Still Gotta Come Through Chicago

The Lord Giveth and Taketh Away

Happy Friday Chicago!

Happy Holidays to you and yours, and thanks for coming back to read another newsletter.

The year is coming to a close, which means the people that don’t work in the first place work less and the people that do work in the first place just keep working. I’m happy for the former though, who will be posting memes about “pushing things to 2024.”

But, let me pull back. I write to you in a wonderful mood.

Yes, the Bears had yet another historically bad loss on Sunday, which we’ll get to. But the Bulls resurgence has made up for that, and then some, which we’ll also get to.

At a conference earlier this month, my urinal trip was interrupted by the guy next to me, a healthcare provider executive I vaguely know. He didn’t wait to kick up the conversation until we finished our business. Instead, he asked “you changing the world?,” mid-piss. All I could get out was a “Eh, don’t think so.”

I realized later the question is probably his narcissistic version of someone else’s “how’s it going?” Undoubtedly, he thinks he is changing the world.

A week later, my father said with a straight face that the “whole world would be talking about the Chicago Bears” if they beat the Browns on Sunday and improved to 6-8 on the year.

Do they know it’s Christmas? Do they know the Bears are 6-8? Do they know it’s Christmas time at all?

I’m not sure which represented a funnier outlook at the world.

But both are proof that we’re all a part of our own little worlds, ones we think matter more than they do.

For instance, I spent five minutes staring at an advertisement for “Taylor Swift’s birthday party” at a bar the other weekend, unsure exactly what the bar was marketing. Was she going to be there?

No, Taylor Swift fans would be there, though, just to celebrate her birthday and shriek to her songs, I guess.

Ridiculous, yes.

But… that was only hours before I texted a couple buddies with a ground-breaking idea for a gathering of my own:

What if we all got together in the February dead period — post-Super Bowl and pre-March Madness — and simulated a 2007 college football Saturday? I could find a full tape from the original College Gameday set, and then we could watch the slate of games from that day?

I even thought about reaching out to ESPN operations to see if they could get me a copy of a Saturday broadcast from 8 a.m. CT to 11 p.m. CT (still am).

Celebrating someone’s 34th birthday is already a bit much. Celebrating someone’s 34th birthday, when you don’t know them, and they’re not there, is pretty insane.

But so is watching re-runs of Rece Davis, Mark May, and Lou Holtz duking it out 15 years later to quench a yearning of a time gone by — in a sport — and kind of crying.

To each their own.

Some people think artificial intelligence will be the downfall of society, others think nuclear war will be. My barometer starts and ends with “people cheering for LeBron at the United Center,” and let me tell you, folks, the Doomsday clock is ticking based on the intros from Wednesday’s Bulls-Lakers game.

At the very least, that means I can continue to use single-use plastic floss picks without guilt. The preventative dental benefits are worth my eco-footprint growing.

Just keep us alive long enough for me to see if the Bulls can get to .500 by January.

I’ll leave you with a tip — if you need a great playlist for any upcoming festivities, you’ve gotta try this one I’ve been listening to on Spotify called “On Repeat.” It’s unbelievable.

Let’s go.

---

Derrick Rose hurt one of his knees on April 29th, 2012; November 23rd, 2013; and February 24th, 2015.

I remember where I was for each of those: baseball bus back from Lyons Township, in my parent’s basement, and in my college dorm’s study room.

Derrick Rose What Ifs, in my opinion, have grown very stale. What I instead remember about those years now is the players that stepped up in his absence.

Adversity is an overused word in sports. But, in this case, the adversity derived from Derrick Rose’s injuries made those Bulls teams closer, tougher, and more inspired.

Some of my favorite memories ever are from the rag-tag teams that Tom Thibodeau put together in those years Rose was struggling to get back on the court.

There’s the 2013-2014 team, which was dead-last in points per game, and yet still managed to get a tick over .500 (they also allowed the least amount of points per game).

Then there’s the 2012-2013 team. A team that was built around Rose cemented together to fill that void, and won a 7-game series on the road in Brooklyn. Then they beat the Heat in Game 1 of the conference semis, still one of the most gleeful sports moments of my life.

The memories of those teams have been evoked by this 2023-2024 Bulls team. And that sentence is so absurd to type. It’s a sentence I wouldn’t have even been able to comprehend a couple of weeks ago.

The idea that any team is playing for “the city” is, unfortunately, usually naive. Those teams did though.

That may not be the case yet with this year’s squad, but they’ve clearly been on a mission to rid the franchise of the embarrassment it has been engulfed in since the season started.

What it comes down to is simple. I don’t ask for much, I love watching teams that play hard, for each other and for the fans.

If I may, another cliche: I like teams that, when the going gets tough, they get going. That’s what this team has done!

Now, I do have to address the elephant in the room. There’s a guy out right now with a foot injury, and I personally think the Bulls desperately need him back. With that said, the 8-10 week timeline they gave Torrey Craig, he said himself, seems a bit long. Get well soon big man!

If there was any doubt on who the problem was — DeMar DeRozan or Zach LaVine — there no longer is.

It’s telling that in LaVine’s awful season, the best he looked was in a 51-point performance against the Pistons. The Pistons won that game. Since, the Pistons have lost 25 straight games. That is not a misprint.

In contrast, since LaVine has been out, and Coby White has become an All-Star-level player — akin to Jimmy Butler’s rise in the 2013 playoffs — DeRozan is averaging just about 7 assists. He’s had 9 or more assists on four separate occasions.

Prior to White’s surge — which coincides with LaVine being sidelined — DeRozan was averaging 4.6 assists.

DeRozan is also attempting about three spot-up threes per game, something he’s basically never done in his career.

But let’s extrapolate that exercise out.

The Bulls are 8-3 in their last 11, since LaVine went out. Prior to that, they were 5-14. Their only losses have come to the Bucks in overtime, to the Heat on a Jimmy Butler buzzer-beater, and to the defending-champion Nuggets.

Over that period, they’ve scored over 118 points per game. Prior to that stretch, they were scoring 106 points per game.

The worst three-point shooting team has become one of the best overnight.

If there’s been this stark of a turnaround before the new year by a team in the NBA before, I don’t remember it. Worse yet for LaVine, he’s the most obvious variable in the history of the word variable.

Coby White’s stats over this stretch, prior to tonight’s game against the Spurs, another good one for him:

White impressed me last year, namely with streaky shooting and a notable increased effort on defense. That was enough for me to be in on an extension for him, an extension which is now looking like one of the most team-friendly contracts in the entire league.

For all the heat the Bulls front office has gotten, on this newsletter and otherwise, the Bulls now may have two of the best contracts in the entire league in Coby’s 3-year, $36 million deal and Alex Caruso’s 4-year, $37 million deal.

What’s more, Patrick Williams has developed into the plus defender I always knew he could be. On top of that, he, too, has stretched his offensive wings since LaVine left. He’s averaging 14 points, 5 rebounds and shooting 50% from three during the aforementioned time period.

The most depressing part of the Bulls early-season woes was not their losses. It was their losses combined with the context of nothing to look forward to. In a month, that entire outlook has changed.

Chicago’s own, JeVon Carter and Ayo Dosumnu, have also been fantastic of late. Craig was fantastic until he got hurt.

Nikola Vucevic is a frustrating son of a bitch, but you can even tell he is far more comfortable in his role now — as a part-time fulcrum of the offense through picks and dribble hand-offs.

The Bulls three-point shooting will regress to the mean at some point. But, on a back-to-back Thursday against San Antonio, they did shoot poorly — and still won by double digits.

I wish I could find every no-nothing moron in Chicago who identified Billy Donovan as the problem and pet their empty heads. You don’t know basketball, son. Now drive Zach LaVine to the airport for us, will ya?

If LaVine plays another game in a Bulls uniform, don’t expect to get down Madison Street without a hold-up. The police will have to drag me out of that protest, hopefully alongside you all, as I hold up my poster stocked with data-based evidence against him.

As for where to go next. LaVine is going to get his way, just like all these guys do. He’ll get traded where he wants because of LeBron’s agency, and he’ll leave Chicago behind. But getting what you want does not make you a winner of the situation, or a winner in life.

LaVine will be neither.

The Bulls won’t be winners either. Getting the mice out of your house does not make you a winner, but it goes mean the mice are out of your house. And that’s still nice.

LaVine’s value is not high, because now the whole league can see what we could before this 8-3 stretch without him: he does not impact winning on a meaningful level. In fact, he deters it.

But someone will pay for him, albeit not a lot. My guess is he ends up with the Lakers, and we end up with D'Angelo Russell, another bench player and a bad pick for him. (The Bulls would likely only be accepting expiring contracts to get that money off the books in the future).

In an ideal world, the Bulls find another trade partner and grab a much better return. But, honestly, I’ve lost interest in it.

Get it over with, and move on. Someone else can pay him $170 million over the next few years. We’ll move on with our star-studded cast and more cap space.

And, for this season, we’ll get to continue to enjoy Bulls basketball again. We’ll get to enjoy a group that cares about each other, the game, and the fans — just like those Thibs-led teams did.

Right now, the Bulls are on the rise. When you’re rooting for a team with championship expectations — which is what I want, don’t get me wrong — you get nervous for games against bad teams. You get nervous for games against good teams.

When you’re a fan of a team like this one, no game scares you. Philly as an 11-point dog? Next. Lakers as a 4.5-point dog? Next. Spurs? Drive home safely!

One more time for OUR 13-17 Bulls… LETS GO BULLS!

We’re back.

---

Alas, the “whole world” was not talking about the Bears on Monday. If they were, it was for the wrong reasons.

After staying up until 1 a.m. watching highlight re-runs in my bed after the Lions win, and a week full of in-the-hunt bliss, the Bears came crashing down on Sunday in Cleveland.

The Bears have lost three games in which they led by 10 or more in the 4th quarter. That’s tied for the most in NFL history, per CBS Sports. They’re also 21-2 in the last 15 years in games where they have intercepted the opposing quarterback three times. Those two losses came in the last month, at Detroit and at Cleveland, per The Athletic’s Kevin Fishbain.

No matter the year and no matter the team, that is inexcusable. And it’s been the difference between the Bears being being squarely in the hunt for one of the wild card spots and the situation we’re in now.

As bad as Matt Eberflus’ in-game decisions are, his attempted explanations of those decisions in press conferences later remain worse.

One less befuddling decision in that game and the Bears win with ease. A field goal try at the end of the half. A non-Jet sweep on fourth and one.

It took the Bears four plays and three penalties to score a touchdown from the one yard line.

From my point of view, watching a team that is clearly talented lose winnable games week in, week out is frustrating. To that point, I can’t imagine what it feels like for Ryan Poles.

There were so many bright spots on Sunday — Montez Sweat, Tyrique Stevenson, Darnell Wright, etc. Those all get washed away by Tuesday, though, when you’re hamstrung by your coaching staff.

I don’t even want to get into Fields today. The conversation around him, frankly, has grown exhausting. And it will be here tomorrow, and the next day. I’ll leave it to the unemployed film “experts” online for now.

But I am curious what will happen with the coaches.

Poles made a spirited defense of Eberflus a few weeks back. It may matter, it may not.

But Eberflus was questioned about Luke Getsy this week, and he didn’t exactly offer up the backing Poles gave him. Instead, in a question not really about Getsy’s job security, Eberflus said he “loves Luke,” but that they’ll “evaluate everything at the end of the season.”

That could have been Eberflus tripping over his words, yet again. It also could have been a look-in to a half-measure the Bears are about to take.

In an undesirable outcome, could the Bears retain Eberflus, but fire Getsy? I’m starting to think so.

The Bears were playing games that mattered these past couple of weeks. What an incredible, rare high that was. You can look at it two ways: Sunday’s loss stripped us of our delusions before they got too deep, or, our optimism was taken from us too soon.

Just imagine heading into this week, as a favorite, with hope.

Nevertheless, they took that away from us. Now, it’s back to watching Fields under a magnifying glass. It’s back to getting angry about the outcome of Sunday’s game, but having no real justification for that anger.

We’ll talk more next week. For those of you who are working, I’ll see you Friday. For those of you that aren’t, don’t be afraid to pop open those laptops for 10 minutes.

---

Thanks for reading. Thanks for sharing the newsletter. Happy Holidays, and leave a comment below.