Still Gotta Come Through Chicago

I Took My Roof Off At The Red Light!

Happy Friday, Chicago!

And boy, do I mean it. Happy Friday.

This past Tuesday, I told myself: Just get through this week, and you’ll be smooth sailing. This sailor did it, I made it to Friday.

Every week feels like its own Chicago year. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and the first part of Thursday feel like Winter’s blistering cold and sleet pounding me in the face on a walk to the store for the paper towels I forgot to get the yesterday. They feel like a co-worker asking for a “quick 5” so we can figure out where they didn’t do their job and how I can fix it.

But, then around Thursday afternoon, I start feeling my own internal spring bloom — tulips coming out of my ears, ass cheeks and nostrils. All of a sudden, you know what? I am in for golf Saturday. Yeah, I would like to hang out with the fellas Friday. Let me circle back to those texts I ignored amid the figuratively sleet-soaked Monday and Tuesday.

I can start imagining the weekend, just like I can begin to imagine summer after one warm night in April.

My senses pick up. I can taste the pizza I’m going to score Friday. Amnesia starts to erase that hangover feeling from Sunday. Yeah, I will grab some beers. I’ll even half consider the note from my buddy who asked me to see a movie on Sunday — on Tuesday at 8:00 a.m. Maybe I should apologize to him for the “what the fuck are you talking about, man?” text I sent in response at the time. I actually do like that guy.

The weekend commences. Summer is here.

Snap your fingers, it’s gone. And here comes the sleet.

And then it’s Tuesday again, but if I get through this week — just this week — I’ll be smooth sailing.

I’m still doing a self-evaluation to figure out whether that mentality is a credit to my unwavering commitment to the task at hand, or: a mental illness cycle that will spin ‘round and ‘round 52 times per year until I reach an inevitable and uneventful death.

Happy Friday, Chicago!

After all, today is a somewhat unexpected BULLS FRIDAY! Tell your kids, tell your spouse, tell your siblings: Chicago basketball is back.

If there’s any indication that women’s basketball will be a part of the late 2020s zeitgeist, look no further than here. Three people texted me about the Chicago Sky’s draft this past week, which is three more texts than I’ve ever gotten about the Sky in my entire lift before.

The straight women’s basketball conversations don’t yet outnumber the “could the five of us win the women’s NCAA tournament?” conversations started by a guy who hasn’t shot a basketball in five years, but they’re inching closer to each other.

(I wonder if, in 2024, people would be mad about Lisa Leslie’s inclusion in the early 2000s computer game Backyard Basketball. She was awesome. That game was awesome. “No way she could compete with men in real life, Pablo Sanchez would dominate her…”)

That draft talk is about as a good of a sign you’ll get that things are changing, however, other than people quarreling online about specific players and who is “overrated” and “underrated,” using argumentative tactics that would make a college logic professor wince.

If I can offer my brief two cents on the Sky draft: I’m fine with the Angel Reese pick, but Kamilla Cardoso is actually what most men’s basketball fans think Zach Edey is: tall, but bad at basketball.

But back to tonight’s Bulls game. It can only be enjoyed in a very specific way: with the absolute best blinders you can find. Look one way, you may realize that the Bulls advancing in the play-in tournament feeds the delusions of the Bulls’ front office. Look the other, and you may realize that the next stop is Boston to play a team that beat the Bulls by 55 combined points in three matchups this year.

Sometimes men will lose their faith in love after a failed relationship, only for a pretty lady to tap their shoulder one day, which changes it all. Then they’re all the way back in, ready for marriage and ready to ignore their friends who they annoyed endlessly to hang out over the preceding three months.

It takes even less for me, comparatively, when it comes to the Bulls.

Let’s go back a year’s time.

The Bulls beat the Raptors in a 9-10 matchup, just like they did Wednesday night versus the Hawks. They traveled to Miami then, and they travel to Miami now. Friday night will be a near exact replica of last year’s Bulls “postseason.”

I tried to taper down expectations and excitement that entire day before plopping down on the couch — alone — to watch the game.

I tried to throughout the game, too. The Bulls trailed the majority of the first half to the Heat. And then, of all people, Zach LaVine had a breakaway dunk to give the Bulls the lead in the third quarter.

All of a sudden I was standing, involuntarily.

And then TNT went into the commercial break playing Rick Ross’ “Trap Trap Trap.”

I TOOK MY ROOF OFF AT THE RED LIGHT!

Just like that, my apartment turned into an insane asylum, and I believed in love again.

A Zach LaVine dunk and a Rick Ross jingle.

It’ll take even less than that today, because I’m already geared up. My blinders cost 99 cents at Ace Hardware, I’m turning on autopilot from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m., then launching this plane into SEE RED Rocket Power mode.

LETS GO BULLS! We got a lot to get into…

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Representation matters.

It felt good Wednesday to know that I wasn’t alone, as I watched 20,000+ Bulls fans lose their minds at the United Center for a 9-10 seed matchup.

Man, did it feel great to see the UC rocking again.

Whether that sends the right message to ownership is an argument I don’t care to consider. The White Sox games are completely empty, and the Reinsdorfs aren’t exactly hellbent on turning the tide over there.

Some people like playing video games in their 30s. Some people base their personalities around Taylor Swift. Some people plan their days around meaningless Bulls basketball games.

To each their own.

The crowd was so electric on Wednesday night that Richard Jefferson, the color commentator for the game, could not stop mentioning it. In fact, I think the crowd whipped him into a little over-the-top Bulls fever, as he said the Bulls would really be one of the best teams in the East without “all the injuries?”

Injuries to who? Zach LaVine? Who they started the season 5-14 with?

But I digress.

With all of the talk about Billy Donovan potentially leaving, it’s worth acknowledging again that he’s constantly been dealt a bad hand here in Chicago, and his team still plays with more vigor than most other NBA teams do.

(I still don’t know why he plays Dalen Terry, a non-NBA-level player.)

The Bulls were completely prepared for the Hawks, and pretty much — sans a few runs — dominated the entire game. Coby White put a crescendo on his breakout year, scoring 42 points and becoming the first Bulls player to post a 40+ point-5+ assist-0 turnover game since Michael Jordan (who of course did it five times).

The ease at which Coby White got to the basket was mesmerizing, but not exactly shocking to someone who has caught at least some of almost every game this year. But I was glad for Coby that a more national audience became aware of his emergence on Wednesday.

Now, I have been preparing for the Bulls season to end exactly as it did last year for months now: win the 9-10 game, lose to the Heat in Miami.

But things have changed, and mostly due to reasons outside of the Bulls control.

In the 7-8 matchup, also Wednesday, Jimmy Butler sprained his MCL. He is OUT for tonight’s contest.

Butler is, obviously, by far the Heat’s most important player. Him not playing, obviously, gives the Bulls a far better chance than they’d have otherwise.

Over the last three years, though, the Heat have played about 25% of each season without Butler. They have the best coach in the league, and they know how to play with or without their star.

This year’s matchup against the Heat won’t even really resemble last year’s. The aforementioned LaVine won’t be there (nor will his 15 points on 6-21 shooting). Not only will Butler not be there, but Max Strus (who matched Butler’s 31 points) is gone. Gabe Vincent is gone, and so is Kyle Lowry.

But the Heat have backfilled their roster admirably, as they’re wont to do. Jaime Jaquez Jr. will undoubtedly have a career high, and Bam Adebayo and Tyler Herro are still in the lineup.

Terry Rozier is also out for the Heat, however.

The Bulls don’t have much of an excuse to lose this game, if we’ve still got the blinders on.

They would if Alex Caruso was out after Andre Drummond just ran into him and stepped on his foot at mid-court (?) Wednesday, but all signs point to him playing.

That is a huge deal. The Bulls are an entirely different team when Caruso is on the court, as he is well on his way to another 1st team All-Defense season.

Coby White won’t get 40 again against the Heat defense, but he needs to be the focal point of the offense throughout. DeMar DeRozan needs to be a reliable decoy, and an antidote to the Heat’s zone if they decide to deploy it Friday.

Nikola Vucevic is likely to get pummeled on the defensive end by Adebayo all night long, which is part of the reason the Bulls need Drummond in the lineup, too (he’s nursing an ankle injury).

If the Bulls keep Herro from a three-point explosion, I genuinely think it’s going to be hard for the Heat to match the Bulls’ offensive… eh… firepower.

Still, the Bulls are 1.5-point underdogs as of this writing.

HAMMER IT. LETS GO BULLS!

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The bullpen is a mess. Seiya Suzuki is out for a month. Justin Steele remains sidelined, and Kyle Hendricks is done.

Staying up for two extra-inning, West Coast ball games this week sped up my aging process ten fold.

And yet: the Cubs are 11-7 coming off an above .500 road trip that featured three tough opponents.

Given all the factors laid out above, I could not feel better about this Cubs team right now.

Nothing about the start feels fluky. I tend to try not to adjust expectations 18 games into the season, but there’s just been so many encouraging signs that it’s hard not to.

Christopher Morel has already markedly improved at third base, somewhat validating my assumption in the last newsletter, which is that he was a bit in his own head to start the season. He threw a ball over 95 mph across the diamond the other day.

Nico Hoerner and Dansby Swanson are always so good in the field that their hitting lulls don’t get to me. But they were the two everyday soft spots to kick the year off.

But in those back-to-back extra-inning games this week, Hoerner went 6-9 and also stole two bases on the same wild pitch to tie the first game. But the latter is what you can expect from the guy on a night-in, night-out basis, which is also why it’s hard to get down on him. After a brutal start, he’s already back up to a 95 OPS+, just below average league wide.

I’m not worried about Dansby’s hitting, and I’m not even sure he needs to be a plus bat for this Cubs lineup to work well. If he’s average at the plate, and does everything else like he normally does, the Cubs will be just fine.

Miguel Amaya has answered the call, and is up to a .783 OPS on the year. Yan Gomes is the man, we all know that, but he’s also hitting .194 at 36 years and 275 days old, which makes Amaya’s progression paramount.

It’s brutal that the Cubs hottest hitter, Suzuki, is out with another oblique injury (the one last year kept him out for even longer than 4 weeks). His absence is going to hurt, no doubt, but I’m more disheartened about the whole situation for him personally.

Every time he gets a groove, it seems like he’s a week away from an IL stint.

The Kyle Hendricks situation is a bummer for obvious reasons, with him being the last remaining member of the 2016 team. But didn’t we all kind of expect this? The ceiling for him was always going to be a 4-5 starter in this rotation. The Cubs have pitchers to take over his role, and he’d be a fine addition to a bullpen that needs help.

I’m not going to write his eulogy yet. He’s had a way of rightsizing the ship throughout his career, so I’ll wait to see how he adjusts to whatever his new role will be.

The Big Man Jameson Taillon is back to eat innings, and Ben Brown and Javier Assad have turned into genuinely reliable starters.

It’s good to be where we are right now. And, frankly, I’m glad the team got a day off today after the road trip. Let’s sweep the Marlins.

Man, I am happy the West Coast games are behind us. That’s a young man’s game.

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The Sox are positioned last in this newsletter for a reason. Is that hypocritical after the Bulls were positioned first? I don’t care.

Anyway, I imagine some of you were expecting some pre-draft coverage this week.

I don’t have it in me. If I see another mock draft from some moron who doesn’t know shit, I’m going to lose my mind.

The Bears are in a great position, but I hope they are never in this position a game — for more than one reason.

They are going to pick Caleb Williams, and I want Malik Nabers or Rome Odunze at no. 9.

Having said that, when it comes to the draft, I’m more of a read-and-react guy. We’ll dive in heavily when the thing is actually completed. No more fake trades and projections.

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Do the Sox just cancel games now if there’s a drop of rain in the forecast? I don’t blame them.

Perhaps the best story to encapsulate the Sox season is Pedro Grifol saying he’s too into baseball to watch the solar eclipse, and then watching it anyway.

At some point, I’ll have to aggregate all the clown comments that guy has made this year. It would be too hard to even go back to last year, as he says something unfathomably dumb before and after every game.

Two White Sox pitchers made their debuts this past week. Nick Nastrini had a really nice start, with 5 innings pitched, 5 strikeouts and 2 runs allowed. Jonathan Cannon did, too, also pitching 5 and allowing only one run. It was the first time two White Sox pitchers made their debuts in back-to-back games since 1932, according to MLB Network.

The White Sox lost both games, and are now 3-15, with the worst record in the league.

But these are the things we can actually monitor! God Bless all of you Sox fans. Happy Friday!

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Thank you for reading today’s newsletter. I deeply appreciate it. And sorry for the publishing inconsistency, I have some trips in April that I couldn’t/can’t avoid. Send the newsletter to your friends, anyhow! And comment below.