Yesterday, for a litany of reasons, I decreed T-Mac to the Bulls sounds nice, but may not be all that realistic of a scenario.

Yet, Mike McGraw of the Daily Herald chimes in with this today:

Sources suggested the Bulls are open to acquiring McGrady, who is just 30 years old.

The 6-foot-8 swingman is the NBA’s highest-paid player at $23.2 million, but his contract ends after the season. A trade with the Bulls would almost have to include the expiring contracts of Brad Miller and Jerome James.

The Bulls might also be interested in moving John Salmons to guarantee a larger amount of cap space next summer. He’s owed $6.5 million next season but has an option to terminate the deal and become a free agent.

Without Salmons on the payroll, the Bulls could have more than $20 million to spend on the 2010 free-agent class.

These three contracts add up to about about what T-Mac is making, so it’s a nice little equal swap. But again, I come back to what i said yesterday: the Rockets are also hoping to acquire some value here. Expiring contracts are always nice because it gives you more options once the season is over instead of being locked into another team’s discarded trash for a few more years, but I don’t see anyway Salmons uses that option to terminate his deal.

He’s likely not going to get $6.5 million in the open market, so why even risk it by exercising that option?

And if the Rockets aren’t looking for a longer-term player unless he’s a piece for the future — see: Bulls players with actually upside and talent, as I mentioned yesterday they’d would likely have to give up — then I don’t see why they’d go for this. Salmons isn’t the type of player they’d want in their system beyond this year for his potential expiring contract.

Unless the Bulls are willing to give up a better player, or the Rockets become desperate because they can’t find a better deal anywhere else, the odds of this happening are pretty slim.