Only an accountant could love Bulls

CHICAGO — A pair of Chicago contracts were exchanged Wednesday for one that will cost $55.7 million over the next two years, with a futures package thrown in.

The commodities involved were NBA players, not soybeans, corn or cattle.

The Bulls sent Bobby Portis (Little Rock Hall, Arkansas Razorbacks) and Jabari Parker — one an imminent free agent with a cap hold of $7.4 million and the other tied to a $20 million deal the team does not have to pick up — plus a second-round draft pick to the Washington Wizards for Otto Porter Jr.

While some of the analysis of the trade concerned the players’ impact — both to this point and as anticipated in the future — much conversation concerned the transaction’s effect on the Bulls’ and Wizards’ respective salary caps. Chicago bored of trade? Indeed. This is the state of the NBA — and arguably all of professional team sports in America — as we near the end of the 21st century’s second decade.

Contract terms and the requirements negotiated into collective bargaining agreements have come to dominate sports reporting and sports talk.

A fan once could escape the everyday world discussing free agency, imagining a world of possibilities for a team eager to improve.

Used to be you’d wonder: Can a guy score? Does he hustle? Will he play defense? Is he a good locker room guy? Does his knee still bother him?

Now it’s: How big and how long is the contract? How much of it counts against the limit? What’s that going to leave available for others? Does the team get along well with his agent?

You scratch your head in, say, baseball that the New York Yankees and Chicago Cubs aren’t at least making low-ball offers for Bryce Harper. But then you remember.

Possibilities no longer seem limitless, which, to be fair, they may never have been. The constraints are too clearly outlined.

It’s all about soft cap, hard cap, cap space, exceptions, exemptions, luxury taxes.

The point, we were told, was parity. But the Golden State Warriors, who are willing to spend and have players willing to accept less money to come aboard, have subverted that.

Does anyone believe that, with a reported 45 percent of their cap space for next season now committed to Porter and Zach LaVine, the Bulls are any great threat to the league’s elite?

What used to be fun and games has become a business school lecture.

The Bulls, this sad season so far, have become a team only a CPA could love, and not just because their year was effectively over well before tax season began.

Their holding deal for Carmelo Anthony, a balance-sheet and legal-loophole transaction never meant to put him in a Bulls uniform, was a classic play for cash.

How was there no calculator giveaway on the Bulls’ promotional schedule this season?

Sports always has taught fans math. We learned how to calculate percentages, averages and, ultimately, probability growing up watching it, reading about it, talking about it with our friends.

Then we were introduced to analytics and learned more complex formulations to measure players’ impact and value.

Now layer on cost analysis, return on investment, long-term financial planning and the ability to track a roster full of contract obligations and the implications on inscrutable salary-cap rules the teams themselves sometimes can’t keep straight.

Some fantasy sports leagues have always included auctions, forcing participants to embrace a simplified variation on salary caps. There are now salary caps in some video games, adding an additional bit of realism and frustration to their other lifelike qualities.

But the real caps are even more difficult to navigate.

“We are excited to add Otto Porter to our team,” Bulls General Manager Gar Forman said once Wednesday’s trade was official, calling the 25-year-old ballplayer in his sixth season “someone who will be a good fit for our team moving forward.”

But what defines a good fit? His impact on the court, on the ledgers, or both?