（重招，1天内）武切维奇交易评级

It's been almost a year since Arturas Karnisovas was named the Bulls' executive vice president of basketball operations last April, and he'd yet to definitively put his stamp on the roster, making only minor moves aside from drafting Patrick Williams No. 4 overall. This bold deal signals that Karnisovas is trying to win now around a core of All-Stars in Vucevic and Zach LaVine.

It's a fascinating experiment, starting with the fact that we've never seen Vucevic teamed with a creator like LaVine. In his 10-year NBA career, Vucevic has played with only one other player picked for the All-Star team that season: Andre Iguodala during Vucevic's rookie year as a part-time starter for the Philadelphia 76ers. Vucevic's best teammate in his eight-plus years with the Magic (Aaron Gordon? Evan Fournier? A young Victor Oladipo?) is an interesting question for a day that's not the trade deadline. For now, suffice it to say that player is nowhere in LaVine's stratosphere as an offensive creator.

As a result, Vucevic has settled in as something more like a volume scorer than a highly efficient one. This season has been the ultimate example. With Orlando nearly devoid of playmaking, Vucevic is finishing a career-high 30% of the team's plays with a true shooting percentage (.565) that is solid but far worse than the average center (.607). I'm intrigued to see how much playing the two-man game with LaVine and benefiting from the creative playmaking of Thaddeus Young (Vucevic's teammate during that short stint in Philadelphia) can boost that mark.

On the reverse side, LaVine has been incredible while carrying a heavy burden himself. His 31% usage rate is 12th highest in the league so far, meaning Chicago now joins the Boston Celtics (Jaylen Brown and Jayson Tatum) and Washington Wizards (Bradley Beal and Russell Westbrook) as the third team with a pair of players north of 30% in usage -- granting that Vucevic's will almost certainly fall.

According to Second Spectrum tracking, LaVine has been far more effective as a pick-and-roll ball handler getting screens from Young (1.14 points per chance) and stretch big Lauri Markkanen (1.02) than Carter (0.94). I'd expect the LaVine-Vucevic pick-and-roll duo to land somewhere between Markkanen and Young, substantially improving on the effectiveness with Carter.

Opponents must account both for Vucevic's ability to pick-and-pop (his 117 shots out of pick-and-pops are the most in the NBA, according to Second Spectrum, and have yielded an outstanding 1.2 points per chance) and mismatches on both ends if they choose to switch.

From a rotation standpoint, pending another move involving Markkanen, Billy Donovan figures to fill out his 96 minutes in the frontcourt almost exclusively with Markkanen, Vucevic and Young. That gives him three slightly different looks as options. Markkanen and Vucevic is a five-out pairing that best spaces the court, while Vucevic and Young is a supercharged version of the existing Markkanen-Young pairing that has outscored opponents by 3.5 points per 100 possessions while on the court together, according to NBA Advanced Stats.

The sum total is that a Chicago team that has been only average offensively -- 18th in offensive rating, despite LaVine's exploits and Young's tremendous season -- should improve dramatically. The Bulls' starting five has a legitimate chance to be a top-five offensive group in the league. To seriously threaten for the team's first playoff series win since Tom Thibodeau's last year at the helm, 2015, Chicago will probably have to get to that level offensively, because this move won't help at the other end, where the Bulls are precisely average (15th in defensive rating).

Rim protection is the weakest part of Vucevic's game. Of the 24 players who have been the closest defender on at least 200 shots inside 5 feet this season, per Second Spectrum tracking on NBA Advanced Stats, the 63% opponents have shot against Vucevic ranks 20th. Since this is an even bigger weakness for the undersized Young (73%), Chicago's best rim protector in the regular rotation is now either Markkanen (58%, about average for a big man) or small forward Williams (59%).

Although the Bulls are starting in the last play-in spot in the Eastern Conference, the addition of Vucevic gives them a good chance of jumping a couple of teams in the standings and an outside chance to get as high as fourth (where the Charlotte Hornets are currently three games ahead and playing without star rookie LaMelo Ball). Realistically, passing that many teams -- including others that are upgrading at the deadline -- is unlikely, but Chicago should be able to finish somewhere around seventh or eighth, which would at least allow it to enter the play-in games with some home-court advantage.

Still, the bigger benefit from the trade should come down the road. Vucevic is signed to a contract that descends annually in terms of salary, meaning he's under contract for a reasonable $24 million next season and $22 million in 2022-23. Compared to the kind of players the Bulls could have added in free agency, Vucevic is a far better bargain. His addition should allow Chicago to stay over the cap this summer, retaining Young and Tomas Satoransky (both of whom have partial guarantees on their 2021-22 salaries) and utilizing their non-taxpayer midlevel exception to fill out the perimeter rotation.

That came at a cost, of course. The Bulls drafted Carter seventh overall with high hopes he would be their center of the future. The decision to move him to the bench in favor of Young as part of a playoff push signified that Carter had slipped in the minds of a front-office regime that inherited him.

Chicago also sends out a pair of potentially valuable first-round picks. It's important the Bulls make the playoffs this year so the 2021 pick (with reported top-four protection) isn't too high in the round.

A below-.500 team dealing for a player who just entered his 30s at the NBA's easiest position to fill is evidence the last build didn't go as planned. Still, there were much worse possible saves than this one.

From the Magic's perspective, dealing the franchise's best player in the post-Dwight Howard era (Vucevic was acquired as part of the four-team trade that sent Howard to the Los Angeles Lakers) is an acknowledgment that the roster as currently constructed wasn't heading anywhere. Hit hard by injuries, Orlando is 14th in the East at 15-29 despite an impressive pair of recent wins over the Brooklyn Nets and Phoenix Suns.

With starters Markelle Fultz and Jonathan Isaac both coming back from ACL injuries next season and starter Evan Fournier (later dealt to Boston) a free agent, it was unclear the Magic would be much better in 2021-22. That being the case, now was probably the right time to move Vucevic near the peak of his value, shortly after his second All-Star appearance. Pending a possible trade of Aaron Gordon later Thursday, the Magic can begin building around a Fultz-Isaac core with additional draft capital.

The most interesting part of the deal from Orlando's standpoint is whether Carter can prove part of that young core. The Magic surely evaluated Carter intently ahead of the 2018 draft, when they instead selected Mo Bamba one pick earlier. That hasn't worked out with Bamba, whose development has been slowed by the lingering effects of contracting COVID-19 ahead of last summer's NBA restart. As Orlando changes focus, both young centers should get plenty of opportunity, allowing the Magic to determine whether it's worth extending either player this summer ahead of possible restricted free agency.

Unlike Bamba, who has had a tough time staying on the court, Carter hasn't been ineffective. The issue is at a position where production is so easy to find cheaply, Carter wasn't keeping up. In the context of the average center posting a .602 true shooting percentage, Carter's marks the past two seasons (.590, .578) are blah, especially since he's not being asked to create much of his own offense. Carter is only OK as a rim protector and hasn't yet consistently made good on his advertised versatility to switch defensively -- something Steve Clifford's defensive scheme is unlikely to ask him to do.

The sum conclusion at this stage of his career is Carter is more likely to settle in as the quality backup and fringe starter he's been thus far rather than an above-average starting center. That said, he won't turn 22 until next month, which is why my ESPN colleague Mike Schmitz highlighted him earlier this week as a young player who could benefit from a change of scenery.

As long as Orlando doesn't feel compelled to elevate Carter organizationally -- for example, by signing him to an aggressive extension to justify this trade -- getting a young center with potential and two first-round picks with upside seems like a positive return for Vucevic.