What’s fair for NBA certainly fair for Bulls’ Deng

Let’s stop criticizing Luol Deng as Thursday night’s NBA draft approaches and trade rumors swirl.

Good for the Bulls if they want to trade their all-star forward to reinvent their roster. Bah on them if they want to for spite.

Deng is intent on playing for England in this summer’s London Olympics. He should. England provided him and his family refuge after they left war-torn Sudan and stopped briefly in Egypt.

A wrist injury limited Deng last season and might require surgery. If it does, he’ll undergo it after the Olympics and miss a portion of next NBA season.

So, oh, no! Derrick Rose already is be rehabbing after knee surgery! The Bulls will be doomed without them!

All that is true, but this issue is complex.

A prevailing theory insists that Deng is a member of the Bulls and should consider their best interests in return for his huge salary.

Deng’s allegiance is to the Bulls? Yes, but what about the Bulls’ allegiance to the NBA? Didn’t the league make it a priority to join up with the Olympics?

This alliance wasn’t Deng’s idea. It was the NBA’s in an effort to internationalize the sport and peddle NBA uniforms to kids everywhere from Albania to Zambia.

The Bulls might be competing with the Heat, Thunder and Spurs for an NBA title, but the NBA is competing with football, baseball and hockey for global dollars.

Winning an NBA title isn’t everything … money is.

At stake for the Bulls is a championship. At stake for the NBA is revenue. Which do you think is more important in professional sports?

Major League Baseball compromises its championship season with something called the World Baseball Classic.

Select players disrupt their spring training to play for the United States and other countries, risk injury, tax pitching arms and generally interrupt preparation for the season.

The National Football League sends teams to London every year to play a game in the middle of its championship season.

That can’t be good for teams trying to make the playoffs but apparently is financially for the NFL as a whole.

North American leagues seem to feel they have maxed out their revenue potential over here and are intent on growing them over there.

NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell sounds like he would move the entire postseason to an open-air hockey rink in Siberia if the money were right.

London isn’t exactly a hotbed for any of America’s favorite sports, including the game of basketball that Luol Deng plays.

But if Deng’s appearance in the Olympics sells a single Bulls jersey with his name on the back in Liverpool, the NBA will be grateful to him for his contribution.

Bulls management presumable isn’t thrilled that Deng will jeopardize theirs and his 2012-13 season. But they are members of the NBA, a couple of decades ago a vote of the league’s 30 teams approved sending players to the Olympics, and players are encouraged to play.

Trust me, nobody from any NBA team — including the Bulls — is going to give back a dollar generated by international merchandise sales.

So all of them, as well as Bulls fans, should dummy up except to say thanks to the likes of Luol Deng for doing what the league wants him to do.

At least loyalty to his adopted country is one of the better reasons to play along.

mimrem@dailyherald.com