The Jimmy Butler trade looks like a disaster for the Chicago Bulls

After all the rumors, all the sources, all the alphas… really? This what the Chicago Bulls got for sending Jimmy Butler, one of the 10-to-15 best players in the NBA, to the Minnesota Timberwolves?

Really? Zach LaVine? Kris Dunn? And the No. 7 pick which they used on Lauri Markkanen? For that, they gave up Jimmy Butler and their own No. 16, which Minnesota used on Justin Patton.

It’s hard to imagine a team selling lower on a superstar-caliber player than the Bulls did right here. They reportedly wanted multiple first-round picks (in addition to salary-matching players) from the Celtics as recently as the February trade deadline, and they ended up settling for two flawed guards and the opportunity to move up nine picks in the first round, a mere four months later.

The holy grail for a superstar trade is getting back some combination of the following three things: long-term salary cap relief, potential star players still working on their rookie contracts, and draft picks (preferably plural). If you squint really hard, you might be able to convince yourself that the Bulls did alright in this deal: they offloaded the final two years of Butler’s contract in exchange for three guys on rookie contracts. They’re getting a 22-year old high-flying sniper in LaVine, a 23-year old bulldog point guard in Dunn, and the 7-foot sharpshooter from Arizona with the No. 7 pick. A deeper examination, though, reveals that they likely went 0-for-3.

LaVine is a really interesting player. He’s proven himself to be a high-level shooter since moving off the ball full-time mid-way through the 2015-16 season, knocking down 39 percent of his 3-point attempts in each of the last two years. He’s also proven himself to be a high-level finisher around the rim; he’s made 65.2 percent of his shots from inside three feet, per Basketball-Reference. He’s shown improved efficiency with each successive season, taking more and more 3s and slashing his turnover rate as well.

Minnesota’s experiment with using him at point guard during the early part of his career helped LaVine develop his ball-handling skills, and as a result gave him the ability to beat over-aggressive closeouts with relative ease. The combination of elite outside shooting and elite hops is a rare one to begin with, and the ability to put the ball on the floor after faking a shot helps LaVine take advantage of both.

However, we have no idea what the ACL tear LaVine suffered in February will do to his game. Any dip in athleticism suddenly makes him a very different player. Any dip in his shooting ability does as well. We’re already talking about a player that generated all of his value from offense and was one of the worst defensive players in basketball. What does his value look like if he doesn’t come back at something approximating full strength? The word out of LaVine’s camp is that he’s on track for a full recovery and we’ve seen players come back from this injury before, but we don’t know what to expect just yet.

There’s a risk involved here; and more than that, even if he makes a full recovery and maxes out his ceiling, he doesn’t figure to ever contribute at a “star” level because he’s likely to be a minus defender. Not only that, but LaVine is extension-eligible this summer. He’s not likely to sign a below-market deal coming off his ACL tear. Best case scenario for the Bulls, he turns into a better version of the player he was prior to the injury, and then they have to pay him somewhere closer to a rookie max extension with a starting salary equal to approximately 25 percent of the salary cap. If he got such a deal, he’d be paid more during the 2017-18 season than Butler. So much for creating long-term cap space. (And shipping Butler out didn’t even work as a ploy to get Dwyane Wade to decline his player option, apparently, so they’ll only create a few million in room this year.) If LaVine doesn’t play well enough to earn that type of contract, then he’s not really the type of guy that should have been the centerpiece of a trade for a superstar like Butler.

Dunn, despite being considered one of the most “NBA-ready” rookies last season, was simply dreadful during his first year in the NBA. He shot 38 percent from the field and 29 percent from 3, exacerbating concerns about his jumper. He averaged only 8 point, 4 rebounds, and 5 assists per-36 minutes, becoming one of just 34 rookies in the 3-point era to play at least 1,300 minutes and record a player efficiency rating below 9.0 in the process. Dunn was supposed to draw most of his value from the defensive side of the floor, but he was inconsistent at best on that end and finished as a negative value player in ESPN’s Defensive Real Plus-Minus.

Dunn’s 23 years old, so he’s not nearly done developing just yet, but absolutely nothing about his rookie campaign screamed “future star.” If anything, his debut year was a blinking neon warning sign that the player the Bulls loved during last year’s draft process wasn’t what Dunn actually is at the next level. It’s certainly possible that he turns things up in Chicago — there are plenty of guys that had similarly-bad rookie years and turned into quality players, so maybe they bought low here. But he, too, does not look like the type of player that should be the centerpiece of a trade for a superstar like Butler.

Maybe Markkanen turns into a star. He’s a 7-foot sniper that made 42 percent of his 3s on nearly six attempts per-40 minutes at Arizona. He’s a pick-and-pop maestro and can get his shot in a variety of ways. He should immediately become the best shooter on the Bulls, a team starved for shooting. But he’s also a poor rebounder and poor shot-blocker because of his short arms, which means he’s unlikely to make much of an impact on defense. He’s going to have to be uber-effective offensively to achieve star status. And even if he does, the Bulls still didn’t actually gain a draft pick out of this trade. They just moved up nine spots. Nine spots isn’t nothing, but again, it’s not the kind of feather in the cap that you want out of a superstar trade.

Next: Jimmy Butler is just who the Timberwolves need to reach their potential

So again, let’s go back to that check list and see how the Bulls did. Cap relief? Maybe in the short term; but in the best case scenario, not much in the long term. Potential stars? The prospect is iffy at best. Multiple draft picks? Nope. Nothing doing there, either. The Bulls are in full-scale rebuild mode now, something they’ve resisted over the years, and the process is off to an inauspicious start. Maybe Gar Forman and John Paxson have some master plan that’s yet to become clear, but based on their track record over the last bunch of years, the safe bet is probably against that idea.