Still Gotta Come Through Chicago

It's Good to Win One, It's Better to Win Two

Good morning Chicago!

And welcome back to Still Gotta Come Through Chicago.

It’s been a good last couple of days to be in the business of Chicago sports watching and writing.

Those stretches aren’t always easy to come by, even if they come in three-day micro doses.

When you become an adult — and thus, become an adult sports fan — you both lose part of your soul and also gain a new part of it.

Let me explain.

When you begin purposely consuming Matthew Berry content because fantasy football is one of the sole joys of your life and one of the only avenues to connect with your friends, leaving you screaming at a third-string QB to pass the fucking ball to a tight end you hadn’t heard of since the day prior, well, part of your soul leaves your body. Actually, it probably rushes out and doesn’t pack any bags. It is frankly probably embarrassed it had been there in the first place.

But then the 4-10 Chicago Bears beat the 5-9 Seattle Seahawks and this inexplicable joy arises. Instead of being annoyed that the second round draft pick will come a bit later and that the Matt Nagy firing may (for some reason) take more thought, you’re happy for all the players that they got that win.

You’re happy the guys you like on the team were able to win one after a long, hard year. After all, this is their job, and having that many days and weeks in a row that are just bad days at work has got to be awful. Getting that road win — in that fashion — has to be rewarding, no matter your record. And I’m all for celebrating it, because god dammit, I was pumped up too.

And that’s how you unknowingly get part of your soul back, replacing what left when you watched three “bench him or play him” segments in one night.

Last week, I wrote about not wanting scummy players on my team, including Carlos Correa.

This week, I’m writing about being happy for people I’ve never met because they won a seemingly meaningless football game.

But I promise you I have not picked up Zen Buddhism or gotten a better perspective on what matters in life. I have no real interest in that perspective, the one where I can feasibly say to myself ‘it’s just a game’ before heading to bed.

I’d rather be in the trenches, scaring my significant other who eventually has to leave me because I throw remote controllers off the wall and put all of my self worth into a football team I have no relation to, and not my own kids.

That’s more my lane than anything.

But after the Bears win Sunday, I had this real sense of appreciation for it — and what it may mean to guys like Roquan Smith, David Montgomery, and even Nick Foles.

Nick Foles was put in this position against his own will. He obviously should not be the Bears starting quarterback, but he was traded for — and paid — by the Chicago Bears to be just that. Then the Bears signed Andy Dalton, who is probably right about on his level, and then of course drafted Justin Fields.

No matter how much these guys are paid, a lot of their worth is likely tied to their career. Being deactivated for the entire season in a year where guys like Ian Book, Josh Johnson, Trevor Siemian, Garrett Gilbert, and even Cam Newton have seen meaningful action, it has to be painful to be labeled a “third-stringer” and not play for a team that isn’t any good anyway. Just four years removed from a Super Bowl MVP.

In a lot of ways, I imagine that win was not just a career-extender for Foles, but also a validating experience for himself. He knows he can still win a football game, even if he’s playing for the Bears.

Guys like Roquan Smith and David Montgomery — who for some reason aren’t actually captains of the team — have played their asses off this year. Putting in so much work and your body on the line every week to see success come to fruition very little has got to be an agonizing experience. And man, it’s got to wear on you.

So in the same vein, I was very happy for those guys.

The way in which they did win had to have something to do with it as well. Matt Nagy decided to stop being a coward the minute it stopped mattering whether he acted like one or not, and the Bears won a game on an under-two minute drive with a two-point conversion to top it off.

Damiere Byrd’s catch in the end zone was one of the best I’ve ever seen, especially considering the stakes (I guess this could be both very high and very low). It would not be a good sign to hear he would be the target in the end zone for a go-ahead score against Seattle in late December had we been notified of it in August, but nonetheless, he’s now had a 60-yard touchdown and a game-winning score in the last three weeks.

And so with that, especially because we lack a first-round draft pick next year, it was all smiles in the SGCTC house on Sunday.

The only fear is that, of course, it becomes a “defining moment when we realized Matt had this team headed in the right direction.”

Jesus, happy belated birthday. If we are all God’s children, and you are his son, that makes us brothers. So please, help a brother out, and do not let that happen.

P.S. Did anyone see Mac Jones play this past weekend? How did he look? Or are we still just unfairly judging Justin Fields as a rookie quarterback, one whose receivers are open the least amount in the league?

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The Bulls have now had every single one of their players on guaranteed deals contract COVID-19 and enter protocols this season, besides Alex Caruso and Pat Williams, who have only avoided that fate thanks (or no thanks) to injuries.

The NBA is adjusting the length of these quarantines now, and so there is some chance that the Bulls who just entered into protocols — Lonzo Ball, Alfonso McKinnie, Tony Bradley, and Head Coach Billy Donovan — will be able to exit quarantine in six days as opposed to 10, so long as they are asymptomatic by that point.

The Chicago native McKinnie, after showing out in multiple games during his two 10-day contracts, earned himself a permanent spot on the Bulls. Alize Johnson, who was being utilized less and less as a back-up big, was let go.

Johnson was probably going to be fazed out of the lineup anyway, given that Derrick Jones Jr. was playing so well as a small-ball 5 and that Tony Bradley and of course Nikola Vucevic were ahead of him anyway on the depth chart.

If anyone was wondering why Johnson was let go in lieu of, say, Matt Thomas, it’s because Thomas is not on a guaranteed deal. Also, his jumper is fucking wet. And the Bulls can always use another knockdown shooter. In today’s NBA, a back-end player with really good shooting skills is more valuable than one with decent defensive skills as a big.

Jones Jr. is dealing with a hamstring injury but his return is imminent, according to the Bulls current acting head coach, Chris Fleming.

It’s tough to say this with supreme confidence, but it’ll likely be the case that the Bulls will face little to no COVID disruption again this season after each player has contracted the virus (some for the second time, like LaVine) and been vaccinated.

And that’s the scary part (for the rest of the league).

Amid this wonderful start the Bulls have experienced, they haven’t even gotten their full team together for what would be considered a significant stretch, at least in my mind.

The Bulls have beaten some of the best teams in the league, they’ve won on both sides of back-to-backs, they’ve won consecutive games on the West Coast. It’s remarkable they’ve done all of that with a constant influx of challenges stemming from both injuries and COVID-19 protocols.

While the rest of the league has pointed to that as a reason for regular season hiccups, all the Bulls have done is win, and then win more.

With basically half the team down still, the Bulls came out of postponement and promptly beat the Lakers and Rockets on back-to-back nights.

Then, after Christmas, they lost the three aforementioned players and their head coach, and still, they came out and beat Indiana and Atlanta on back-to-back nights.

I ranted earlier this year about the reffing in a Bears game, and how the Bears could not overcome external troubles because they were a poorly coached team. Two years after Jim Boylen was our head coach, I can’t believe I’m saying this, but the Bulls are an example of the exact opposite.

The Bulls have plugged and played random guys over the last couple of weeks. They’ve lost their best players, they’ve lost their coach. They’ve gone 8-2 in their last 10 despite all of that and remain the second seed in the Eastern Conference.

Despite the Hawks missing a handful of players last night as well, they still had Trae Young. If you were to pick two players you’d most not want out from a defensive perspective against the Hawks, it’d be Alex Caruso and Lonzo Ball.

Coby White took his bumps early on against him, but the Bulls adjusted. Ayo Dosunmu stepped in and made life harder for Young, as did White from time to time later on in the game. Vucevic also played incredibly well on both ends, disallowing the “roll” portion of Young’s favorite set, the pick and roll.

On a night like that where you’re missing two key players, the best of the best need to step up. And did they ever.

"We don't have one selfish guy on this team who cares more about their own numbers than team success. It's all about winning. When you have guys like that, it's easy." — Nikola Vucevic

DeRozan had another 35-point night, and the most under-appreciated part of his improved game — his passing — was highlighted as he had 10 assists as well.

LaVine had 30 and 9, but that doesn’t tell the full story. In the last two games, LaVine has been playing some of the best basketball I have ever seen out of him, and that’s all while DeRozan has continued to get his.

The “fit” concern between these two was sensical if you didn’t know either of them. But if you take into account their personalities, it was nonsensical. Each may have had a point in their career where they may not have fit well with the other, but over the last couple of years for DeRozan, and the last year for LaVine, each has shown they are mature enough as players and people to make this transition.

LaVine’s performances used to be overshadowed by bad losses and a couple of end-of-game miscues. Now, they’re only overshadowed by DeRozan performances or a night like Vuc had last night — 24 points, 17 rebounds, six assists and four blocks — a stat line that has literally never been replicated before in NBA history.

The above is what LaVine said when asked if he’s learned from how DeRozan handles late-game situations. To see that level of reflection is so encouraging. Not only is he still learning, but he also nailed exactly what those of us saw from him in his earlier days with the Bulls.

We’ve already seen what the role guys can do for this team, guys like Javonte Green, Ayo, and especially Caruso and Ball. If Coby White continues on an upward trend, and the “Big Three” continues at a pace near where they’re at right now, this is a championship-level team.

Given how tremendously those guys are playing — specifically LaVine and DeRozan — the Bulls front office should consider this a year where they need to “go for it.” In a weird way, it sucks for them to have their moves pan out so well that it forces more aggression and less waiting to see how things unfold.

I’m not sure what trade just yet would put them over the edge, but knowing the NBA, something will be out there as the deadline nears. I trust the front office to be judicious, because at this point, things are going well enough where you don’t want to give away a guy us fans have fallen in love with over the first 31 games.

According to FiveThirtyEight’s NBA projection model, the Bulls are expected to win 50 games this year. They have a 92% chance of making the playoffs, a 12% chance of making the finals, and a 4% chance of winning the finals.

Those numbers have obviously skyrocketed. But what’s more of note is the championship number. Near 5% is actually very high, especially for a team that just came together and had an over/under of 42.5 wins heading into the year.

Daryl Morey, the 76ers GM, once said that if his team has a 5% chance of winning the finals, he considered it a year where all the chips should be pushed forward to try to win that championship.

Morey himself hasn’t done that yet, but it does give some perspective into how close the Bulls actually are.

Now, we’re only 31 games in, so yes I know I need to pump the brakes. The Bulls still have plenty of areas to improve. And I’m sure they will.

But I have to admit that I, as I watched the waning moments of that game last night, began to think: “To hell with this shit, I want the 1 seed.”

Oh, how things have changed.

“It’s pretty humbling to have a chance to coach the Bulls.” — Chris Fleming

Pride has returned to the city of Chicago as it relates to basketball, and it’s so good to be back.

LETS GO BULLS

Source: Associated Press