Good morning Chicagoans, and happy belated 58th birthday to the greatest to ever do it, Michael Jordan.
His influence on this newsletter is obvious, and I sit here writing to you every week with a picture of him on the left side of my desk and his six fingers emphatically pointing toward me from my right side.
The first thing a stunned and quiet Utah crowd heard after the Bulls won their sixth and final championship — 23 years ago — was Jordan yelling “SIX, YEAH, SIX!”
“You Still Gotta Come Through Chicago. Utah, Indiana, they still gotta come through Chicago. I don’t care what happens today. I don’t care what happened in the other series. Still gotta come through Chicago.”
It’s still true to this day, man. Below zero, three feet of snow. I don’t care if it snowed yesterday, don’t care if snows today. Don’t care if there’s nothing to do. Still Gotta Come Through Chicago — the new tourism slogan for Chicago.
Pitchers and catchers reported today in baseball, which people kind of hang onto as a sign that baseball season — and thus, the summer — is coming.
I hate to be a pessimist, but pitchers and catchers reporting is fool’s gold. We’re not close to baseball season. We sure as shit are not close to summer. It was like Spring Break in Midwest growing up.
Spring break! It’s like 36 degrees and cloudy outside and all my friends are in Mexico while I’m playing catch in a sweatshirt for one of my first baseball practices.
Just not all that exciting.
But this is not going to be the tone of this newsletter. Because the worst is behind us, Chicago. You may have to push your roommate’s car out a few more times because he’s dumb enough to think he can just wheel his ‘98 Volvo into an alley filled with a foot of snow on top of three inches of straight ice without a problem. But other than that, we’ve made it past the worst of the winter.
When all this shit melts, it’s going to feel divine. Like God is finally telling us that we can get on with our lives again.
When it does, the Bulls will be well on their way to a playoff shot and more than 30 wins, the Cubs and Sox will be gearing up for competitive seasons at the same time again, the Blackhawks will be in the fight still and the Bears will have made a decision at QB — which, if nothing else — will mean we can stop spending every waking moment thinking about.
The COVID-19 cases are down in Chicago and people are getting vaccinated left and right. The sun is still out when 5 p.m. hits, thank the lord. Our city will become a joy again, despite how unlikely that feels right now.
And we’ll all feel better because of the grit and grind we endured.
Well, I guess you could argue you’d rather be in, like, Florida. But Texas is dealing with virtually the same weather we are right now, and are far less equipped to deal with it.
So I’ll continue to look forward to Summertime Chicago and block out the haters who suggest that a year full of chirping birds and 70-degree weather is the high life.
If that was the case, I’d have nothing to blabber on about at the beginning of work phone calls.
You know, every once in a while I start thinking about what it may be like to live in San Diego, Nashville, or Austin. Then my day dream ends abruptly as I come to my Chicago senses, and I smack away that sensation like an R. Kelly song that comes on shuffle that I find myself enjoying a bit too much.
I’ll be here in February, March, April, and with all of you in May celebrating the Bulls’ 30+ wins and a play-in tournament berth in a bar nearby… God willing.
Let’s go.
Get a few folks to subscribe to the newsletter today in honor of the worst being behind us, a light at the end of the tunnel, and our lord and savior Michael Jordan’s birthday.
Someone needs to tell my mother that I need her upstairs in my room ASAP with a tray filled with soup, crackers, and Ginger Ale.
Because God dammit, I’ve got playoff fever! (Yes, I did have a bit of that thing they call privilege growing up, my mother was great to me when I was under the weather.) My temperature was about a 101 before last night’s win over the Pistons, now it’s at about 105 and I can’t fall asleep because of it.
They say the most fervent converts in a movement are the late ones. By all means, if you’ve been hesitant to believe in this Bulls team, and the movement we’re witnessing with our own eyes, there’s still room on board.
And 100% capacity is allowed on this bus. There’s no room for social distancing when the Bulls are making 25-point comebacks and a half game out of the 6th seed in the Eastern Conference.
We need everyone on board, packed shoulder to shoulder, screaming LETS GO BULLS on every game day.
In another edition of there’s-no-chance-the-Bulls-would-have-won-this-game-last-year, the Bulls outscored the Pistons 27-12 in the third quarter and 62-41 in the second half to take home their 12th victory of the season Wednesday night.
Dissatisfied with the abysmal first-half effort, Billy Donovan benched three starters to begin the second half — Wendell Carter Jr., Coby White, and Patrick Williams. The Bulls played one of their best defensive quarters of the season, and then Donovan closed with those three as both White and Williams hit clutch, dagger threes to close the Pistons out.
If that isn’t superb coaching, I don’t know what is.
Stacey King has again created another great nickname for a Bulls player. This time, he’s calling rookie Patrick Williams “The Paw” — a knockoff, baby version of Kawhi Leonard’s “The Claw.” King is the greatest. The comparisons mostly come from the common disposition between the two players. But they’re also both long defenders with methodical offensive games.
For what it’s worth, Kawhi averaged 12 points and 7 rebounds per 36 minutes his rookie year. Pat Williams is averaging a near-identical 13 points and 6 rebounds.
And, here I go, that was an All-Star performance by Zach LaVine. All-Star players carry their teams when they need to be carried, and that’s what LaVine did when he came out mad in the third quarter and went on a furry that included 15 points in the third quarter alone.
LaVine’s attitude is night and day from where it was last year. His intensity when the Bulls are down is inspiring, and the team seems to actually feed off that energy, something they did not do last year — or any year before that.
Thad Young went off on his team in the huddle amid their struggles, and it worked. He called it “out of character for him,” but I disagree. Because the guy’s character is driven by the notion that he should do anything he can do to help the team win. And they needed to hear, clearly, what he had to say.
Zach LaVine showed maturity off the court this past week as well. He told reporters that Young had been the MVP of the team thus far. Being grateful to have another above average teammate and also being able to acknowledge his excellence is another sign of the emotional maturity that has developed in him — and in the entire team — over these past couple of months.
Young is having career year at the age of 32. He’s averaging about 11 points, 6 rebounds, and 4 assists on 60% shooting. But his traditional stats don’t tell the whole story.
Both offensively and defensively, Young is the glue that keeps the Bulls together in close games. Donovan has given him the ability to do so, and through his efforts, Young has given LaVine the ability to be an offensive threat and not the strategical leader of the team.
I can’t understate how huge Young’s impact has been for the Bulls thus far.
A slew of teams will undoubtedly come calling near the trade deadline because of how well he has played. Because every team competing for a championship wants a guy like Young on their team.
Guess what the Bulls should do when they get those calls? Deny them immediately.
Young is the best free agent signing the Bulls have had in a long time, and he has helped others develop around him. He has played a massive part in bringing the Bulls back to respectability — and you can’t quantify the value in that.
The same reason I don’t want to trade Young is the same reason I wanted the Bulls to compete this year, and not bottom out for a higher draft pick. NBA fans can be so dumb sometimes. They think the formula to winning in the league is to suck five years in a row so you can get a bunch of high draft picks.
The Timberwolves have done that, and how has that worked out?
The Suns did the same, and it worked terribly — until! — they tried to compete last year in lieu of tanking and did well enough to attract Chris Paul to their team, which has catapulted them to the top half of the Western Conference standings.
The Brooklyn Nets competed with what they had in 2018-2019, and it put the organization back on the map. Now, they have three of the best players in the league.
If the Nets had continued to bask in their own misery, do Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving elect to go there? Most certainly not. The evidence lies across the river, where the Knicks refused to compete, and lost out on the KD and Kyrie sweepstakes largely because they presented themselves as an incompetent organization year in and year out.
The Bulls have had plenty of bad seasons. They do not need another one. And this group, which I am falling for more each and every game, will pave the way for a better future than any draft pick could.
Plus, the NBA draft lottery is more uncertain than ever. The worst teams are not guaranteed the best pick. When considering competing vs. chance, always side with competing.
Bear in mind that the Bulls have competed this well without key players throughout this year. Otto Porter and Lauri Markkanen remain out. When they return, there’s no reason why the Bulls can’t be a top-8 team in the East.
My mindset has completely changed. I’ve been as passionate about the Bulls winning this year as anyone you know. I have done so because of the aforementioned reasons and because I wanted to see the young guys turn into winning players. They are doing just that.
But now, the fever is taken over. I don’t just want 30 wins. I want a playoff berth, God dammit!
The way I see it, there’s no reason the Bulls can’t be a part of this year’s playoff field.
The Heat will likely pass them. The Raptors will probably stay ahead of them. But the Bulls can be better than the Hornets and the Knicks, and that would place them — at least — at an eight seed.
Since the play-in tournament is between the 7th, 8th, 9th, and 10th place teams, the Bulls would still have to fight for a berth after the regular season. If the Bulls were to reach the 7th or 8th seed, they’d have two chances to win one game to make the playoffs.
And I want in. Bad.
The experts over at FiveThirtyEight, with all of their analytics and simulations, have finally caught up with the big basketball brain that bounces around in this fat ass head of mine.
31 wins and the over, they say. They could have saved their robots a lot of time and just asked your boy, and I would’ve told them this projection — and not their former projections of 24, 25, 27 and 29 wins — was the right one. (I’d say closer to 34, but I’ll take it.)
Everyone’s catching on. The question is, do you want to hop on the bus or do you want to be sitting in your house in the springtime when I’m pouring shots of Jameson down every subscriber’s throats against their will?
Your choice.
The Cubs sure know how to play with my emotions. After an embarrassing offseason mired with salary dumping and head scratching moves that made me want to punch Tom Ricketts square in his doughy gut, those sons of bitches signed Jake Arrieta, perhaps my favorite Cub to watch of all time.
Is Jake Arrieta the guy he once was? No he’s not. But he also once went nearly 30 starts with less than a 1 ERA.
During Arrieta’s prime, he was as good as any pitcher to ever take the mound in the MLB. Every time he started, it was appointment viewing.
I was once out and about during an Arrieta start, and found myself later at night in a cafe by myself watching him throw a no-hitter against the Dodgers.
Never again did I put myself in that position.
Like Jon Lester, Arrieta’s fire made his pitching even more fun than it already was. Being able to go into the game knowing you’d likely win because he was pitching was such an unfamiliar feeling for me as a Cubs fan.
The Cubs were in a Wild Card game, and I actually felt confident that we’d win. The Pirates loaded the bases, and I still wasn’t completely panicking. That was all thanks to Arrieta, who is also one of the most important Cubs of all time.
He loved his time here, and bringing him back feels like the reunion we all needed this offseason.
He’s lost a couple miles per hour on his fastball and has battled injuries. His stuff is not as filthy as it once was. But for what the Cubs are this year — a team that’s likely to hover around 80 wins — he’s a fine back-end rotation guy.
The Cubs will likely have the slowest pitching staff in the league this season. It will be an interesting experiment at work, but if they’re even average, the Cubs have a real shot at the playoffs.
They also are unlikely to rely on a traditional five-man rotation like in years past.
If Arrieta can rekindle even 10% of that magic he once brought to Wrigley, he’ll be worth the money and then some.
He’s happy to back, and all of Chicago is happy to have him back. If there was one thing that could drag me back into being fired up for this Cubs season, it was signing Arrieta.
Sure, I would’ve loved to ride way-past-their-primes Lester and Arrieta each week to a mediocre record, but the latter will do.
It’s becoming clear to me that the bad things that happened this offseason, such as trading Yu Darvish, came from ownership.
But what has happened since seems to be Jed Hoyer’s doing, and in a cheap, creative way, he’s made this team intriguing.
They signed reliever Brandon Workman yesterday, who had a tough 2020 — like a lot of players did. It’s a small sample size.
But his 2019 inspires confidence. He had a superb 1.033 WHIP and 1.88 ERA in nearly 72 innings pitched. If he can be 80% of that, his signing will also have been worth it.
Perhaps it’s the winter talking — or, dammit, pitchers and catchers reporting — but I’m excited to watch a team that wasn’t necessarily built to win try to do just that.
P.S. Pat Hughes, the Cubs radio voice, will fill in as the TV play-by-play guy for a handful of games this year. That will be both strange and appointment viewing.
Tony LaRussa showed up to his press conference an hour and a half late yesterday, which irked reporters that were sitting on their couches when the press conference was supposed to start and also when it actually did.
Still, I think Tony should probably try to err on the side of good PR for a while, don’t you think?
Michael Kopech, the flamethrower prospect rebounding from Tommy John surgery, reportedly looks great. The Sox have all of their best players back, and also added Liam Hendriks to the bullpen. They signed Adam Eaton who, if nothing else, will likely be an upgrade in right field.
The only thing in this team’s way is Jerry Reinsdorf, who was disrupting in the team’s operations all offseason. Rick Hahn apparently did not even know about LaRussa’s DUI until it became public knowledge. That is unacceptable.
Hahn admitted that himself on a 670 The Score interview before he backtracked.
Nonetheless, it’s evident that Hahn hired LaRussa at gunpoint. And it makes it worse that Reinsdorf is off giving interviews in which he’s bragging about the fact that he signed Hendriks to a deal under budget constraints.
That’s like me bragging to my buddies about buying new shoes despite telling myself I wouldn’t be retail shopping in February. Cool, man, you broke a non-existent threshold that you set for yourself.
In yet another projection, FanGraphs placed the Sox behind the Twins based on playoff chances. The Sox, according to the projection, have a 60% chance of making the playoffs (the Cubs were given a 20% chance). The Twins, 66%. They also give the Sox a 5% chance of winning the World Series, the 6th best in all of baseball and the 4th best chance in the AL.
The best thing that can happen to the Sox is for them to start playing baseball, and for the rest of the noise to go away. And I cannot wait to watch.
Carson Wentz apparently does not want to play for the Bears, which is just an all-time smack in the face.
The guy was one of the worst quarterbacks in the league last year, and yet he is willing to deny another opportunity to start in the league if it means going to the dumpster fire that is the Bears.
For once, the Bears incompetence may save us.
The Bears are reportedly unlikely to trade for Wentz unless he’s all in on them, which he’s not. Sorry to hear that, Carson. Next!
Hopefully that continues to fizzle out, and it seems that some of the rumored high-end offerings are also being taken off the table.
If the Bears were smart, they’d trade away assets for draft capital, find a way to move up in the draft with those new picks, and draft a QB. They’d do that, and invest heavily in a youthful offensive line. And they’d start over.
It doesn’t have to be a complete rebuild, but grasping at anything that will keep them at 8-8 is not the move.
Which is why it probably will be Pace’s move.
The Blackhawks are 7-2-1 in their last ten games, and are now second in the Central Division at 9-5-4.
The Bulls and Blackhawks both had putrid starts to the season. I expected the Bulls to rebound. I did not expect for the Hawks to, nor did I expect their young players to shine as much as they have. Nor did I expect Jeremy Colliton to be a sneaky Jack Adams award contestant.
Things of note if you’ve fallen off the bandwagon and want to get back on:
— The goaltending: After giving up five goals in his first star, Kevin Lankinen has been outstanding. Since then, he has given up just 15 goals in nine starts. Malcom Subban has also put out great performances in a couple of his recent outings.
— Nicolas Beaudin filled in for Adam Boqvist while he was recovering from COVID-19. He was expected to be on for a shorter stay, but as one of the Hawks two 2018 first-round draft picks, Beaudin has shown serious promise. If there’s anything the Hawks needed this year, it was their youth stepping up. And they have thus far.
— There is hope. The Hawks are more than capable at making a sneaky playoff run. They likely won’t stay this hot, but there’s no doubt they have a chance to compete for the Cup — at least theoretically — when the time comes.
Things are looking up, Chicago! Thank you reading, as always. Thank you for spreading the word, as always. Next week, t-shirts will go on sale. For those of you who have been the biggest supporters, discounts will be rewarded. I appreciate it.
Man what a game last night. I will say it after every comeback win like you but this team last year loses by 40 in this game. Granted it was the Pistons this was a great win. Thagic Johnson continues to be an awesome role player. This team hasn’t even reached its full potential with all the injuries. The 5-8 seeds are completely open and I could not have a higher fever. Great point about tanking too because we have so many examples of free agents going to slightly above average teams because of runs they go on. Also add clippers who made it to the western conference semis before getting kawhi and pg. this team is just fun because although Zach is the star we get major contributions from role players every night. Really excited to see how we match up against Philly.
I’m writing this after hearing Went to the colts and I’m doing a 180. I think we are ultimately screwed hear now. Our starting quarterback next year as of now is Nick Foles. I keep hearing this Derek Carr rumor but after he cried on the field and lost respect from his teammates I’ve hated him. He was also the corniest dude on hard knocks but he is a decent quarterback. I don’t even know what I’m writing because I’m emotional. Thank god for the bulls
Haven't been able to taste or smell anything for the last week, have had a deep cough, pounding headache- and I know it can only be one thing: Playoff Fever babay!!!
I said before the season that the biggest upset that can happen with the Bulls is me coming full circle on Lavine. He has been such a joy to watch this season, and when he lets the offense flow and lets his game come to him its a thing of beauty. I like the fiery edge on him wanting to guard Grant down the stretch, however we all know that needs to be PWills assignment. I understand Lavine iso being the best option for the offense some times, but it needs to come organically and not with him bringing the ball up and dribbling out the clock waiting for a screen. There was a sequence last night in which he ran to bring the ball up to do just that, then the officials reviewed a Pistons 3 pointer- Billy signaled for Coby to bring the ball up, ran through the motions, Lavine came off an off ball screen and then went to work- not giving the Pistons a chance to set up on D. That's the type of offense the Bulls need down the stretch.
Massive team win, huge shots from Coby and the Paw down the stretch. I love Thad and I am hungry for the fucking playoffs. You think the Celtics can beat us in the first round when we have home court advantage???? No way buddy! No. Way!