Chicago Bulls the last five seasons of rebuilding have featured starts of 4-15, 4-23, 3-24, 2-26 and 4-13. It's hard to make the playoffs from those holes. This is why Dolan will never go to a (TOTAL) rebuilding phase, because his only goal is to make playoffs and go from there.
Rebuilding (DOES NOT) guarantee a succesful team for the future. ala Clippers etc...

Yeah, but there are different models for rebuilding. See Indiana Pacers.

Hmmm. They traded the Davis Boys. Got rid of Action Jackson. That's 3 players off their core of players. I think that is a major rebuild on the fly.

It would have been more of a clear case had they let Ewing expire...but because of the Rice-Eisley-Anderson thing, It made it look like we weren't rebuilding...

and of course, there's Houston's contract...

Being a GM is a zero-sum game with the cap. The deals that truly turn out to be good for both teams are few and far between. The main way you get better is by getting the better of another (or several other) GMs. You ditch your overpaid guys on someone blind to their flaws. Or you get rid of aging stars just as they're decline is accelerating, or you see something in the draft that the other guys missed. Not too hard to see we've been on the wrong side of most of these deals over the last several years. Now, no other GM's see much value in our guys, so it will be very hard to improve quickly ... i.e., rebuild on the fly. Think the best bet is to move in the right direction with every move. Spree/KVH is a good example. More than anything else, with this deal, we get younger. We get a guy at his peak vs. a guy on the way down. Maybe one or more of our picks pans out. Or Dice comes back. Then we'll have something to build from and some players that will intrigue other teams if we need to make a move.