Ben Gordon will become a member of the Detroit Pistons come July 8th. As Gordon said in his parting comments on the Waddle and Silvy show, the writing was kind of on the wall. The situation of Gordon leaving the Bulls, and how he left the Bulls was entirely predictable, in fact, I did a pretty solid job predicting most of this mess. Here are a few posts that I made over the past year regarding the Gordon situation, that largely predicted most of what transpired.

Last August, I wrote about how the qualifying offer would be Gordon’s best bet. Here is an excerpt of that post:

Ben Gordon has little to lose taking the qualifying offer. He will only lose about $1.2 million next year if he takes the qualifying offer instead of the Bulls offer, which would be peanuts if he got the big extension he is looking for. If Carlos Boozer doesn’t opt out next summer, Gordon will be the top free agent on the market, so a big offer will likely come his way.

The Bulls need to start taking the Gordon situation more seriously, because if they continue to play hardball with him and end up disrespecting him, they will probably lose him to a conference rival next summer.

Carlos Boozer ended up opting out, and Ben Gordon became the top free agent on the market, and Gordon ended up being able to get the type of offer he was looking for.

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According to Bulls.com, Ben Gordon may have received an $11 million a year promise from the Pistons.

But I also heard that Gordon’s agent allegedly has been saying he has an $11 million promise from the Pistons.

This seems about what Ben Gordon is worth. Gordon’s scoring average this year fell right on the tier where I said he would be able to make $11 million a year when doing my analysis of whether the qualifying offer was a good idea or not.

I think it would be sickening to let Ben Gordon walk if this is all he is seeking. It will simply come down to the Bulls not wanting to pay Ben Gordon what he is worth.

Bulls’ management has conditioned the fans into thinking that the luxury tax is some thing that would be unacceptable for the Bulls to go into. The fact is that the luxury tax is not a hard barrier, and should not be a factor, at all, for the most profitable team in the NBA keeping their best player and leading scorer for the past four seasons.