What should the Bulls be prepared to offer Luol Deng?

I'm more than willing to have him back but don't overpay.

What I'm curious about is what people think overpaying would be.

Let's start with Deng. To me, Deng is a lot harder to figure out than Gordon. Sam Smith effectively said in a mailbag that he never got to the bottom of what the discrepancy between what the Bulls say they offered Deng and what he says he was offer. If Smith's not going to do it, I doubt we will. At a minimum, we know that Deng turned down $50M over 5 years.

That's a contract that pays out:
Yr 1 8.26
Yr 2 9.13
Yr 3 10.00
Yr 4 10.87
Yr 5 11.74

I think the fair comparison to make is with what similar guys who have signed long-term deals will be making (No use comparing to guys still on rookie contracts), and of course, what this year's similar FAs make (Josh Smith, Iggy, Josh Childress, etc)

Gerald Wallace $8.31M
Josh Howard $9.95M
Carmelo Anthony $13.76M
Tayshaun Prince $8.76M
Shane Battier $6.37M
Mike Dunleavy $9M
Corey Maggette $7M
Lamar Odom $14.28M
Mike Miller $9.13M
Richard Jefferson $13.2M
Peja $12.53M
David West $9.86M
Rashard Lewis $16.45M
Hedo Turkoglu $6.86M
Boris Diaw $9M
Ron Artest $7.4M
John Salmons $5.1M
Manu Ginobili $9.91M
AK-47 $15.1M
Matt Harpring $6M
Caron Butler $9M

When I look through that list, it's hard for me to say Deng is going to be significantly overpaid at $8.25M or whatever the exact amount would be.

On the other hand, how do we view those deals. Which ones are good and movable, and which aren't?
I'd say Manu, Howard, Melo, Prince, Battier, West and Butler would be considered easily movable.

I'd pay their cost and not think twice about it. Wallace, Dunleavy and Miller are more questionable. I don't think they're good at that rate, but they're not completely godawful (Dunleavy was until this year when he sort of broke out).

How do I feel about Deng? Well, he'd be making less than most of those guys at what he was offered last year, but not a lot less.

Mostly I think the "going rate" for decent small forwards on the free agent market is so high that it'll be hard do the sort of team building we need to do with him on board.

To me, the only workable plan I see is to keep as much talent as possible, that's reasonably priced, and then plan for the summer of 2010. The keeping talent dictate means we should try to keep Deng. Reasonably priced, unfortunately, is a relative term. The "reasonable" price for a good young SF is something on the order of $9M or more. If we're paying Deng less than that, it's reasonable in an objective sense.

At the same time, I think there's very little chance you can keep a player happy by offering him quite a bit less than he turned down. Without getting into the fairness aspects, that's a lot of face to lose. So something has to be done to give Deng an out in this regard.

So I'd try to offer Deng a contract that minimizes his cap impact then (in Summer 2010) but still enables him to say he "won" by turning down the Bulls initial offer. I think to keep Deng you probably have to offer something like $59.5M over six years. He can say he "won" because he's getting an offer approaching $60M and a longer deal instead of $50M (never mind he's getting less per year, we'll ignore that- remember, it's about saving face).

2008 $10.4
2009 $9.3
2010 $8.2
2011 $9.3
2012 $10.4
2013 $11.5
Total $59.1

I won't be totally happy paying Deng that much, but I think that's the going rate and I don't see it as likely he'd be happy here for less. If you look at all then and just think "screw it, he's not worth that", then I think your only alternative is to let him walk (or sign and trade him- for what?) and hope to play Thabo as our full time 3. I expect that leads to another trip to the lottery next year, which is why, other things being equal, I guess we should move forward with Deng.