SH Blog: Bulls Keep Shopping Players After Deng Trade; NBA Warns J.R. Smith; Steve Nash Plans to Return

• The Chicago Bulls have waived Andrew Bynum, Thibs not happy about the deal: “”Look, it’s not realistic to ask Tom or his staff to be happy about taking a player of Lu’s caliber off your team,” Paxson said Tuesday. “[General manager] Gar [Forman] and I put ourselves in Tom’s shoes a lot. Every day, really. And we know what he’s facing. We’re not sitting up here saying be happy about it. It’s hard. It’s difficult. “But what has to happen within an organization is that when decisions are made, that as a group you have to align together, and you have to move forward. And our focus now has to be on how best to take advantage of what we’ve just done. That’s the challenge — and Tom’s going to be a part of that process with us. That’s how this works.” The Bulls traded Deng, their All-Star forward who will be a free agent at the end of the season, to the Cleveland Cavaliers for Bynum, draft picks and salary savings early Tuesday morning.”

• The NBA has approved a disabled player exception for the Brooklyn Nets: “For Brooklyn to use the full exception and pay the ensuring luxury-tax bill, it would cost the Nets approximately an additional $20 million on top of the $180 million-plus in roster salary and taxes they’re already paying this season. The Nets have until March 10 to use the exception through a free-agent signing or a trade. The Nets have a full roster of 15 players, so they would need to clear a roster spot to make use of the exception. The exception became possible after Lopez broke his right foot on Dec. 20, necessitating season-ending surgery. Lopez played only five games in the 2011-12 season after breaking the fifth metatarsal bone in his right foot twice. Doctors repositioned the bone in his right foot in this surgery and hope that can provide better stability and staying power in the future.”

• Steve Nash is hoping he can regain full health and return to the court: “”At some point, I have to also realize, do the safest thing, the best possible opportunity to play basketball again rather than letting my angst get the better of me and jumping back in there,” Nash said after the Lakers’ shootaround Friday. “I know I can get healthy. It’s a matter of, ‘Can I sustain it?’ And I’m just trying to get that health under my belt for an amount of time where we feel confident that it can be sustainable is the tricky part, and that’s probably going to take a little while longer than I was hoping.”  Nash, the league’s oldest player — turning 40 next month — originally hoped to return to the lineup sometime during the Lakers’ upcoming seven-game Grammys road trip Jan. 15-26, but he has since decided to use that time to go back to Vancouver, British Columbia, for the fourth time this season to undergo rehab with personal trainer Rick Celebrini. If all goes well, Nash will practice with the Lakers for a week when they return from their extended road trip and attempt a comeback during the first week of February with about 35 games left in the regular season.”

• The NBA has warned J.R. Smith for his recent antics: “Mike Woodson said he planned to speak with his shooting guard before the team faced the Detroit Pistons on Tuesday night. “He shouldn’t be doing stuff like that,” the coach said. “I’m going to talk to him a little more about it when I get in there. His focus should just be on playing basketball. That’s what it’s about and those are things you just don’t do. You think you’ve seen it all and something creeps in.” The shoelace stunt happened as Marion and Smith were lined up next to one another on the free throw line with the Knicks up 48-33 and 2:08 left in the second quarter. “He was just playing,” Marion said, laughing. “I think he just wanted to have some fun. That’s all it was. It was just some joyful play. … They made it a bigger deal than what it was. He was just playing. That’s all.”

• Philadelphia’s Thaddeus Young just wants to win: “So it’s kind of strange to see Young with a little bit of an attitude this season. His smile isn’t flashed as often as it used to be, the joking in the locker room limited. It’s not that Young has completely changed his disposition, it just appears as if he’s become hardened to the way things have gone since he was drafted by the team in 2007. Perhaps not having a true position, having played for five coaches and compiling only one winning season among his seven has changed the 25-year-old young a bit. You won’t find any of his teammates complaining, nor is coach Brett Brown. Young is having his best season in the NBA, averaging a career-high 17.9 points to go with seven rebounds. He has added outside shooting to his repertoire, having made 28 of 68 (41.2 percent) from three-point range. He made only eight threes in the previous three seasons combined.”

• Dwight Howard pretends to fall asleep to avoid another question about playing the Lakers: “Houston Rockets center Dwight Howard will face the Los Angeles Lakers for the second time since his departure from the team after a solitary awful season, and he doesn’t seem too excited about the reunion. When asked about facing the Lakers, Howard first pretended to fall asleep before delivering a perfect facepalm.”

Ben Baroff is a basketball journalist who blogs for SheridanHoops.com. Follow him on Twitter here.