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The Chicago Bulls aren't looking to trade Zach LaVine after he signed a five-year, $215 million deal with the team this offseason. But there are a lot of Mavericks fans who would love to see him teamed up with Luka Doncic in Dallas, according to Tim MacMahon.
The Mavs have reportedly had interest in LaVine given their motivation to pair a second star with Doncic, and he could be just what they need to finally assemble a championship-caliber team in the Western Conference, especially with the way Luka is playing.
“I just know that there are fans of him that hold prominent positions within the Mavericks,” MacMahon said on the Lowe Post podcast this week. “Again, I'm not sitting here and telling you there's some great consensus. I think there's enough fans of him where I wouldn't totally rule it out.”
Zach Lowe did interrupt to state that the Bulls do not appear prepared to entertain trading LaVine at this point in the season. Chicago is in limbo in the NBA's Eastern Conference, sitting in 11th place with a 14-19 record. LaVine's trade value is also difficult to gauge, considering his contract and the injuries he has battled in the past.
The Bulls need a point guard, and aren't quite at the point where they need to break it up and rebuild just yet, but that might not be the case when the NBA Trade Deadline approaches. The team is still just 3.5 games back of the 8th seed in the East, and they do still have DeMar DeRozan and Nikola Vucevic after all.
Making things tricky for the Bulls is LaVine's contract, which teams would reasonably be wary of considering his injury history. LaVine tore his ACL while playing for the Minnesota Timberwolves in 2017, and underwent surgery to reconstruct it nearly six years ago.
If a team were to trade for Zach LaVine and have him go down with another injury, that could kill their chances of competing, adding extra risk to a potential deal.
The 27-year-old was an NBA All-Star in 2021 and 2022, and is in the first year of his five-year max contract.
