Good morning Chicago! Welcome back to the newsletter.
Every week I promise you all and myself that I’m going to write about X, Y, or Z and then enough goes on in the next few days that it almost feels irrelevant to touch on X, Y, or Z.
And such is the newsletter game, especially when you have a full-time job. (Sidenote: two people have asked me if this is my actual job over the last two weeks. It is not my job, I make zero dollars. But more appropriately, it’s not my job, it’s my life.)
The truth of the matter is that I have almost zero idea what you all want to read anyway, so I’ll continue the route of throwing shit at the wall and hoping some of it sticks.
Nevertheless, thanks for coming back to another edition of Still Gotta Come Through Chicago.
If you didn’t read last week’s newsletter on the Bulls current struggles and how we got to where we are now, you can do that here.
Aaron Rodgers signed some sort of four-year deal with the Packers, and thus, will remain in our lives for the near-term or long-term future, depending on how you define each term.
It didn’t come as much of a surprise, but was probably a bit more surprising than him shoving butter up his ass and doing shrooms for 12 days in lieu of just saying, ‘I’m sad my girlfriend and I broke up’, which was not surprising at all.
(Rodgers did a ‘Panchakarma’ cleanse, which seems about as effective as switching from dip to the juul as a way to curb your nicotine addiction.)
Like a lot of things I plan to write about, I think about them for the day or so, and then eventually decide where I land.
And to be honest, I’ve landed on this with the Rodgers news: I don’t really give a shit.
But before I get into why, it’s worth mentioning that I can still not figure out what this contract is going to look like. Rodgers himself has even come out and disputed some of the details around the initial reporting.
It just makes no sense to me that it could both be a $200 million deal, with $153 million guaranteed, and also reduce his cap hit.
The obvious caveat is that the NFL cap, at times, makes no sense at all. Agents are generally the source of this reporting, which also muddies the water. The initial deal is almost never as lucrative as it first sounds.
Regardless, he’s returning to the Packers and will be, in all likelihood, playing the Bears two times again next year.
Here are the reasons I don’t give a shit:
First and foremost, I expected the worst — the worst being that he would come back.
One should never care more about what another team does than what their own team does, but still, I can admit that Rodgers being in the same division does tangibly matter in how much the Bears are able to succeed. It’s also out of our team’s control. Hold this thought.
I’m not sure I can describe Rodgers better than Charles Barkley did on the Waddle & Silvy show last week: “I think he’s the pretty girl that you gotta tell her she’s pretty everyday.”
Whether a Packer fan or not, paying attention to everything Aaron Rodgers says or does and applying that to his future status is about as fruitless as following along with the MLB lockout news, which is apparently on the verge of ending every night before I go to bed.
Somehow, when I awake, the MLB is still locked out.
And somehow, despite Aaron Rodgers reportedly weighing retirement, wanting to play for the Denver Broncos, and wanting to be the full-time host of fucking Jeopardy! have all resulted in him being in the same spot as he was before all of that.
Does a four-year deal change that pattern of behavior? Next year, he’ll say he’s still considering retirement — or that he wants to shove butter or oil up his ass on a full-time basis.
He’s no different than Kyrie Irving, and this isn’t some column on his vaccine hesitancy, either. If Kyrie isn’t not playing because of the vaccine, he’s not playing because of something else. The world could become a harmonious place tomorrow with zero racism and complete social justice, rid of COVID-19 with no vaccine mandates in New York City or Canada, and still, Kyrie would be missing games because of something.
Likewise, Aaron Rodgers signed a deal yesterday, but acting as if that’s going to shoe him in for the next four years is asinine. It would be avoiding all we’ve learned about him over the last decade.
I know a sect of you started jerking off to his interviews on Pat McAfee’s show during the height of the pandemic because you fall to the right side of the political aisle and thought he was saying some revolutionary shit, but that was just his flavor of the day, so pull your pants back up, dear reader.
I don’t want the people on the anti-Aaron Rodgers train to be on there just because of vaccines, just like I don’t want you posers who just started hating LeBron a year ago because he said something dumb about a cop on the anti-LeBron train.
This shit is a lifestyle, it ain’t a fad. And for Aaron Rodgers, generating controversy that’s generally all for naught is his lifestyle.
So while I expected him to be back, I also don’t think signing a contract changes anything indefinitely. If that were the case, there would have been no drama last year, or the year before that.
On a more football-related note, Bears fans living and dying over the Rodgers news is reflective of the Stockholm Syndrome that permeates through this fanbase.
Bears fans are so unwilling to truly hold their organization accountable that they actually care more about what other teams do more than what their own team does.
The Bears haven’t been bad this century because of the Packers. Brett Favre and Aaron Rodgers hurt— I’m not denying that — but we ascribe them way too much credit. We look externally too often, even when it feels like we rip the Bears every day.
This isn’t Michael Jordan keeping the rest of the Eastern conference from winning a championship for a decade. Football is not akin to basketball in that way, and the proof is in the pudding: the Packers themselves have won a single Super Bowl in the last 25 years.
If Justin Fields doesn’t pan out, Aaron Rodgers doesn’t matter. If Matt Eberflus is even close to as big of an idiot as Matt Nagy, Aaron Rodgers doesn’t matter. If Ryan Poles isn’t fit for the GM job… you get the point.
This obsession over one quarterback in the division (when the rest of the division is in disarray half the time) is backwards.
If Eberflus is the right guy, Fields is the quarterback we think he can be, and Poles is a capable GM, then maybe we can consider the Rodgers question. But that’s a long ways away.
And even then, the goal should be to beat him, as we did in 2018, a fact I’m reminded of by Bears fans on Twitter every time an anniversary comes up. (Let’s not post for the four-year anniversary of beating Aaron Rodgers one time, it’s not making the point you think it’s making.)
Rooting for his demise because you simply can’t stand the guy is one thing. We can all root for him to fail, more generally. We did so in unison this past playoffs until the people with names like Wendy (VAXXED and BOOSTED) Williams on Twitter began making godawful jokes and ruined it.
Perhaps saying you don’t give a shit about something and then writing a 1,000 words about why you don’t care is a bit contradictory.
I’ll have to give that some thought, or maybe I’ll do shrooms, take laxatives, and rub ghee on my nipples.
Either way, let’s just stick, for now, to filling the 10+ positions on our roster that need to be filled.
Family Group Chat Transcript, March 9, 2022, Bulls v. Pistons:
6:49 p.m., From Dad: Absolutely embarrassing! Getting COMPLETELY OUTHUSTLED!
6:56 p.m., From Dad: Traveling
7:41 p.m., From Dad: Colby (misspelling his) White is a defensive liability. He constantly loses his man.
8:12 p.m., From Me: He’s played his ass off defensively down the stretch
8:22 p.m., From Dad: They won because I turned it off.
Bear in mind, there are five total members of the above group chat.
Yes, it’s the Pistons. Yes, they looked awful at points up until the fourth quarter. Yes, they had lost five straight previously.
To that I say, yes, it is the Pistons, a team that had won seven of nine games beforehand. Yes, they looked mostly awful up until the fourth, as they have the past two weeks — which makes the fourth quarter all that much more meaningful. And yes, they lost five games in a row before that, and that’s why this win was as triumphant of one as I can remember this season.
It wasn’t an early season holy-shit-this-team-is-good win, or a did-DeMar-really-just-do-that? one. It wasn’t a could-this-team-win-the-East? win either. All of those wins were followed by jubilation, this one more followed by relief and ease.
The Bulls aren’t out of the water yet. But the bleeding had to be stopped at some point. And it was stopped in the fourth quarter, as DeRozan hit tough shot after tough shot (16 points in the fourth quarter), as he’s wont to do (and almost took one too many). Guys like Coby White and Zach LaVine dialed in defensively, and overall, the Bulls looked as cohesive and competent as they have since the All-Star break.
It had all of the aspects of a season-defining win. Right before they hit the abyss, they turned back up. There was shouting in the huddle and a mid-game turnaround, all of which will hopefully lead to an overall turnaround.
Just hold on.
The Bulls have been letting their grip of the rope slip. Talks of the no. 1 overall seed turned quickly into play-in-tournament fears. They don’t have their grip back yet, but they gained a foot back in the tug-of-war with the rest of the Eastern Conference.
DeRozan had a great night. Vuc had a good night. LaVine had a good night, despite being unable to hit a three-pointer. With a 1-7 line behind the arc, he managed to still hit half of his shots and only commit two turnovers. He also made multiple impressive defensive plays in the final couple of minutes, which is as encouraging as anything.
LaVine hasn’t looked great since the All-Star break, and we know he’s banged up, but he’s going to have to play through it. In order to do that, he’s going to have to readjust his normal. His body feeling just 85% — or whatever he’s at — needs to become his baseline. Only then will he get past that discomfort and start producing on the level he’s capable of offensively.
The Bulls reached 40 wins last night for the first time since the 2016-2017 season. They’re three wins away, with 16 games left, from eclipsing their preseason over/under.
That perspective needs to be regularly infused into Bulls Nation to get them to, well, frankly, to get them to shut the fuck up.
If you are surprised that the Bulls have struggled against the top teams in the East without a couple of their crucial players, I don’t know what to tell you. Well, actually, I think I do. Hold on.
Frustrations are more than okay. I documented all of mine in last week’s newsletter, including the fact that their forced turnovers have gone down — and their points allowed have gone up — sequentially by month.
But to come to grips with those frustrations is to understand this Bulls team, and how the roster was built. Remember, in Arturas Karnisovas we trust.
If you argue that one or two injuries should never hurt a team this badly, I urge you take a look at the rest of the league’s won-loss splits.
If you argue a team should never suffer this badly simply because they’re missing a couple of players that aren’t one of their top-2 overall players, I urge you to listen up.
Let’s say you’ve got a group of friends in high school. One looks a little older and has a fake ID. He may not be the coolest, funniest, or best with the opposite sex (I’m obligated to say this was not the case in mine), but he has the fake ID. You want to do a little underage sippin’, and thus, to have any social clout at the age of 17, you need that guy. He may not be an integral personality, or the one that gets the girls to come to the house party, but without him, none of those other personalities matter.
If we’re going to stay on the same obscure analogy track, we can level up. You’ve got a group of guys who goes out to the bar every Friday looking to meet some co-eds (absolutely love when Dads use this term). A couple of the guys will literally die if they don’t talk to girls that night. I mean seriously, they might puke or start a fight if they aren’t yammering in a girls ear by 11 p.m. Those guys may be the initiators, but even if they don’t realize it, they’re nothing without the guys in the back who are fine talking to the “co-eds” about normal shit, or not talking to them at all. If the guys in the back had the same disposition as the initiators, the whole operation turns cringeworthy at best and a tad predatory at worst.
That’s two of the longest paragraphs you’ll ever see in SGCTC all to say this: Caruso and Lonzo Ball may not be the most important players on the Bulls, but without them, the whole team goes out of whack.
It’s fine to rely heavily on excellent offensive players like DeRozan and LaVine when you have unselfish defensive playmakers like Caruso and Ball rounding it out. Without them, you just have a good offense and a bad defense, and overall, a pretty average team.
That sounds a lot like the Bulls the last couple of months. Throw in Pat Williams, also a guy who doesn’t need the ball in his hands to affect the game, and you start to understand why the Bulls have hit the wall they have.
Finally, there’s some worthwhile information on when those guys will be back. It’s clear that Caruso is leading the pack. He’s been cleared for full contact, while Patrick Williams has been cleared for partial contact. All are practicing with the team, in some capacity.
So what does that mean?
We don’t know exactly yet. But since Caruso is practicing Friday, full go, that puts him very close to playing in games. Williams isn’t yet cleared for 5-on-5, so he’s a little further form gameplay, but once he returns to 5-on-5, his return will be imminent too.
The reason for those timelines is because Caruso and Williams have wrist injuries, meaning that they’ve been able to stay in condition during their rehab process. With Ball and his lower body injury, he’ll have to be cleared and then begin to “ramp up” — what a dreaded term.
My guess, and this is a wildly uneducated guess, is that we’ll see these players in their first games back on these dates:
Caruso — Friday, March 18, at Phoenix.
Williams — Saturday, March 26, at Cleveland
Ball — Saturday, April 2, vs. Miami
You’ll notice, too, that all of these games happen to be against very good teams. That’s pretty much how the rest of the schedule looks, and it’s why the Bulls need wins against Cleveland this Saturday (off two days rest) and against Sacramento (they suck) on Monday.
Just hold on.
Help is on the way. But until then, we’ll take a W.
Quick hits
— The Cubs’ Cody Heur, a part of the package from the Sox (along with Nick Madrigal) for Craig Kimbrel, underwent Tommy John surgery. Heur pitched very well last year for the Cubs (3.5 ERA) and was on an upward trajectory. This is a major bummer, given that he’ll miss his age 25-26 season. If there is a season.
— Dylan Strome had three goals and an assist in the Hawks win over the Ducks on Tuesday. Patrick Kane also had 6 points total — a career best. I don’t know, it seems like not keeping Kane around for a reboot at this point would be hasty logic. Plus, he’s said he wants to stay.
— Norm Maciver is coming back to the Hawks as associate general manager under the new GM Kyle Davidson. Maciver was the director of player personel for the Seattle Kraken, but had spent 14 years with the Hawks previously. Davidson has been with the team since 2010. It seems as if the level heads in the room that were cast aside during Bowman’s rein are now being given the chance to take the franchise in a new direction. From what I can tell, it’ll be a good one.
— Nikola Vucevic has been playing through a hamstring issue. It’s been tightening up, but is described as “minor.” He played well in reduced minutes on Wednesday, which was reassuring.
— The Bears are likely parting ways with Allen Robinson, which is probably the best for both him and the Bears. He was a great receiver that never had a great quarterback, and things clearly soured at the end. I don’t blame him for having animosity towards the Bears — hell, we all do — but his effort at the end of last year was hard to look past as a fan.
Thank you all for reading STILL GOTTA COME THROUGH CHICAGO. Enjoy St. Patricks Day, be safe, and see you next week.
That text chain was me showing restraint. I had sooo much more to say including Olynyk sitting in the lane for literally 6-8 seconds per possession or five Bulls looking at a rebound while one Piston steps in and grabs it or that I loved Tristan Thompson lighting the team up during a timeout! In Billy and AK47 I trust. We need to get healthy.
My hatred for Aaron Rodgers, which has never been that bad, grows daily. Like you said, what the Packers do doesn't matter. We will be better no matter what with the subtraction of Nagy. What better proof of that than the fact that Mitch Trubisky is the number 1 Free Agent QB on the market. It has now become completely obvious to everyone that after almost ruining Justin Fields maybe Nagy ruined Trubisky???
First off, I know plenty of people who have successfully kicked their addiction to dip in favor of vaping. And I know plenty of people who kicked the E-cig all together by switching over to cigarettes.
If those injury return projections are correct, that would leave five regular season games for Lonzo. I know you touched on best 4-man lineups in a previous newsletter. Once we have the sample size I would love to see how much worse a Coby-Zach-Demar-Vuc lineup is defensively than Lonzo-Caruso-Pwill-Javonte/Ayo lineup.
Zach did look good down the stretch on defense but the first three quarters were brutal. Also when we had that stop on Olynyk only to have Coby hand the ball away in the back court I was ready to give up on that game. Big win, with an even bigger stretch of 6 games coming up.