Still Gotta Come Through Chicago

A LaVine Rumor, a Cubs Sweep, and a Sox Problem

Happy Friday Chicago!

The Bulls hired a shooting coach this week.

I’m very happy that they did. A Chicago native, Peter Patton played basketball at Loyola Academy and then at DePaul. He shot 54.1% from three one season there. He previously worked for the Mavericks and is the protege of the NBA’s most famous shooting coach, Chip Engelland. Engelland rose to niche fame with the Spurs, and now is with the Thunder.

I was way too excited about this news.

While it doesn’t mean much, the Bulls have set a low bar. When they do something smart, it elicits that kind of reaction, as does a competitive play-in game.

When I was in high school, I was in a film/broadcasting class. I found my teacher to be cool, and I thought he knew everything. He wore a scarf around his neck and looked the part. This guy was film to me. He was going to bring me to fame in media.

Then, four months or so into class, he showed us the movie he wrote and directed. It was an abomination. The worst fucking movie I’ve ever seen, bar none. And it wasn’t even about the low budget, either. I honestly, to this day, can’t believe he showed it to us. It was worse than the first creative writing story I wrote in college, and that’s saying a lot. I took two hours on that story and I think all of the characters in the end of it killed themselves because I didn’t know how else to wrap things up.

This was worse. If my teacher laughed after it and told us his third grader had made it on a camcorder, I promise you I would have believed it.

We all clapped at the end.

That experience with that teacher is a lot like my relationship with the Bulls. The Chicago Bulls, Chicago’s NBA team, have generally been run by people not much smarter than you or I. The mystique has long faded.

So, when the Bulls do something smart, it’s on a scale. Yes, a shooting coach — he won’t actually be under the title “shooting coach” — seems necessary for an NBA team.

If you ever watched a Bulls guard make a shooting form mistake over and over and over again — like Derrick Rose shooting at the very top of his jump — and wondered why it was never fixed, that is likely your answer. No one on the goddamn Bulls staff was there to be like, ‘Hey man, there’s a better way to do this.’

Some players have improved their shooting on the Bulls. Sometimes that’s because they’re NBA players, sometimes it’s because other coaches are capable of helping out. And a lot of that is likely due to offseasons with trainers that are equipped with the knowledge and coaching ability that the Bulls staff lacked.

The Bulls still don’t do other smart things NBA teams do, like go into the luxury tax if need be (have only once, I believe, probably by accident). They also don’t sign shooters in a shooters’ league.

So, the shooting coach is the start. It’s a wild concept I’m glad they’ve come around to. It’s like your grandma signing up for Gmail in 2023. I’m not going to congratulate her, but I’m glad I don’t have to call her every time I need to reach her now.

The Bulls are also reportedly considering trading their best shooter, and best player, in Zach LaVine. Yahoo’s Jake Fischer wrote yesterday that the front office is actively reaching out to teams to gauge interest.

Some of the mock trades I’ve seen for him already are so bad I can’t even engage with them genuinely. I think a lot of people have forgotten that LaVine, for all of his warts, has been a 25+ PPG scorer for the last four years on very efficient shooting. He’s one of the best scorers in the game. He’s worth more than a few average players and a bad — or far away — draft pick.

It’s not as spicy of a take, but of course I’m okay with the Bulls trading LaVine. That’s only if the return is there, though.

If it’s for a subpar package just to get off his salary, only for the Bulls to be just okay again next year, I’m out. Signing him was the right move. Hold onto the asset and worry about what to do with him later. But now that later is already here, that asset’s worth needs to be realized, whether he stays or goes.

The issue all comes back to that low bar the Bulls have set for themselves. Is the goal to win a championship, or is it to remain hovering around the 40-win mark? Fighting for the 7th to 10th seeds can be done with or without LaVine. Taking the route toward winning an actual championship could start with trading him.

Keeping him only makes sense if the Bulls are willing to trade DeMar DeRozan and part ways with Nikola Vucevic. We’ve seen the ceiling of the LaVine-DeRozan-Nikola Vucevic group. It’s not high.

There are three certainties for the Bulls.

— They are currently not very good. Since the calendar turned to 2022, they are 63-68.

— They don’t have cap space to sign quality free agents (this also isn’t a great free agent class, and they’re also, again, unwilling to go into the luxury cap).

— They don’t have a draft pick this year. They don’t have a significant amount of picks in future years.

If you come to grips with those three certainties, trade becomes necessary. The reason I suggest trading LaVine is because he will net by far the biggest return. He is younger and more versatile than DeRozan, he’s also locked down for another four years under his current contract.

Bradley Beal and Damian Lillard are the other two big trade chips out there. Lillard is likely to be in Portland next year. LaVine is better than Beal and more durable.

History suggests there will be plenty of teams willing to trade for him. And the Bulls have leverage. While they probably should trade him, they don’t need to. He hasn’t asked for a trade and just signed a new deal.

I’m not exactly a trade machine guy, but I would, for instance, trade him for the #2 or #3 pick in this year’s draft. But I would also want a good, young player in return, too.

This won’t happen, but an example would be the #3 pick (via Portland) and Anfernee Simons for LaVine. Obviously, in that situation, the Bulls would need to take back some bad salary in return as well to make the trade work. That’s just a template. I actually don’t love Simons as a player. But he’s young and has proved he has potential — that’s really the point.

I don’t want to trade LaVine in a vacuum. But given the reality of the Bulls’ situation, they almost have to. Their hands are tied. They tied their hands, don’t get me wrong, but they’re also the only ones who can untie them.

The question is what the front office wants out of this. The reason the Bulls are going to re-sign Nikola Vucevic, for instance, is not because they need him. It’s because they traded for him in a bad trade, and now can’t recognize him as a sunk cost.

It’s how most front offices operate. The Cubs can sell at the deadline if they want, because they’ve shielded themselves with the narrative that they are still rebuilding toward becoming a contender. Fans wouldn’t be happy, but they have that card to play. For Rick Hahn and the White Sox, that would be harder. They already rebuilt for years, and selling would essentially be an admission by the front office that they are not qualified for their jobs.

Artūras Karnišovas is still relatively new to the job. But the Bulls went all in, and came up with nothing. To turn around and trade LaVine would also be an admission of failure, though not as much as it would be for Hahn. Selling LaVine and also tearing down the rest of the roster may be the right move, but that would be a complete admission of failure, while re-tooling around just LaVine or just DeRozan could be explained as more of a half-measure, a half-admission of failure. That’s why it’s the more likely scenario.

The Bulls need shooting. They also need a franchise-altering player. LaVine is likely never going to be that. DeRozan was for half of a season, and is only getting older. Vucevic is certainly not that.

I hate rebuilding. I despise when the Bulls suck. But they’re likely going to have to take a step back to move forward. It’s up to the front office to stop standing still.

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The Cubs have swept the (gulp) first-place Pirates! They are now right back in the thick of things in a god-awful division. They sit 3.5 games back, only behind the mediocre Pirates, Brewers and Reds.

I do believe the Cubs’ front office wants to sell. Marcus Stroman — one of the best pitchers in all of baseball right now — has expressed his dismay publicly with their unwillingness to negotiate with him on a new contract.

Since Jed Hoyer took over, the Cubs have been very quick to sell and very slow to buy. So much so that, when they signed Ian Happ and Nico Hoerner to blah extensions, the fanbase lost their minds. They get credit for Signing Stroman in the first place, but that wasn’t entering a competitive window. We should now be entering into one of those. (They also signed Jameson Taillon to a big deal, and so far, get no credit for that besides a pat on the back for signing a sizable and available check).

My wish is for the Cubs to continue pushing the competitive envelope this year so that the front office looks dumb if they try to sell. I’m starving for some meaningful games. So are the rest of the fans. Just look at the crowds at Wrigley. Game 1 against the Pirates was delayed, cold, rainy, and a relatively large group rooted them on until the finish.

Christopher Morel is BACK.

Seiya Suzuki is STILL HERE.

Marcus Stroman IS ELITE.

Cody Bellinger is BACK (from injury).

Matt Mervis, right when he seemed to be turning a corner, WAS SENT DOWN. Okay, this one I wasn’t thrilled about, but at least it was to make room for Bellinger.

The Cubs are in a very winnable division. They aren’t a great team, but they aren’t a bad one either. They have plenty of young talent on the roster, and young talent on the way up. There’s no reason anymore to be selling for the future. It’s not like the Bulls situation, the Cubs should never be stuck between a rock and a hard place. The goal should always be to compete, and they can this year if they win, I don’t know, like 83 games.

The Pirates sweep was sweet because it was necessary to keep this dream alive. It was also only their second sweep of the year, with the other being against the lowly A’s. The Cubs haven’t been winning much at all of late, but when they do, they generally win the first two games of a series and then lay an egg in the final game.

That didn’t happen Thursday night. Stroman didn’t have his best stuff and still went six innings, only allowing two runs. God bless him. The Cubs scored 28 runs in the series.

They crushed the Pirates in Game 1. In Game 2, they overcame an early four-run deficit.

It was just exactly the series this team needed.

In baseball season, I am allowed to swing my emotions from one side of the spectrum to the other in a week’s time. That’s what I’m doing now. They have a tough series coming up against the Orioles this weekend, but then have the opportunity to gain even more ground on the Pirates again next week.

Tucker Barnhart still SUCKS.

But the Cubs are BACK. And if they’re not, I’ll put my “Days until College Football” sign back up in my room (it’s 71, by the way).

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The White Sox, like the Cubs, will likely remain in the theoretical hunt for the entire year. The Twins won’t be good enough to pull away, and the Sox are going to be just good enough to stay within six games of the lead.

Some people call that purgatory, Jerry Reinsdorf calls that paradise.

We’ve examined the obvious problems with the White Sox time and again. They can’t stay on the field. Yoan Moncada is back on the IL — again. Lance Lynn is awful. Tim Anderson leads off, but can’t hit.

Some of these issues you can’t change. But some of the issues you can change, and it starts with the culture, a culture a lot of fans thought Pedro Grifol may bring.

He has not helped, but it’s hard to blame him for more than, I don’t know, 5% of the White Sox woes.

The White Sox have some decent hitters, but their approaches — back to culture — are awful across the board. Collectively, they chase more balls out of the zone than any other team in the league outside of the Tigers. And that’s not really a fair measurement for the Tigers, because they have Javier Baez on their team.

They also have the worst on-base percentage in the league. It’s feast or famine for every guy that goes up to the plate. Walks are boring. They also lead to baserunners, which lead to runs. And runs lead to wins, according to me and Billy Beane.

Baseball is an individual sport, but there also needs to be some sense of the team. All of the best teams have players that are willing to walk and willing to work on disciplined approaches at the plate. The Tampa Bay Rays, for example, rank on the opposite end of the White Sox in all of these categories.

Homers are cool. Batting titles are cool. Winning is even cooler, and the Sox are ten games below .500.

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I write a newsletter each week about sports, sometimes drawing asinine conclusions based on just the last seven days.

But sports coverage has gone too far when we are freaking out about whether Justin Fields had a good day at practice during OTAs and mini camp. I don’t blame the writers for reporting what they saw one day or another, but my God, having a discourse over who looked good one day to the next in voluntary practices is probably a sign that we all need to step back a bit.

I’m excited to write about the Bears as training camp nears. But I promise you this: I will never be writing about performances at summer camp. That is a Still Gotta Come Through Chicago guarantee.

Get back to work. It’s 12:30 on a Wednesday and you’re tweeting that the Bears should have traded Fields because he didn’t connect with Equanimeous St. Brown on a Go route in June.

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Thank you for reading, as always! Sharing the newsletter with your friends and family is always appreciated. Have a great weekend.