Thank you for reading a rambling newsletter about Murphy’s Law and underage drinking yesterday, with the Bears and the Bulls both intertwined. If you missed that, check it out here.
Believing in the Bulls, and believing in OVER 43.5 wins is, as Thomas Paine put it, Common Sense.
The 2020-2021 season, and your annual hype video, is here. LOCK IN!
We got a comprehensive breakdown and predictions for the Bulls season today. Are you ready? Let’s do this shit. But first…
As we embark on the Bulls regular season today, let us pray that it is somewhere between what the Blackhawks’ destiny appears to be and the Chicago Sky’s season result.
The Blackhawks season started in a hurry, a lot earlier than I guess I expected it to, and before I could even tune into my first game — admittedly — they were 0-2-1 and had not led. They lost their home opener tonight 4-1, one in which tickets were going for $10 in some areas, and are now 0-3-1 and have trailed for every minute of their season thus far.
Head Coach Jeremy Colliton was met with immediate boos from the crowd during the opener, and although he’s received backing from Patrick Kane, who knows when he’ll become the next fall guy in this borderline-atrocious run they’ve been on over the last few years.
“We’re a good-enough team [and] well-enough coached to get out from underneath this,” Kane told reporters Saturday.
Between a massive sexual assault scandal that had a resounding impact on the entire organization and a team that has only been competitive in certain stretches over the last handful of years, the Blackhawks look more like the pre-2010 version of themselves these days.
Considering the pricey, major moves they made during the offseason, without a near-immediate turn around, it seems like heads will roll. Still, that head seems unlikely to be the true perpetrator of much of this — Stan Bowman.
The Chicago Sky, on the other hand, just won the WNBA championship after posting an uninspiring 16-16 regular season record. After that, they staved off single-game elimination twice and ultimately went 8-2 in the playoffs.
After investing in a new, downtown location for games at Wintrust Arena, and then going out to get one of the best basketball players of all time in Candance Parker — a Chicagoland area native — it all paid off on Sunday.
While Parker no doubt brought more than just basketball prowess to the team, it was Kahleah Copper who ended up being the finals MVP. Courtney Vandersloot, the Sky’s point guard, is as good of a floor leader as I’ve seen play basketball live in my lifetime.
As I started paying more attention to the Sky over the last couple of years, I wondered why they weren’t as successful with the likes of Vandersloot and her wife, Allie Quigley, leading the charge. It turns out they were just a couple of pieces away.
It’s great to see Chicago basketball back — and the Bulls are next.
Having said all of that, I think the Bulls are more likely to have a season up to par with the White Sox.
I’d be remiss to not mention my experience at the sole win of the White Sox playoff stint here.
Though the season obviously ended unceremoniously, and in a way that suggested the Sox aren’t at the level of the top teams (I certainly thought they were), the Sunday night Game 3 was one of the coolest in-person sporting events I’ve ever attended.
Props to all of the White Sox behind-the-scenes workers, who made that feel like a college football stadium for five straight hours on a Sunday night.
That’s not hyperbole. The stadium was packed to the absolute brim, but more than that, it was about the enthusiasm that every single one of those fans brought with them.
Granted, I’ve only been to one other baseball playoff game — a Cubs loss to the Dodgers in the 2017 NLDS. But I’ve just never seen a baseball game with that kind of electricity before, or even close to it.
I was not watching the same sport that I had watched in the regular season, from both Wrigley and Guaranteed Rate. It was just different.
I learned that waving a towel non-stop is pretty fucking hard actually, and you look like a moron if you lose the right wrist rhythm. I learned that if you miss the playoffs for a decade straight, and then some, the fans bring a little more than they would otherwise.
The “CHEATER” and “FUCK ALTUVE” chants were so awesome and so goddamn loud. Granted, Altuve hitting a bomb to effectively end the series two days later kind of ruined all of that. But it didn’t change the experience on Sunday.
Growing up a Cubs fan, I guess I was a bit of a John Cusack in the crowd — wearing black, cheering like a South Side lifer.
But that’s kind of what the deal has become as I’ve written this newsletter, and it’s also a spot I like to be in. I don’t jump teams necessarily, but I’ll always root for the Sox if they’re in a spot like that. But it made it much more easy that my least favorite team — maybe in any sport, with only the Lakers rivaling — was the opponent. And boy did we give it to them, at least for one night.
It felt like more than just a White Sox experience, but a Chicago one. The whole city was out, post-COVID, post-playoff drought, for an all-out party. At the very least, we got that.
Keeping up with the energy was tough, I’ll admit. Looking up after the third inning on a Sunday night to see that it was already 8:30 already definitely gave the scaries a chance against me. But nonetheless, I persisted, and the whole night was just an absolute treat, especially considering how it played out — a 5-1 deficit erased, and then some.
The chants were mostly in unison, though I have to admit every time we chanted Jose! Jose! Jose! Jose! to that Olay, Olay, Olay song, I felt a bit racist for whatever reason. I had zero moral trouble with telling Jose Altuve and Alex Bregman to go fuck themselves, however.
It was a tad disappointing that one guy got boo’d big time that night, however.
And you all know who I’m talking about: Craig Kimbrel. I kind of felt bad for the guy.
At one point, a Sox fan in front of us was dying to start a chant. Watching him do so made me want to stab myself with horse tranquilizer. After many different tries, he went with a MICHAEL BRANTLEY chant. You may be asking yourself, why would he chant that? That’s a good question, I have no idea why he was just chanting the name of the other team’s player.
But other than that, the Sox fans were mostly operating under one pulse. And it was fucking awesome to see.
Now, as for what the future holds, we’ll have to talk more about that in the coming weeks. But one thing is clear: the Sox need to get better, and it needs to happen sooner than later.
The Bulls kickoff this season tonight in Detroit.
Let’s start there. You know why the Bulls are starting the season not only on the road, but against one of the worst teams in the NBA? Because no one expected this team to look like it does now.
Sixteen months after Arturas Karnisovas was handed the keys to the organization, only two players that he inherited remain: Zach LaVine and Coby White.
That is a good thing. The Bulls went from being one of the most conservative teams in the NBA — for what reason, no one knows — to a team that is aggressively trying to win as many basketball games as possible. Some NBA “fans” would lead you to believe that that is not the goal of the NBA, though it still is, at least for me.
And with that said, I am so incredibly excited to watch this group play basketball.
ESPN is low on this team, as is FiveThirtyEight, John Hollinger, Bill Simmons, and a slew of other pundits.
I am not the type of person that writes about Chicago sports as if I’m omnipotent, and I won’t even begin our season-long campaign of harassing people that are down on the Bulls yet. I’ll just kindly say that a lot of these media members are just missing something — or in some cases, a lot of things — about this team.
Before I get to the major reasons why the Bulls will be good this year, I’ll lay out my predictions for the season.
Record: 48-34
Playoff position: 4th seed in the Eastern Conference
Offensive rank: 5th
Defensive rank: 13th
That sounds pretty good, right? Here are the reasons I think the Bulls will get that far, and here are the things I believe a lot of NBA media are missing about this team.
The Chicago Bulls relied on Denzel Valentine, Chandler Hutchinson, and Ryan Arcidiacono last year. They played 17, 9 and 10 minutes per game, respectively. All three of those players are very, very below average players. It wasn’t Billy Donovan’s fault, either. He had to make do with the hand he had been dealt. And it wasn’t that these players were just playing. Valentine, for instance, was actually relied on to score at certain points — something no NBA fanbase or coach should have to experience. The Bulls do not have these gaping holes in the roster this year. Instead of Valentine, Hutch, and Arch, guys like Alex Caruso, Javonte Green (who made a splash at the end of last year), and Derrick Jones Jr. will be getting these minutes. Not only are all those players better than the aforementioned ones, but they will also only be asked to play their role — something the Bulls couldn’t afford to do last year, because they didn’t have the nucleus of LaVine, Vucevic, Ball, and DeRozan to rely on. When you have that baseline, the other plays can fill in the gaps, as opposed to creating them. That’s why guys like Coby White, who played 32 minutes per game last year and was asked to be a player he wasn’t, will be even more valuable this year. Now, Coby can just be the streaky offensive player off the bench that he was meant to be, and nothing more. It sounds simple, but the easiest thing to tell people that are down on the Bulls this year is this: The Bulls have good players now. They hardly had any last year. And by the way, they still competed! Had they not lost LaVine for 11 games down the stretch of the season, they would have made the play-in and competed for a playoff spot.
The Bulls were 11th in the league in defensive rating last year. The defense worsened after the trade deadline, because that’s what happens when you ask a team to play defense together that hasn’t played together all season. I’m not really sure why this narrative has taken hold that the Bulls are going to be so bad defensively. Sure, Nikola Vucevic and DeMar DeRozan are not good defenders. They are also All-Stars and two of the best offensive players the Bulls have had in the last five years. But that’s besides the point. Are we really saying that adding those two players will make the Bulls an atrocious defensive team? Let’s look what else they added: Alex Caruso, who is an All-NBA caliber defender; Lonzo Ball, who has some of the best defensive instincts in the entire league; Derrick Jones Jr., who adds defensive wing help that the Bulls severely lacked last year; Tony Bradley and Alize Johnson, who albeit lack size, will be somewhat of a panacea to the defensive woes that Nikola Vucevic may create. Outside of that, LaVine is also sure to be a better defender this year — and he was already light years better last year! LaVine was one of the top on-ball defenders on Team USA this past summer. Now that he won’t have to do everything on offense, he will also have the ability to exert more energy on the other side of the court. The most important point, though, is that Billy Donovan has never ran a bad defensive team. With Oklahoma City, here is how Donovan’s team’s ranks defensively for each year, beginning with his first in the NBA: 13th, 10th, 9th, 4th, 7th. That is all with plenty of player movement and a player in Russel Westbrook who doesn’t play much defense at all. If the Bulls are bad at defense this year — which many are just shoeing in — it would actually be a surprise.
Zach LaVine is not the Zach LaVine that everyone thinks he is. For longtime readers of the newsletter, you know that LaVine used to be the subject of many newsletters, and for negative reasons. He often played too much one-on-one type ball and was god awful defensively. That all changed last year. Even with a subpar supporting cast, LaVine increased his assist numbers, learned to let the game come to him more, and tried much harder defensively. You may say that it shouldn’t take an NBA star that long to “get it,” but in reality, LaVine has been the most unlucky star in the NBA since he entered the league. No one has had worse basketball situations than him, and this isn’t a chicken-or-the-egg situation. He’s had nothing to do with how bad his teams have been. If you’re still thinking of LaVine as a scorer only, and not a legitimate star who is capable of being the best player on a good team, you haven’t been paying attention to his evolution.
I will be the first one to say that I did not like the DeMar DeRozan deal. It was way too much money for a player that could not have gotten close to that elsewhere. It was also another step towards proving to LaVine that the Bulls were committed to building a legitimate contender around him. But besides that, what has happened is the merits of the DeRozan deal are being conflated with what it means from a basketball perspective.
The bottom line comes down to this: do you want DeMar DeRozan on your basketball team? If the answer is yes, for the sake of projecting the Bulls season, forget about the rest. They are under the money threshold they need to be, so let’s discuss what DeRozan can do, and not what he can’t do. Plus, he’s replacing some mix between Otto Porter Jr. and Garret Temple. I love Temple, but what are we even talking about here? DeRozan’s game, while tucked away in San Antonio, has blossomed. He continues to get to the line at a high rate — something that the Bulls have severely lacked over the last couple of years — and his assists numbers have gone up year by year. LaVine and DeRozan won’t clash because they’re not really similar players. Each has gotten much better at facilitating, and one operates in the mid-range while the other operates behind the three-point line and at the rim. They’re also both level-headed, genuinely good dudes. If both of them care about making this thing work — spoiler alert, they will — then it is going to.
The Bulls have a point guard! Believe it or not, that’s pretty important. For years, they’ve been searching for a sensical option to lead their offense. Because they failed at doing so (love you, though, Tomas), LaVine had to play pseudo-point guard at times. He’s not good at that. Now, he won’t have to. You can kind of start to see through these bullets how much less players will have to do because of the diversity of talent, which allows players to focus on what they’re best at. I have always been high on Lonzo Ball, and think his basketball IQ is one of the highest in the league. He, like LaVine, hasn’t really gotten the chance to play with a starting lineup like the one he’ll play with this year. There’s a reason he had been rumored to the Bulls for over two years: he needed a new spot where he could use his talent in the most optimal way, and the Bulls desperately needed his kind of talent.
We all sighed when Patrick Williams sprained his ankle a few weeks ago. Well, he’s already back. Williams is the key piece to this whole puzzle. If he can be the dynamic player we all saw flashes of last year, he is such a ceiling-raiser. I was extremely impressed by his Summer League showing, and do believe he’ll take a considerable next step this year. Also, the 19-year-old rookie who guarded LeBron, KD, and Giannis last year seems to be left out of the “Bulls defense will be horrible this year” conversation quite often.
Turnovers and rebounds. The Bulls biggest weakness last year was their turnovers. Having better players, again, will naturally help this issue. Rebounds is a separate issue, one I’m more worried about. While Vuc is a good rebounder, he’s going to need some help. Alize Johnson, who the Bulls just signed, could give them good, small-ball center minutes, but he’s just 6’7. Tony Bradley, the back-up center, will help. But he’s also got a small frame. When the Bulls play bigger teams, they may have some trouble. This is where I see the Bulls improving their roster mid-season. There’s always a big man on the market for cheap, either through trades or buyouts. If the Bulls are playing well by that point, I have no doubt they’ll go get a bruiser to put a bow on this roster.
The Bulls open up tonight at Detroit. The line opened at -3, and now is at -5. That is stealing money. This is the last chance to bet on the OVER season win total (43.5) and the Bulls tonight at -5. You won’t regret it. See you all at the party in May.
This season will no doubt be a journey. On a team where the majority of the guys have never played together before — sans a few preseason games — meshing may take some time. But regardless, a 3-0 start should be a priority.
The Bulls play the Pistons without the 1st overall pick Cade Cunningham, then the Pelicans (likely without Zion) in the home opener, and then the Pistons again the next day. Winning those games to kick off this campaign would be massive.
I purchased a 10-game season package this year. I put my money where my mouth is. If I didn’t think this Bulls team was going to outperform every projection out there besides my own, I wouldn’t be wasting your time or my money.
Let’s enjoy the ride, Still Gotta Come Through Chicago community. And LETS GO BULLS. LOCK IN.
I think reasons 1 and 4 coincide with each other. That is what a lot of the media (Bill Simmons) gets twisted. Will we be paying too much for him in 3 years? Likely, but time will tell. That has nothing to do with how the Bulls will be this season.
Great point about the defense post all star break as well. Being a good defensive team isn't about how many 1v1 defensive stoppers you have. I said last night I like them winning 45 games but you've convinced me to come up to 48.
LETS GO BULLS!!!!!!!!