Feb. 17--A first-round pick and a rotation player.
That's the asking price, according to league sources, from the Bulls in most of their trade talks as Thursday's 2 p.m. deadline approaches.
The Bulls have been in several discussions, with most talk centered on Pau Gasol, Taj Gibson and Tony Snell, sources said. Not surprisingly, there has been little interest in Snell.
However, Gasol has drawn interest and the Bulls are weighing whether to deal a player who has made clear he will exercise his player option and become an unrestricted free agent this summer. The Bulls have turned down some unknown offers for Gasol, a source said, so they won't trade him just to trade him. Yahoo Sports reported the Bulls are aggressively shopping the six-time All-Star, who will turn 36 this summer.
The Bulls sit just $4.5 million over the luxury tax, but exiting it isn't a main focus of trade talks, a source said. That's because the Bulls reset the clock on the more punitive repeater tax with the 2014 trade of Luol Deng. And with the salary cap and tax threshhold rising dramatically the next two seasons because of the influx of TV money, paying the repeater tax isn't likely.
Conflicting stories exist whether the Bulls or Raptors initiated talks centered on a Gibson for Patrick Patterson deal. However, the Bulls did ask for the lesser of the Raptors' two first-round picks in those talks, regardless who initiated them, a source said.
