Warriors would have sent Harrington to Bulls for Hinrich

November 24th, 2008 by Andrew Wamboldt

According to theKnicksblog.com, the Bulls and Warriors were close on pulling the trigger on a trade that would have sent Kirk Hinrich to the Warriors in exchange for Al Harrington.

A source has told TKB that the Warriors and Bulls were getting ready to pull the trigger on a Kirk Hinrich-Al Harrington swap earlier this month right before the Bulls guard suffered an injury to his thumb. Hinrich damaged ligaments to his thumb in a win against Phoenix a few weeks ago and required surgery. He will be sidelined for up to 3 months.

The Warriors then went into a stalemate with Harrington until trading him to the Knicks on Friday for Jamal Crawford. Harrington told reporters he wanted to be dealt to New York “back in April.”

Hinrich would have fit a bigger need for the Warriors at point guard, but the combination of Harrington’s hold out and Hinrich’s injury forced them into going after Crawford, who Donnie Walsh resisted on trading before okaying a deal after Crawford’s poor performance in Boston last week.

The source assured TKB that if Hinrich stayed healthy he would have been dealt to Golden State for Harrington and the Knicks would have had to keep Crawford.

This is a real shame that this trade did not go through. Harrington would have given us some solid big man contributions for the next two years. Harrington is not anywhere close to being a star, but he is a competent NBA level big man, which is more than you can say about Tyrus Thomas and Joakim Noah. He would have made the Bulls a substantially better team this year.

Also, Al Harrington’s contract expires before 2010 and would have allowed us to become a player in the 2010 free agency.

The good news from this is that it appears that the Bulls are ready to move on, in a new direction, away from Kirk Hinrich. This is a barrier that the Bulls have had so much trouble with as Hinrich should have been traded away as soon as we drafted Derrick Rose, regardless of how the Gordon situation turned out. Hopefully the Bulls will be able to find a suitor for Hinrich when he comes back from his injury in February.