Hello SGCTChicagoans, this week is a weird one, with MLK Jr. Day and all. I’ve decided to move this week’s newsletter primarily to Friday. I’m working on an audio portion guest, digging into some Patrick Kane numbers, and waiting for any significant Cubs news to drop in the meantime. So today’s letter will include a column and a thread for all of my loyal threaders. Love you guys. The rest of you, make sure to stay tuned on Friday for the best newsletter yet. It’s gonna be a juicy one.
When I watch Bulls games, I am usually alone. But nowadays, that alone feels a lot more lonely. Because even though I have watched hundreds of Bull games in front of the television with no one else on the couch beside me, I was at least assured that there’d be a handful of people in my social sphere also watching and willing to talk about it—whether that was during or after the game. That’s just not the case anymore.
If you go to a sports bar during a Bulls game, particularly during football season, there’s a good chance the game won’t even be on. The city that was recognized as the center of the basketball-loving universe less than a short lifetime ago now has its basketball team on the back burner. Chicago sports fans, rightfully so, can only muster up the energy to get genuinely upset about a few sports teams at a time. That leaves the Bulls, in many cases, in either third or fourth place in a race with about as many participants as the Dunkin’ Donuts third-quarter video display at the United Center.
Speaking of the Dunkin’ Donuts race, while working for the Bulls last year, I noticed that the crowd was most engaged when waiting to see if they may get a free coffee. Either that, or when a visiting team like the Bucks produced a Giannis Antetokounmpo dunk. Bulls fans used to dominate the crowd in Milwaukee for Bucks home games. Now Giannis fans, whether from Chicago or Wisconsin, cheer harder for the out-of-towner than they do the home team. It appears they weren’t interested in waiting to see if Timothé Luwawu-Cabarrot could hit a three to cut the opposing team’s lead to 12.
It feels like an underreported story, that the Bulls are rapidly vanishing from the sports-watching public’s consciousness. But I guess someone has to care for it to be underreported.
Even if most don’t care, it’s worth mentioning how depressing it is. In just 20 years, the most successful sports franchise in the United States has let all of the goodwill it accumulated with the game’s all-time best player erode into Lake Michigan.
It feels like a historic monument was torn down, the difference being that everything still looks the same. My memory spans to about 2003 for sports—it’s the first year I have a collection of real sports memories. That’s also the year John Paxson took over as the general manager of the Bulls. Since then, I’ve seen the Bulls in the eastern conference finals just once.
The two perennial All-Star players the Bulls have had since then—Derrick Rose and Jimmy Butler—were shipped out of town. Deng was too. Rose and Deng yielded a bag of basketballs in return. Jimmy, well, he landed a guy that would shoot the bag of basketballs all in one possession if he could.
I was reminded of this when Patrick Kane hit the 1,000-point mark the other day. The city was ecstatic, and it should have been. It does feel like the Blackhawks have in some ways, at least in some age demos, passed the Bulls by in Chicago. From one end, it’s a great thing. The Hawks have built an incredible brand that won’t go away anytime soon. But in the same time, after the Hawks first won the Stanley Cup in 2010, the Bulls have faded into oblivion. What a loss that is.
This week’s thread is a case study: Who were your favorite Chicago teams in each period of your life, and why?
Post your answers here. Take this wherever you want to.
When the Still Gotta Come Through Chicago merch eventually drops, and I’m telling you, it will—the men and women who’ve entered the thread with regularity will be rewarded for their engagement.
Before we go, Betting Pick:
Dallas Mavericks +1.5 tonight
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