Doug Thonus released the 56th episode of the Bulls Beat podcast today. In the podcast Thonus covers the Ben Gordon situation, the Bulls schedule, makes a plea for fans to buy off his season tickets, and answers his listeners questions.

He is reporting that Ben Gordon has no offers from Europe at this point. This is not entirely true, I think this was just a bit of misstatement, as Thonus later said that no one in Europe is throwing the big money at Gordon. The teams willing to spend that much on a player have already spent all the money they are willing to spend. A good point was brought up by one of Thonus’ emailers, who pointed out that Ben Gordon has a British passport. This will allow a European team to not count Ben Gordon as one of their 2 American players, which gives Ben Gordon more leverage than other American players. I would venture to guess that Ben Gordon’s offers from European teams thus far have been in around $8 million net, which is more than he would be making with the Bulls, but probably less overall, if going to Europe causes him to lose his endorsements with companies such as EAS.

Everything that Doug says regarding the Gordon situation corresponds with what a source around the Bulls organization told me yesterday. The Bulls are not willing to go past that $58 million over 6 years mark. While them not wanting to go into the luxury tax is the stated reason, this is just a facade. The Bulls are just trying to keep Gordon’s deal small so that he is very tradeable, which corresponds with Doug saying the Bulls don’t want the back end of Gordon’s deal to be huge. In addition, Gordon has not received the offers (monetary offers) from teams in sign and trade scenarios that he was looking for according to Doug. The Bulls are hoping that Ben and his agent see this and become willing to accept the Bulls offer.

This leaves Ben Gordon with two options, to take the qualifying offer or cave in, and take the Bulls $58 million over 6 year deal. As we said on Monday, we think it is in Gordon’s best interest to take the qualifying offer. Thonus thinks that Ben Gordon will eventually cave and accept the Bulls offer. This goes hand in hand with what I’ve heard about Ben really not wanting to take the qualifying offer.

Also, one other important tidbit from Doug’s podcast is that the Bulls will not be playing neutral site games in Atlanta or Indiana. This was just a error made by the NBA on the schedules.

You can listen to this podcast at BullsBeat.com