent looks their way, and finally, run it back after never making it past the second round year after year.

Or in other words, the team is stuck.