Feb. 10--Pau Gasol became an All-Star Tuesday for the second straight time since signing with the Bulls.
Should they trade him?
That such a question even is posed speaks to the tenuous situation in which the Bulls find themselves, which, as of Tuesday morning, is seventh place in the Eastern Conference, just 11/2 games ahead of the ninth-place Hornets.
Gasol will travel to Toronto as Commissioner Adam Silver's injury replacement pick for Jimmy Butler, whom the Bulls now say will miss three to four weeks with his strained left knee after team physician Brian Cole evaluated him further.
Butler already has missed three games to left knee soreness and left last Friday's loss to the Nuggets in the second quarter when he worsened the injury. If he's out three more weeks, he will miss an additional eight games. If it's four, that number grows to 11.
By then, particularly since one meeting each with the Cavaliers, Raptors and Heat and two meetings with the Hawks are in that span, who knows where the Bulls playoff fortunes will be? They have lost 12 of 17.
And Butler's injury piles on top of Joakim Noah's season-ending shoulder surgery, Nikola Mirotic's appendectomy that will sideline him for weeks not days and Derrick Rose's big-picture approach that leads to missed games here and there.
The Bulls sit roughly $4.5 million above the luxury tax and could exit it with a strategic trade of Gasol. Before Noah's injury, they had gauged the market on all of their big men, with the goal to improve the roster, not exit the luxury tax.
The Bulls reset the clock on the more punitive repeater tax penalties when they traded Luol Deng to the Cavaliers in January 2014. That financially based move came in the wake of Rose's season-ending meniscus injury in November 2013.
Despite this season's downward trend, internal belief still exists that, when whole, the Bulls can be competitive. They do own two victories over the Cavaliers, Thunder and Raptors and one over the Spurs.
Management always looked at this summer as one of change with the deals of Gasol and Noah as well as those with Kirk Hinrich and E'Twaun Moore coming off the books, not to mention the influx of TV money spiking the salary cap. Then again, plenty of signs pointed to the Bulls keeping Deng until he rejected their take-it-or-leave-it, proactive extension offer that fit with that coming summer's financial plan.
In other words, stay tuned regarding Gasol as the Feb. 18 trade deadline approaches. It's more likely than not for now that he remains a Bull when the post-All-Star break slate begins that night with a road game with the Cavaliers. But as this season has proved time and again, things change.
This is Gasol's sixth All-Star selection. Averaging 17 points and 10.9 rebounds, he was 360 votes short of fans voting him in as a starter.
Butler, who leads the NBA with 37.9 minutes per game and is averaging 22.4 points, 5.2 rebounds and 4.3 assists, spoke eloquently after coaches voted him a reserve and badly wanted to play in the All-Star game. He also had a bet with his personal trainer that he would play all 82 regular-season games.
Now, the Bulls said he "has begun rehabbing his injury and he will be allowed to engage in all activities as tolerated with the primary goal of maintaining his conditioning over the ensuing weeks." How the Bulls stand -- and look -- upon his return remains to be seen.
kcjohnson@tribpub.com
