There is less than a month to go before the NBA trade deadline, and rumors of player movement are heating up with each passing day. Even more trade restrictions will be lifted come the 15th, which should speed up trade talks even further. And one player with continued loud trade buzz around him is Chicago Bulls guard Coby White, who is drawing plenty of interest in the final year of his contract.
White is performing worse than he is last season, and a lot of that has come due to the injury problems he's had to deal with that continues to persist. Nonetheless, he's a quality young player that's only 25 years of age, which suggests that he's just about to enter his prime and achieve what one would think is a higher level of play on a game to game basis.
ClutchPoints NBA insider Brett Siegel noted that White is garnering a ton of attention on the trade market as a young shot-creator and ballhandler on an affordable deal that doesn't require a ton of commitment. According to Siegel, the Los Angeles Clippers are among the teams that have reportedly kicked the tires on acquiring White.
When the Clippers were struggling earlier in the season, pursuing White did not make much sense. But now that they're on the rise, there's certainly a ton of merits to pushing through with such a deal. But do they have enough assets to make a trade with the Bulls?
Here is the Clippers' perfect trade offer to the Bulls for White in preparation for a bigger playoff push come the second half of the 2025-26 campaign.
Clippers try to buy low on Coby White
Clippers acquire: Coby White
Bulls acquire: Bogdan Bogdanovic, four second-round picks
Nov 28, 2025; Charlotte, North Carolina, USA; Chicago Bulls guard Coby White (0) reacts after scoring during the second half against the Charlotte Hornets at the Spectrum Center. Mandatory Credit: Sam Sharpe-Imagn Images
Mandatory Credit: Sam Sharpe-Imagn Images
The Atlanta Hawks were rumored to be interested in trading away Trae Young for so long that it was not too surprising when they finally pulled the trigger a week ago. However, Young, despite being a four-time All-Star who put up 24 and 12 a night just a season ago, commanded so little on the trade market that teams with small guards who aren't very adept on the defensive end have to be anxious — the Bulls included.
The demand for ball-dominant shot-creating tiny guards has fallen off so much, and with Young, the issue was that it has become very difficult to build around a player with as many limitations as he has. When a team allocates a huge percentage of its cap space on a small guard, the team around him has to be tailor-made towards his strengths for it to be worth it. And even then, the Hawks decided to pivot, ending the Trae era on a whimper.
With regards to the Bulls and their potential decision to trade White away, the fact that Young netted so little has to be very concerning. White is a good player who can get buckets, but if Young could only get the Hawks CJ McCollum and Corey Kispert, how worse is the return the Bulls will get for White going to be?
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Salaries, of course, play a huge part in a player's trade value. Young is making $46 million this season and $48 million the next, which is a huge amount of money for the Wizards to take on. White, on the other hand, is making $12.9 million this season and is set to be a free agent — which brings down his trade value, but in a different way.
With no future security for the team acquiring him, trading for White is going to be a risk. For a Clippers team looking to win for as long as Kawhi Leonard, James Harden, and Ivica Zubac could keep it going, taking on that kind of uncertainty is never going to be worth forking over a first-round pick — if they had any reasonable first-round selection to trade away in the first place.
The Clippers can trade away their first-round picks from 2030 onwards, but White is not the player to be trading one of those picks for. That would be some incredible mismanagement.
In this scenario, with White's value sinking so low due to his impending free agency, injury problems, and declined play (relative to last season), the Clippers should be able to put together a competitive offer for the Bulls guard centered around Bogdan Bogdanovic's salary — with four second-rounders doing the trick.
Those four second-rounders are the only second-round picks left that the Clippers can trade, but acquiring a 25-year-old guard and buying low on him should be worth it. LA has had a mixed track record with second-round selections anyway, and at this point, acquiring a proven commodity like White for this low of a price cannot be seen as anything other than worth doing.
A backcourt of White and Harden sounds like a disaster on defense, but White would be a natural in coming off the bench; in head coach Tyronn Lue's rotation, Leonard usually is the one leading the bench unit, with Kobe Sanders functioning as the nominal point guard. White is a no-brainer upgrade for that spot, and it also allows Sanders to play his more comfortable spot-up shooting role.
The Clippers should also have enough space to re-sign White for the next three to four years, giving them insurance at the guard positions with Harden aging and Bradley Beal's future being uncertain. Losing Bogdanovic's floor-spacing hurts a bit, but White makes up for it with his shot-creating abilities that should make life easier for everyone on the roster.
For the Bulls, this is simply about recouping any sort of value for someone who could walk away for nothing in free agency. They haven't exactly been proactive in the trade market in the past, but they have to learn from their past mistakes eventually. Right?
Nonetheless, the Bulls don't exactly have to make this trade. They can re-sign White come summer time and shop him if it comes to that. Chicago may end up deciding to keep White and gamble on their chances of keeping him instead of selling on him this low. But if they decide to trade him away, they should never expect to get a huge return — not in this market.