Grading 12 trade deadline targets from no-brainer to palpably awful

No. 1: Nikola Vucevic is a palpably awful trade target

Last summer the Chicago Bulls had a decision to make. They could finally initiate the rebuild their fans had been clamoring for, moving off of their veteran players and starting the hard work of building a better team for the future. Instead, they decided to recommit to their core, and that included bringing back center Nikola Vucevic on a three-year, $60 million contract.

No one was paying Vucevic $20 million per season last summer, not for a 32-year-old center who doesn't protect the rim and is billed as a stretch-big when he has hit only 34.2 percent from deep for his career. Teams certainly aren't trading for Vucevic on that contract now, after four months of disastrous play from the veteran center, including a frigid 27.4 percent mark from deep.

The idea that the Thunder would trade for the Bulls center simply to upgrade their rebounding is ludicrous, and their front office surely didn't give the idea the time of day. Vucevic would make them a better rebounding team, but he would kill their spacing, neutralize their interior defense and clog up their cap sheet this season and beyond. That's without considering whether the Bulls would be demanding positive value back in a trade (they likely would).

Combo forwards like Dorian Finney-Smith and Tari Eason make a lot of sense on the trade market. Low-cost bigs are a reasonable addition. Paying a premium in salary for a center like Nikola Vucevic, or piling on the trade assets for offense-first on-ball players like Dejounte Murray and Keldon Johnson, are moves that simply don't make sense.

Vucevic takes the cake as a palpably bad trade target and someone the Thunder should stay lightyears away from.