Still Gotta Come Through Chicago

Breaking Down Bears Business, Bad Bulls bets

Happy Friday Chicago!

I hope you all had a good time watching the final football game of the season last week.

It was the most-watched Super Bowl of all time, with 123 million people tuning in, which means the War On Football I’ve referenced time and again here is finally dead. I feel like the men of Easy Company hanging out on Hitler’s Eagle’s Nest in 1945.

You all can try to connect with your kids on walks through the park, just don’t get in the way of me fully padded conducting Oklahoma drills with my son.

Living in the U.S., in 2024, affords me a lot of privileges.

So now that I got that acknowledgment out of the way, I can say that the Sunday night after the Super Bowl is one of the worst of the year. What a horrible deal it is to come to grips with reality while pizza, wings and brownies interact with one another in your stomach. Goodbye to my friends, goodbye to football, and hello to yet another work week ready to attack me like a kid of Scared Straight.

Even within that context, though, I have to acknowledge that I’ve got it far better than others.

After all, my building sent me an email at about 3:45 p.m. on Sunday letting us know that “The Big Game” would be on upstairs in the amenities room, and there would be food and drinks — sorry, “sips and dips!” — served.

I almost peaked my head in there just to see what kind of freaks saw an email from their building and then consciously decided to go hang out with strangers and watch the Super Bowl.

I want to stop short of saying that if you accept that invitation, you should go to prison. I wanted to stop short, but I’m not going to. Because if you go up there off a whim, you’re either a psychopath that belongs behind bars or you’re so terribly lonely that a cell mate may actually be the upgrade you’re looking for.

Now, as for the game, I was just happy that is was a good one. A man like me doesn’t sweat over his San Fransisco -1.5 bet, he enjoys the battle and appreciates a final ode to football before six or seven months of darkness.

I think San Fransisco probably should have won the game, but it also makes perfect sense that the best player in the world was able to triumph against a team that probably should have won the game.

I’m convinced there’s an overlap between the dudes who think everything is rigged and the dudes who think there’s 3.5 billion evil women in the world conspiring against them.

You can shrug your shoulders and say, “hmm, makes sense,” about Pat Mahomes winning another Super Bowl at the peak of his powers, or you can convince yourself that thousands of people are initiated each year into a deep-secret cult to rig football games.

That’s akin, in my mind, to believing 3.5 billion women are evil and conspiring against you in lieu of just coming to the grips with the fact that you may be unfuckable.

If you don’t know much about football, don’t sell yourself out so easily. Acting as if you can’t possibly conceive how a Pat Mahomes-led team won a football game exposes you. You should just sit back and enjoy the show instead, with a couple “tackle him!” shouts throughout the game.

It’s like if everyone you’re with is vibing to a rap song, but you realize halfway through everyone knows the lyrics but you. Don’t worry, young King, just throw out a WOO! every once in a while, off beat, and no one bats an eye.

But perhaps the psychology behind the “rigged” conspiracies is really around the deeper belief that you think you know things that common folks don’t. I’ll admit, it is satisfying telling someone a song they sent you — which came out in 2023 — is an “oldie but a goodie.” Maybe the rigged rush is like 10x that.

Now that I think about it, that may be a good personality to adapt: Just shouting “rigged” at anything that doesn’t go my way.

Sports games are just the first use case. I’m calling rec league basketball games rigged as a ref making $15 per game escorts me out of a church with a court. I’m making offers on luxury condos 40% below market price and telling people the realtor just “didn’t like me.” I’m assuring freinds I’m only single because the game is “rigged against me.” I’m chatting (to: all) RIGGEEDDD in the year-end Zoom call for company awards when recipients are announced.

If I’m not the Godfather of my brother’s first child? You know the drill.

I was going to say that, post-football season, I may need to start a diary or something to get through. I quickly realized I have one, online, masquerading as a sports newsletter.

But the season’s end has hit me hard. I almost texted my dad a Chicago politics take on Wednesday. That’s how quickly I broke down. Chicago politics? Opening up the door to a political conversation with my father? What’s wrong with me?

I quickly deleted the message and started playing Simple Plan to convince myself I hated him for 12-15 minutes as the urge to chat about “ShotSpotter” contracts faded.

Seven months of football feels like vacation. What waits on the other side, when you get home, isn’t good. There’s a lot of Bulls basketball in my future. I’m expecting to text a lot of group chats things like “is anyone watching this Mavs-Grizzlies game?” Those are generally met with a new text on a completely separate topic an hour later.

But, in due time, summer will be here.

And, when summer returns, and everyone rushes to the beaches, I’ll know it’s nearly time to rush the proverbial beaches of Normandy soon. In other, more sane words: I’ll know football season is almost near.

Let’s go.

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What a frustrating week it was for the Bulls, who could be coming off an unbelievable stretch that would have ostensibly supported some of Arturas Karnisovas’ delusions.

First on the agenda was blowing a late 11-point lead to the Magic on Saturday, and then a 17-point lead came crashing down against the Cavaliers on Wednesday.

I understand that, now more than ever, the swings in the NBA are expected. Three-point volume and variability, in particular, makes it so neither team is generally out of the game (as the play-in makes it such for the playoff picture — LETS GO BULLS!).

But that’s not what’s to blame for the Bulls.

For the Bulls, it’s a complete breakdown of the offense in the fourth quarter. Against the Magic, for instance, the Bulls did not score a point from the 6:58 mark in the fourth to the 2:33 mark. That allowed the Magic back into the game, and ultimately led to a road OT period that felt like an impossible hill to climb from the get-go.

DeMar DeRozan is one of the best isolation players in the game. He’s one of the top 15, in fact, at 1.1 points per isolation possession, according to Synergy. The problem with slow moving, isolation basketball in the fourth quarter of close games is that, well, it doesn’t work.

The jig is up on DeRozan in the fourth quarter. He sees doubles, better defenders, and teams begging him to pass. His own team is begging him to pass, too, as he throws his elbow into a defender hoping for a foul call on a god-awful fadeaway jumper.

DeRozan’s usage rate is about 25% in the fourth quarter, far too high for a player that should be realistically playing second fiddle to Coby White at this point in his career — for a lot of reasons.

The stagnant offense gets the Bulls out of their rhythm and leads to awful shots in crucial situations, in general. The Bulls should not be 28th in the league in assists per game, even without a true point guard running the show.

When the Bulls had a chance to take the lead with about 25 seconds left in the game, Coby White threw the ball out of bounds trying to make a play. He took the onus, and then some, after the game.

But he wasn’t actually the problem with the play. Penetration led to a kick out to Nikola Vucevic, who was wide open at the top of the key. League-wide, that’s probably a 50% or better shot. But Vuc didn’t shoot, and instead waited for someone else to come grab the ball, because he can’t shoot threes anymore.

Out of 163 players who have shot enough three pointers this year to qualify, Vuc is the worst of them all. He’s shooting 27%. From a true shooting and PER perspective, he is having the worst year of his career since his rookie season. But, to the untrained watcher — like Karnisovas — he’s still a “double-double” machine, averaging 17 and 10.

Vuc’s play seems to be declining, and while he and DeRozan are good teammates that aren’t to blame for all of the Bulls problems, the former just signed an above-market contract extension with the team heading into his age-33 season, and the latter is also going to sign a way-above-market contract extension heading into his age-35 season.

If you think the Bulls’ game plans are outdated and frustrating now, just wait until they’re centered around declining 34 and 36 year olds taking up a great deal of their cap space.

This is where the philosophical question comes in with Billy Donovan. My instinct is to put blame on him for end-of-game situations, but when you consider that he’s likely only playing a guy like Dalen Terry because he’s got a front office gun to his head, it’s hard to separate things.

The organization is certainly headed in the wrong direction long term, but near term, that direction is also affecting wins and losses.

There’s no reason this Bulls team — which has had a solid net rating for three months now — should not be .500 yet. But they remain stuck in that no. 9 spot, destined for the worse of the two play-in games.

The All-Star break is here, and the Bulls will not be participating. Having said that, they deserve the break.

But we — the fans — deserve the break, too. Even with football over, I know I can use the break from high blood pressure at 9:30 p.m. every second or third night.

LETS GO BULLS!

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The Bears cut Cody Whitehair and Eddie Jackson on Thursday, in two of the least unexpected moves of the NFL offseason. Neither were effective players anymore, Whitehair can’t snap the ball (like his teammates), and the Bears will save over $20 million in cap space.

The Bears now, in addition to having the no. 1 pick, have $70 million in cap space. That’s the third-most in the NFL, only behind the Commanders and Titans.

That’s reflective of a wonderful job by Ryan Poles (at least on that front), but now comes the harder part. If the Bears take advantage of the position they’re in appropriately, they will undoubtedly lose a first-round playoff game after Matt Eberflus does something extraordinarily dumb.

Sign me up!

As for the cuts, I’m not exactly the person that gleefully waves guys out the door, unless they appear to be bad humans. I don’t think neither of Whitehair or Jackson are that, and Jackson, in particular, brought us a lot of good memories.

He was so god damn good in 2018. And one thing that I always really appreciated about him was how much he loved being a Bear. He embraced that and the city, and worked his ass off to come back from multiple injuries.

His play deteriorated toward the end, and his arm tackles were a little less bearable without the interceptions to make up for them. I just wish we could have won a little bit more with him during his time here.

Elsewhere, the offseason has already gone on so long that there are pro-Caleb Williams people in my life flipping back to Justin Fields. We all just have too much time on our hands, including me, when it comes to thinking about the Bears QB situation.

I personally will not break down that decision every week, but we’ll dig more into the weeds when April is in sight.

I think a lot of this has to do with Merril Hoge’s take that Caleb Williams is “not special.” Hoge was in on Mahomes, and fervently out on Johnny Manziel. He’s been right about a lot, but I do think it’s worth mentioning that he said he only watched three Caleb Williams games last year. Even his evaluation is not finished, and he’s just one guy.

As a side note, Hoge wrote a “CTE is fake” book, basically, a few years back. As a soldier against the War On Football, I bought it immediately and sped through it. Without hyperbole, is was one of the worst books I’ve ever read in my entire life.

Anyway, we also have some stadium news this week. It appears Arlington Heights is out of the running — after being called a “sure thing” — for the new stadium. The town and the Bears couldn’t agree on taxes.

I’m not a financial analyst, but the Bears probably should have gotten a better idea on tax breaks before buying a property and destroying the existing stadium there.

The pressure is on Bears President Kevin Warren, who I have said from the start is a smoke-and-mirrors professional. I’d call him incompetent, but that can’t be true given all the jobs he’s taken on in his career. I do think that his hiring was met with so much praise simply because his name is not Ted Phillips.

I’ve been pro-Chicago stadium from the get-go, but with the Bears and city negotiating, you have two of the most inept entities in the world talking biz. I wouldn’t count on anything getting done soon.

Bears football should be played outside, in Chicago. I may not get both of those wishes, but it looks like I’ll get one of them.

I’ve been resigned to the fact that the stadium plan is not going to work out well for a while, so I’ve mostly stopped paying attention. The only reason I’m back in now is because it appears the Bears are again incapable of getting out of their own way.

The Bears, unfortunately, remain the Bears.

Playoffs next year, though. Playoffs next year.

See you all next week.

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