Icy Wrigley and Land-o-Links for 7/23/2008

It’s been a long time, so let’s throw up some links:

1. The Blackhawks Game of the Century (My Tribe) - It’s nice to see the Blackhawks start getting some attention again in town, with Rocky Wirtz taking swift action in turning around a franchise that was decimated by his father’s bull-headed business practices. The biggest news for the casual fan, of course, is that the Hawks and Red Wings will be playing at Wrigley Field next New Year’s Day in the NHL Winter Classic. This will certainly be a great event for the city of Chicago in a historic venue - of course, I’ll miss it all if the Illini end up in a warmer locale for a bowl game that day. (We actually have expectations this year!!!) That’s the dilemma here. The scheduling choice (I’m not sure if the NHL or NBC is to blame here) to put the Winter Classic on the same day as the Rose Bowl, Capital One Bowl and other major bowl games makes about as much sense as putting it opposite of the opening round of the NCAA Tournament or game 1 of the World Series - the national attention is elsewhere. Plus, this past New Year’s Day, Michigan played in the Capital One Bowl while Illinois played in the Rose Bowl right after that, which happen to be the major college football draws for the Detroit and Chicago media markets, respectively. If that type of situation happens again this coming New Year’s Day, how are Chicago and Detroit fans going to choose between the Winter Classic and their respective college home teams? As much positive press as the NHL received for the ratings for last year’s Winter Classic, it ended up garnering a 2.6 on NBC with teams from two cities (Buffalo and Pittsburgh) that got huge local ratings since they had no local college team conflicts. In contrast, the Capital One Bowl aired directly opposite of the hockey game on cable (as opposed to network television) and received a 9.1 rating on ESPN and the Rose Bowl got a 11.1 rating on ABC. That should be clear evidence to the NHL its headliner event ought to be moved to a date with a lot less competition for eyeballs. Plus, while there will be a certain curiosity factor of watching a hockey game at Wrigley Field, any combination of Illinois, Notre Dame, Michigan and/or Michigan State playing in New Year’s Day bowl games, which has occurred every single year except for one since the turn of the millennium, would reduce the local ratings for the Winter Classic in Chicago and Detroit by a significant margin. If I were NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman, I would do a whole lot of things, but first and foremost would be to move the date of the Winter Classic to the weekend in between the AFC and NFC Conference Championship Games and the Super Bowl where the game would have the full attention of the sports world. Placing the marquee regular season game of the season up against a day that has been reserved for college football for decades (with the ratings to back it up), particularly in the middle of Big Ten country, is asinine.

2. The Dark Knight Triumphs and Disturbs (Chicagoist) - I’m not a very big comic book guy at all, but even I got wrapped up in the hype around The Dark Knight and ran out to see it this past weekend. The generally glowing reviews of the film are warranted - the best thing that I can say about the late Heath Ledger’s performance as the Joker is that you completely forget that it’s Heath Ledger up there since he consumes himself in the role so thoroughly. Plus, the latest Batman installment spent much of last summer filming right outside of my old office building at LaSalle and Wacker, so it was a kick to see the long chase scene on Lower Wacker Drive and multiple shots on LaSalle Street up on the big screen. In contrast to Batman Begins, which filled in a shell of the Chicago skyline and street scenes with a lot digitized images, The Dark Knight displays the city of Chicago pretty much as-is, such that it’s truly fair to call this a “Chicago movie” in the same manner as The Fugitive, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off and The Blues Brothers. Regardless, if you’re one of the five people in America that hasn’t seen the film yet, there’s no reason to wait.

3. Williams, Jazz to Play Bulls in Champaign (Pantagraph) - I wasn’t planning on going to the Illinois Homecoming game this year because it happens to fall on the same day as my law school class reunion, but now I’m really regretting it with this preseason game being added on Friday night to start off that weekend. Deron Williams, Derrick Rose, Ron Zook, Rejus Benn - all my man crushes in one place and I’ll have to miss it. Uh, let’s move on.

4. Together Again Briefly, Dee Brown and Deron Williams Chart Different Courses (ESPN.com) - Speaking of the Illini and the NBA, J.A. Adande (one of the few non-schmucks left at TWWL) had this nice piece examining the juxtaposition of the situations of Dee Brown and Deron Williams in college compared to the pros. It would be nice to see Dee get a spot somewhere in the NBA - the Jazz were a much deeper team, so he may have a better shot at cracking the rotation in Washington.

5. Brett Favre, Could Cause Sickness (Windy City Gridiron) - If there’s one saving grace about the 24-hour news ticker about Brett Favre’s movements over the past week, it’s that there is finally some movement away from the monolithic media monkey love for this man that has existed for the past decade. I have always hated Favre, plain and simple, and it’s nice to see people outside of Chicago and Minnesota start realizing that he is as selfish as any other athlete out there.

6. Kevin Jones Signs With Bears (Huddle Up) - As the Bears open training camp, I’m trying to think of any athlete that has ruined my past fantasy seasons in either baseball or football more than Kevin Jones. I’ve been a victim of catastrophic injuries to Rocky Baldelli and Cris Carpenter on a number of occasions on the baseball end, but there’s nothing quite like how you get fucked when your starting running back goes down. That being said, the Bears taking a flyer on Jones isn’t a bad idea in the real football world - when the alternative is throwing in rookie Matt Forte out there after an offseason dedicated to wiring Cedric Benson bail money, you can’t afford to be picky.

7. Illini Sell Out Ohio State Game (FightingIllini.com) - The note here about the Illinois-Ohio State game selling out within an hour is a load of B.S. - I went online as soon as tickets went on sale and this game was already gone. So, if anyone out there has 2-4 tickets available for the game, shoot me a message.

And finally…

8. Baseball Hall-of-Famer Jerome Holtzman Dies (Chicago Tribune) - Most of the nation knows of Peter Gammons’ work at the Boston Globe due to ESPN, but for Chicagoans, it was Jerome Holtzman that defined baseball writing. His old column going through the all of the tidbits across the baseball world (not just the Cubs and White Sox) was always the first place I went to every week when the Sunday Chicago Tribune hit the driveway. May the Dean rest in peace.

(Image from Chicago Tribune)

Life is Unexpectedly Awesome

A couple of weeks after this year’s Rose Bowl, I wrote a long post lamenting the state of the teams that I root for, stating that “none of my teams are going to be playing any games of real meaning from now until the Illinois football team suits up to play Missouri on Labor Day weekend.” I also said this about the Bulls: “[A]s a Bulls fan, do I want this team to stretch to grab the seventh or eight seed in the Eastern Conference so that it can be shellacked by Boston or Detroit in the playoffs, or would I rather roll the dice and see if we can get O.J. Mayo or Derrick Rose in the United Center on a full-time basis next season? Call me crazy, but the latter option is more appealing to me at this point.”

Well, for for the second straight weekend, the White Sox are playing the Cubs with both teams being in first place. Granted, the sweep of the Sox by the Cubs last weekend emphasized the fact that the North Siders, I’ll admit begrudgingly, have the most consistent top-to-bottom team in baseball this season. The White Sox are just an all-or-nothing team - they’ll either bash in double digit runs powered by multiple home runs or have a complete power outage. Fortunately, the pitching staff (both the starting rotation and the bullpen) has kept the team in pretty much every game, but for narcissistic Sox fan base, it’s disheartening to watch a 6 1/2 game lead over Minnesota dissipate in the span of a few days. (I don’t hate the Twins in the same manner as the Packers, Pistons, or Hoosiers, but they might be the most annoying team that I could think of, if you know what I mean. The Twins don’t actually have David Eckstein on their team, yet it’s as if though they’re marching out nine clones of him every evening. As great as they are to fawning analysts, I always get a perverse delight when they’re squashed like a group of gnats later in the year.) Nevertheless, the White Sox are performing about a million times better than I could have ever expected by this point in the season, all the while Ozzie Guillen continues to spout off about the rats at Wrigley Field. With the teams on both sides of town performing so well (I just had suck it up and buy a few tickets to a Cubs game from a broker for a friend coming into town that wanted to see Wrigley - let’s just say that ticket resellers can tell me how my ass tastes), I’ve been steadily stocking up my basement with non-perishable goods, supplies of water and transistor radios just in case the previously unthinkable event that once occurred in 1906 comes to fruition.

Meanwhile, the Bulls have been the biggest winners of them all as they have officially taken Derrick Rose with the number one pick in this year’s NBA Draft. As I’ve said before, I think he’s got the goods to be even better in the end than both Chris Paul and Deron Williams (and this is coming from someone who has a picture of Deron shooting the game-tying three from the 2005 NCAA Chicago Regional Final permanently ingrained as his laptop background), which translates to the Bulls finally having a legitimate superstar once again. I hate using too many superlatives, but I believe that we’re going to look at footage a decade from now of the Bulls winning the lottery last month and Derrick Rose heading up to the podium tonight and point to this time as one of the most important moments in Chicago sports history. The impact of superstars in the NBA can’t be underestimated, which the Bulls know better than anyone since they once had the biggest megastar of them all, and by all indications Rose is going to get to that level.

So, when this Labor Day weekend comes around, I’ll still be blanketed in orange when the Illini take on Mizzou in what will be the most important non-conference football game that Illinois has played since I went to school there. However, I have hopes that I’m also following a baseball pennant race on both sides of town along with anticipating the opening of Bulls training camp. As for the Bears… I’ll just stop pushing my luck right now.

(Images from Chicago Tribune and ESPN.com)

The Amended and Restated Teams You Can’t Cheer For List

With the prospect of the Bulls becoming a favorite bandwagon team once again after they select the #1 pick in the NBA Draft later this month and coming across this Jim Caple column about the overexpansion of Red Sox Nation, I’ve decided to re-visit this post from a couple of years ago where I listed the top ten teams that people should not be allowed to root for unless they have a direct and concrete geographic (as in the location where people spent their formative childhood years), alumni (for college teams), or family (fandom that is passed down from a parent that qualifies under the two previous reasons) connection. Since then, I feel that I have become even more hardened in terms enforcing these standards and am much more suspect of those that cheer for teams outside of the aforementioned legitimate connections. (On the off-chance that I have a new reader out there, I grew up in the south suburbs of Chicago, so I’ve been a diehard Bears, Bulls, and White Sox fan since the moment I could comprehend what was on the television, while I went to college at Illinois, so I live and die with the Illini. I feel more than confident in stating that my fandom is pure without any shenanigans.) Much of this is based on the general d-baggery of Red Sox fans over the past few years that Caple refers to (Minneapolis Red Sox excluded, even though he is an admitted baseball bigamist, which is another matter) and the increasing focus that ESPN and other media outlets have on a select number of teams at the expense of others.

In re-reading my old post, I’m actually disappointed by how lenient I was on Dan Shanoff’s adoption of the Florida Gators, particularly in the wake of the fact that he wrote an expanded post regarding this subject on his own blog a few months ago. If anything, the fact that he disposed of his alma mater Northwestern, which is a Big Ten school, in favor of an SEC school that happens to be very successful in both football and basketball as a result of his wife is unconscionable on several levels. It might have been somewhat plausible if Shanoff hadn’t attended a non-BCS school (as bad as Northwestern might be outside of women’s lacrosse) so that he could have a rooting interest on football Saturdays, but that wasn’t the case here. At the same time, I’m fairly certain that he wouldn’t have adopted, say, fellow SEC member Vanderbilt with quite the same fervor if his wife was a member of the Commodore community. Shanoff’s piece is written well enough, but the substance behind it is opportunistic and shallow. Unfortunately, there seems to be a whole lot of other people out there that take the Shanoff approach to picking teams.

As I noted in my old post from a couple of years ago, what the sports world ought to have is a list of teams that a fan can’t cheer for unless he or she can unequivocally prove a geographic, alumni, or family connection. While the claim of fandom of any team anywhere without such a connection is a punishable offense, an illegitimate fan of a team on this particular list would have an enhanced penalty, such the suspension of his Man Card in the case of a male. To amend the approach that I previously took, this list should be set up in the same manner as the UN Security Council, with permanent members that will always be off-limits and other members that rotate on and off depending upon their success. The permanent members ought to include the Yankees, Red Sox, Cubs, Cowboys, Lakers, Knicks, Notre Dame football, and Duke basketball. No matter how good or bad these teams might be in a given year, they carry such inordinate power and sway over sports and television executives that you need extra proof to avoid the bandwagon tag for any of these clubs at all times.

The Patriots are the perfect example of a non-permanent member – a decade ago, they were the NFL equivalent of the Clippers and weren’t anywhere on that national sports radar, but have since become such a dominant franchise that anyone who has started cheering for them outside of the Boston area since Tom Brady arrived should be cut off immediately. However, once they are no longer an upper-tier team, they will likely be removed from the list because the interest in that franchise doesn’t carry the same widespread bandwagon inelasticity of, say, the Red Sox or Cowboys. On a related point, the Bulls were at the top of the list back in the 1990s as probably having the most bandwagon fans of any team in sports history, but they receded out of the national sports consciousness quickly after Michael Jordan retired for the second time. If likely draft pick Derrick Rose becomes as good as I believe he will be, then the Bulls will get right back onto the non-permanent member list with all of the national television appearances that go along with it. Anyway, the current non-permanent members outside of the Patriots include the Celtics (this year’s NBA Finals will have the largest concentration of bandwagon fans in any sport since MJ and Magic faced off in the ‘91 Bulls-Lakers series), Cavaliers (simply for the presence of LeBron James), Colts, New York Giants, USC football, UCLA basketball, Florida football and basketball, and Ohio State football and basketball. (While a number of these teams might seem like possible permanent members and the reason why they’re listed here is that there’s a bit extra blowhardedness from the media about these teams in contrast to others, I’ve observed in recent years that when these teams did not perform well, the national news coverage of them declined in commiserate fashion. In contrast, look at the ridiculous volume of ink that was spilled on the horrid Notre Dame football team last season and the drama that surrounded the Lakers before they turned it around this year. That’s the difference between permanent members and non-permanent members – it’s how much you hear about them when they’re terrible.)

Please feel free to add your own suggestions to the permanent and non-permanent lists, along with any defenses that you may have if you cheer for a team that falls outside of a geographic, alumni, or family connection (although such defenses will likely fall on deaf ears on this end unless you fall into the “I grew up in a metro area without an MLB/NFL/NBA/NHL team”, “I didn’t go to a BCS school”, “I grew up in a place like Nebraska or Kentucky where everyone cheers for the flagship university regardless of whether they or their parents went to school there”, “I was an Army/Navy/Air Force/Shawn Kemp brat that moved every couple of years”, or “my formerly favorite team moved cities so I picked a different one” exceptions).

(Images from Boston Dirt Dogs and LakersTopBuzz)

The NBA Finals That We All Wanted (Outside of Detroit and San Antonio)

The ABC/ESPN hype machine has gotten the Celtics-Lakers NBA Finals matchup that it has been craving since the day it took away the league television contract from NBC six years ago. (The worst thing about the network move was that the glorious John Tesh theme song was mothballed in favor of a rotation of music “stars” that has gotten progressively worse over the years, culminating in the horrific current opening that stars Tim McGraw and Def Leppard. For as much as the ESPN empire bashes us over the head with pop culture references, they seem to have confused the highly urbanized NBA audience with a group of carnies from Decatur. This might also be planting the seeds of another sick ploy by the television conglomerate to jam NASCAR cross-promotions down our throats.) I’ll be honest with you – I’ve been craving this matchup, too. It’s not that I have any personal affinity for either of these teams, but I couldn’t take another NBA Finals involving the Pistons (unequivocally my least favorite pro sports franchise after the Packers) and the Spurs (a team that I know I ought to like as a pure basketball fan, but they annoy me in an irrational manner). Plus, as a sports fan in general, I’ve come to appreciate the rekindling of storied rivalries at the highest level since people can’t bank on it anymore with increased parity in all of the sports leagues. Back when I was a little kid, the Celtics and Lakers playing in the NBA Finals was considered a common occurrence, so the fact that it has been 21 years since they last met for the championship (a series that I remember clearly) is the latest in a long line of historical moments that have reminded me that I’m not really young anymore. What’s unique about the Celtics-Lakers rivalry is that it isn’t based on geography or conference/division affiliation like almost every other sports rivalry, such as the general New York vs. Boston/Philadelphia or Chicago vs. Detroit/Green Bay/St. Louis matchups (note that Cowboys-Redskins is still a divisional rivalry), but instead on excellence where they have met on the final stage with incredible frequency for a three decade stretch of time. The closest comparison might be Notre Dame-USC, but even then, they have only played one game where the teams were ranked #1 and #2 (this occurred in 1988, which was the last time the Irish won a national championship).

Of course, Magic Johnson and Larry Bird aren’t going to have much effect on this series. I was very excited about the prospect of the Celtics-Lakers matchup at the beginning of the NBA Playoffs, but over the past few weeks, it’s been looking more and more like this series can’t possibly live up to the hype. Hopefully, I’m wrong and this will push out to seven games, since that would be a transcendent sports moment. However, the Lakers look dominant right now and they disposed of the Spurs (who I think would beat the Celtics head-to-head) in five. There’s little indication that L.A. wouldn’t be able to dispose of Boston in the same number of games, so I’ll avoid the typical conservative commentator prediction of a six-game series and say that the Lakers will win 4-1 (I foresee a split of the first 2 games in Boston and then the Lakers rattling off 3 straight at the Staples Center).

Kobe Bryant continues to play out of his mind (the yahoo portion of the Bulls fan base that didn’t want to give up guys like Kirk Hinrich, Ben Gordon and/or Luol Deng for this guy last fall continue to look horrible) and will clearly be the best player on the floor (which you could say no matter who the Lakers are playing). I love Kevin Garnett as one of my favorite athletes that hasn’t played for a Chicago team or the Illini (although he’s a native Chicagoan), but he can’t necessarily take over a game the way Kobe can. At the end of the day, Paul Pierce is going to be the one that needs to match Kobe shot-for-shot while the rest of the Celtics have to hold down Pau Gasol and the balance of the torrid Lakers offense – that’s going to be a whole lot tougher than the one-man-LeBron-show that took Boston to the brink of elimination or the Pistons club that could only utilize Chauncey Billups in limited fashion.

At the same time, the Lakers have a monster coaching advantage in Phil Jackson over Doc Rivers. For the Phil-haters out there, particularly from Boston, that discount his accomplishments since his championships came with the Michael Jordan/Scottie Pippen Bulls and the Kobe/Shaq Lakers, I would like to point out that Red Auerbach never won a championship without Bill Russell in an era when power forwards rarely cracked 5’10”. I’m not sure why this never gets mentioned. Granted, I’m a bit biased here since I grew up as a Bulls fanatic and Phil was at the helm of the teams that provided me with probably the most memorable sports moments of my life. However, he should always deserve credit for getting the max out of that franchise in the 1990s. As much as I love Mike Ditka (to the point where I have this autographed photo in my basement), the ’85 Bears ended up being the ultimate one-hit wonder in sports history instead of the becoming the first championship team in a dynasty that should have lasted for the rest of the 1980s (Bill Walsh’s 49ers teams ended up filling that space) due to a lot of internal squabbling and personality clashes (many of which were caused by Ditka himself, much less the case of him not being able to solve them). In contrast, the ‘90s Bulls were able to achieve success even when they had a murder’s row of Godzilla-sized egos – MJ was a cold-hearted competitor to the extreme, Scottie was always a Toni Kukoc-last-shot-play from snapping, most of the rest of the team was perpetually at odds with Jerry Reinsdorf and Jerry Krause about their contracts, and there was that slightly-off personality known as Dennis Rodman during the second three-peat. The fact that Phil put those guys into line for six championships (along with three more rings with Lakers teams that were nearly as ego-filled) is a testament to his ability to coach in the modern NBA.

Meanwhile, Phil’s well-known soft skills in managing personalities and digging into players’ psyches are complemented by what I believe is an underrated substantive skill: I don’t know of a basketball coach at any level that has ever managed rotations of players better than Phil. Phil would often take MJ out of regular season games relatively early, yet the Bulls rarely collapsed because he got key bench players substantive playing team with Scottie Pippen running the second unit. This paid off massively in the postseason since (a) MJ was always healthy because he wasn’t unnecessarily put through max minutes early in the season and (b) the bench players often came up huge as a result of not just being in there at garbage time, which is why reserves such as John Paxson, Bobby Hansen and Steve Kerr live on in Chicago sports lore with key baskets in championship clinching games. Phil has done the same thing with the Lakers by regularly removing Kobe early and giving the second unit quality minutes with Lamar Odom running the offense. That means that Kobe and the rest of the starters are fresher (and already younger) than an older tapped-to-the-brink Celtics team and Luke Son-of-a-Bastard Walton or someone else of that nature will be primed to make a number of clutch shots in the series when Kobe is double or triple teamed. On the other side of the floor, Doc Rivers is acknowledged to have one of the most inconsistent rotations in the NBA (guys will play 30 minutes one game and then get DNPs for two weeks straight), which is a severe disadvantage when the Celtics are much more banged-up and can’t really depend on their stars to go 48 minutes every night.

Like I’ve said before, the basketball fan in me hopes that I’m wrong and that this becomes an NBA Finals that lives up to the hype. However, the basketball analyst in me believes that this will be a pretty easy stretch for a significantly superior Lakers team.

(Image from Sportslifer’s Weblog)

Bulls Should Make the NBA Draft a Rose Bowl

One would think that there would be a raging debate in Chicago for the next month about how the Bulls should use the first pick in the NBA Draft that fell so fortuitously in the lap of Steve Schanwald last week, considering that this is a two-player draft between Derrick Rose and Michael Beasley.  Having been too young to have watched the Hakeem-MJ draft of 1984 even if it had been televised, this will be without question the most important draft that I’ll personally witness for a Chicago sports team.  As a result, you would think that the sports radio talk show hosts in town would have a great incentive to milk this out for as long as possible.  However, a consensus has quickly built around Rose as the choice on both the national and local fronts with only a smattering of exceptions.

Fortunately, I’m whole-heartedly in the Rose camp.  This is partly based on all of the standard arguments that point guards are becoming more valuable than ever in the NBA while it’s “easier” (not easy) to get a power forward in the manner of Beasley.  Look at how Chris Paul and Illini great Deron Williams have respectively turned around New Orleans and Utah over the past couple of seasons with relatively average talent around them.  In particular, CP3 has turned Bulls retreads Tyson Chandler and Jannero Pargo(!) into viable NBA players on the offensive end of the floor.  When considering that Rose is more fully developed at 19 than either CP3 or Deron were at that age with almost a combination of Paul’s slashing ability and Williams’ size and strength, it’s not crazy to surmise that Rose has the potential to be the preeminent point guard in the league for the next decade.

(By the way, let’s quickly go over two things that DON’T matter in this draft.  First, the fact that Rose is from Chicago is inconsequential.  It’s great for the headline writers in town for the next month trumpeting the return of the hometown kid to lead the favorite team from his childhood out of the dumpster, but draft picks in any sport need to be made in a vacuum with respect to where such draft picks grew up or went to college.  If Rose was from American Samoa, I’d be just as excited.  Second, whether Rose or Beasley is picked, no one should care one bit with how either one would fit with the Bulls’ current players.  The team needs to be built around this draft pick as opposed to the other way around.  John Paxson’s ability to restore the fans’ confidence in his management skills is not going to be based on this draft pick, which is essentially idiot-proof, but whether he’ll be able to package Kirk Hinrich and/or others to obtain a solid scorer at power forward (organizational mea culp on Elton Brand, anyone?) assuming that he takes Rose.)

More importantly, while I think that Beasley will become a star in this league, I just think that Rose has a certain jen a se quas that I believe will make him a superstar.  Rose already has enviable passing, driving and defensive skills, so if he’s able to develop a consistent jumpshot, there’s not much this guy can’t do on the floor.  I hate going back to the “upside” term, but the ceiling seems higher for Rose and it’s not as if though he’s substantially more of a risk than Beasley considering that Rose was able to lead Memphis to the national championship game as a freshman point guard.  The more I think about the image of Rose stepping out onto the United Center floor in a Bulls uniform in November, the more giddy I get about the state of our basketball team.  This is by no means any disrespect to Beasley, who I believe will be every bit of the impact player that he’s been advertised as for the past year, but Rose is the right pick for the Bulls.

(Image from Zimbio)

Lottery Ball Miracle

I have been prepping for an entire summer of posts about how the Chicago Bulls organization has been in disarray and aloof over the past two years, ranging from misfiring on legitimate opportunities to obtain Kevin Garnett, Kobe Bryant and/or Paul Gasol (all of whom are still leading their teams today in conference finals round) to having such a wacky power structure that Mike D’Antoni didn’t even wait for the team to make him a coaching job offer to go off to the Knicks. Let’s face it - I don’t care how convincing Donnie Walsh might be. After all that’s happened to Knicks management (not to mention their pitiful roster), how awful is Jerry Reinsdorf face-to-face that D’Antoni would rather hang out with Jim Dolan for the foreseeable future?

Two years ago, the Bulls were set up to get back into the NBA’s upper echelon for the first time since Michael Jordan made his last shot to clinch the franchise’s second three-peat ten years ago (I’ll remind you again that my brain’s internal hard drive has erased all memories of the NBA from 2001 to 2003). The team had a young and rapidly improving team, plenty of salary cap room and trade possibilities, and a large market locale that could attract a marquee player or two. John Paxson, who I do believe did a good job drafting players overall considering the positions where he was making picks, was able to parlay all of that into… Larry Hughes and Drew Gooden??? With the lack of a superstar in a league where you need at least one superstar at a minimum to be a legitimate contender to win the NBA Finals, it should not have been a surprise that the Bulls faded in miserable fashion this past season after three straight overachieving years. Last fall, there were a number of Jim Jones Kool-Aid drinking Chicagoans that were actually arguing that giving up a combination of Luol Deng, Ben Gordon and Kirk Hinrich in exchange for Kobe Bryant would have (a) been too much in terms of talent and (b) upset the chemistry of the team. (For once, I ended up on the right side of a sports debate - I’ve always known that you can’t pass up on Kobe.) By the time this year had concluded, I doubt that Paxson could have traded all of three of those players for even Gasol, much less someone of the caliber of Kobe Bryant.

Every once in awhile, though, the Sports Gods will throw you a bone. Look at the Celtics, who were a smoldering carcass of a franchise a year ago at this time after getting whacked in the Oden/Durant sweepstakes despite having all of the statistics on their side. As Celtics fans stared into the proverbial abyss (or it could have just been the Big Dig), that team subsequently pulled off trades in summer to nab Kevin Garnett and Ray Allen that transformed themselves from one of the worst teams in the NBA to the top record in the league.

Likewise, just a few hours ago, I was resigned to the fact that the Bulls were going to get another solid-but-not-great draft pick in the NBA Draft Lottery to add to their collection of undersized shooting guards and power forwards, with the best case scenario being a sacrificial lamb in the first round of the playoffs. But then, amazing actually happened (just as the NBA has told me roughly over 800 times over past few weeks with somewhat-creepy half-head split-screen shots). With only a 1.7% chance, after years of getting top draft picks in the wrong drafts (or top draft picks with motorcycles), the Bulls freaking got the first pick in a draft where they could get that legitimate superstar - in the form of Michael Beasley or Derrick Rose - that I’ve been screaming about from the very beginning of this blog nearly three years ago. This has come after a decade where the Bulls went from being six-time champions and the most famous team in any sport in the entire world to a close-to-irrelevant franchise that just got passed over by a very good coach in order to go to the human cesspool known as the Knicks organization. It is way too soon to tell whether this day will go down in Chicago sports history as a stroke of luck on par with the Portland Trailblazers thinking that Sam Bowie was a better fit for their system than Michael Jordan in the 1984 draft, yet the Bulls have finally got the burst of energy, regardless of whether that player is Beasley or Rose, that can give this franchise a legitimate chance to get back to where it was ten years ago.

(Image from Bulls.com)

Land-o-Links - 5/10/2008

A few links for the weekend:

(1) The Conservative Revival (New York Times) - David Brooks has long been one of the more sensible conservative political commentators out there and this column is an example of this. Right after the 2006 midterm elections, I wrote a lengthy post about how disaffected I was with the Republican Party from the libertarian standpoint. Brooks points out that the Conservative Party in Britain is on the ascent since it’s embracing a different social agenda while still adhering to its fiscally conservative principles. The party in our country that is able to mirror what the Tories have done will get my support.

(2) Your Friday Coaching Search Update (Blog-a-Bull) - Let me just start off by saying that I could have very easily turned this blog into “Frank the Tank’s Rantings About the Bulls” for at least until the conclusion of this year’s NBA Draft and really through the free agency period (which would almost bring us right to the start of next season), but I’m trying to exercise some self-restraint. It’s good to see that we didn’t have to go down the road of Rick Carlisle with his new deal with Mark Cuban and I’ve been actually getting increasingly excited about the prospect of Mike D’Antoni on the sidelines at the United Center. While he doesn’t have the defensive philosophy that John Paxson has long preached, it’s clear that the Bulls needed a complete readjustment in attitude which is what the almost-former Suns coach would provide. Granted, the Bulls don’t have the personnel on offense to come close to the scoring proficiency of D’Antoni’s Suns teams, but we are a team that is capable of playing uptempo (which is how the Bulls took down the Heat in the playoffs last year). The one thing that I don’t want to hear about from the Bulls is how much D’Antoni might cost in terms of salary, especially with the offer that the Knicks have thrown on the table. I’ve actually been an overall defender of Jerry Reinsdorf over the years (as Ozzie Guillen “eloquently” pointed out this week, Reinsdorf is the Chicago owner with seven rings), but if the Bulls really want D’Antoni, they had better put their best efforts forward. While the White Sox might be a mid-market team that happens to be located in a large market (and I’m saying this as a huge Sox fan) which at least allows for a tenuous argument about payroll limits on their end, the Bulls are a legitimate marquee NBA franchise on pretty much every financial and media metric (on a related note, Minneapolis Red Sox and I had a back-and-forth on where the Bulls place on the Chicago sports scene a couple of weeks ago), so I don’t want to hear a peep from that organization about how much a coach of D’Antoni’s caliber might cost. Reinsdorf and Paxson just need to get this deal done.

(UPDATE:  Apparently, D’Antoni has now taken the Knicks job because the Bulls wouldn’t match their offer.  I’m seriously THIS close to making Frank the Tank’s Rantings About the Bulls into an entirely separate blog since there’s so much material to be mined.  This is what we get from the third most valuable and second most profitable franchise in the NBA.)

(3) Law Firms and Layoffs: Who Are the Most Vulnerable? (Wall Street Journal Law Blog) - There’s always a question as to whether law firms provide more steady employment for lawyers than being in other environments (i.e. corporations, government, etc.). In the end, like most other work environments, it’s the people in the middle that get squeezed.

And finally…

(4) Hyping Sidney Crosby Won’t Help the NHL Win Over New Fans (Slate) - There’s been little movement from my modest proposal to save the NHL from a couple of years ago, although the Blackhawks have finally figured out that VHF exists.

Meet the New Boss… Same as the Old Boss

Usually, I’m pretty much right in line with Blog-a-Bull on the state of our fair NBA team, but I’ve been feeling the exact same sentiment as Greg Couch (who is criticized heavily by Blog-a-Bull with a comparison to Chicago’s most evil columnist) toward the prospect of Rick Carlisle as the new head coach. For those who watch the NBA, Carlisle is someone that is known as a strict disciplinarian - essentially, a less-sarcastic version of Scott Skiles. Now, my track record of making predictions on this blog has been so horrific that I’m pretty sure the sports book at Caesars Palace has a standing rule to set their lines in inverse proportion to what I believe that’s going to happen. That being said, when I looked through some of my old posts recently, I was predicting that the love of Skiles as Bulls coach would end badly over two years ago (before the 2006 playoff series with the Heat and when everyone was drinking the Bulls kool-aid as an upper tier team in the Eastern Conference). He’s great for a young team that’s trying to find its identity (so he’ll probably do well with his new employer in Milwaukee and, if he’d ever consider it, I’ve always thought he’d be a terrific college coach), but that type of coaching can only work for a short period of time in today’s NBA. Carlisle has almost the exact same track record as the Skiles. Think of it this way - John Paxson has modeled the Bulls after the Pistons, yet the players on the Pistons got so sick of Carlisle that they revolted against him (and then won the NBA championship after he left the very next season).

I guess the quandary that the Bulls find themselves in is that they don’t have the talent that would make a Phil Jackson-type “players coach” beneficial, yet they’ve already had a hard-nosed old school coach at the helm for several seasons, so a turnaround artist of that nature probably wouldn’t work, either. At the end of the day, a coach can only do so much without the proper personnel. Somehow, a team that was supposedly a favorite to win the Eastern Conference this season has been exposed as a roster completely composed of undersized shooting guards and power forwards that can’t score. I liked the team last year, yet I’ve known for a long time that they needed a go-to-guy in the clutch (which is why I was immediately begging the Bulls to grab Kobe Bryant when they had the opportunity while, as many people seem to forget, the majority of the yokels calling the Chicago sports radio shows didn’t want a “problem child” to mess up the team’s “chemistry” - for as great of a sports town this city is, I’m continuously amazed at the ineptitude and blind loyalty to “grindy” guys of our fans to the detriment of our franchises). The upcoming draft looms large for the Bulls, but unless the ping-pong balls yield one of the top two picks (meaning the addition of Michael Beasley or Derrick Rose), the team stands gain yet another solid-but-not-impact-type of player. I look back at last summer with a lot of pain, since the Bulls had a chance to grab both Kobe and Pau Gasol. In the infinite wisdom of the organization, it decided that Luol Deng and Ben Gordon were too valuable to give up. Now, the Lakers got Gasol at a garage sale price and rode him and a ridiculously rejuvenated Kobe to the top record in the Western Conference (even without the benefit of Andrew Bynum’s presence for much of the year) - just imagining what the Bulls could have done in the East with that pair is one of the biggest unrealized-yet-realistic dreams that I can ever remember for one of my teams. The upshot is that the Bulls seem to be getting ready to hire a coach in Carlisle that probably will do little to help this club unless there is a massive overhaul in personnel.

(Image from Chicago Sun-Times)

Land-o-Links - 3/24/2008

I know the posts have been sparse, especially considering that we’re in the middle of March Madness, but I promise you that this blog will be coming out of its once-a-month-or-so rut very soon. Anyway, the Illini basketball team ended the season with their best impression of the 1999 club in the Big Ten Tournament on the heels of my previous post. Maybe next year won’t be so bad with the return of Jamar Smith and the addition of Alex Legion, right? Here are some links to tide you over in anticipation of the Final Four, baseball opening day and the Masters:

(1) Stuff White People Like - I’m sure that if you’re interweb-savvy that you’ve seen this blog already, but those that haven’t would be remiss not to check out the daily postings here. As many others have observed, it’s really Stuff Liberal White Yuppies and Hipsters Like, but of course that type of title would not lead to people passing around the link to this blog. My favorite gems are how white people like dinner parties, knowing what’s best for poor people, hating corporations (other than corporations that make stuff that white people like, such as Apple and Target), public radio, gifted children, and, of course, Wrigley Field. The only thing is that despite being a half-Asian libertarian Republican, this blog really hammers home how I’m pretty much a pasty white liberal yuppie on paper outside of the anti-capitalist undertones.

(Edit: In my long overdue review of everyone on my blogroll, I’ll note that Kenny pointed this blog out a couple of weeks ago.)

(2) The Republican Resurrection (The New York Times) - I don’t agree with Frank Rich very often (although my link history does show that I’m an avid New York Times reader), but he nailed the political analysis on the spot here. The Democratic Party somehow is grasping defeat from the jaws of victory yet again with a prolonged and increasingly nasty nomination battle. I’ll be upfront that I’ve always been a John McCain fan, but realistically, I’ve thought that he could only win in the general election if Hillary Clinton somehow grabbed the Democratic nomination at the last moment. That would mean that the Democrats would be putting up a politically polarizing candidate AND the party base would be less than enthusiastic in the general election. As unlikely as that may happen, the Clinton family sway over the Democratic superdelegates at least makes that a real possibility. I’m also simply amazed that there are still Democratic primary voters who sincerely believe that Hillary would do better than Barack Obama in the general election. Believe me - every Republican alive that has any knowledge whatsoever about the tempermant of the general electorate would rather face Hillary than Obama in November. This seems to be pretty obvious to everyone other than a blindly loyal subset of Clinton supporters.

(3) Fighting Illini Announce 2008 Spring Games (FightingIllini.com) - Given the state of the White Sox and Bulls, I’m being dead serious when I say that Illinois spring football is what I’m looking forward to the most in April sports-wise (other than the Masters).

(4) Playoffs or Lottery for Bulls? (Hoopsworld) - Speaking of the Bulls, I really hate being in this predicament as a fan. The team is 15 games under .500, yet the Eastern Conference is so horrible that they are still within 3 games of a playoff spot. So, what is better for the club in the long term - squeaking by into the #8-seed, where they would most likely be swept by the Celtics or Pistons in the first round, or taking its chances in the NBA Draft lottery with the hope that everything comes up Milhouse to be in position to get Michael Beasley or Derrick Rose (where either one would probably make the team a true championship contender next season)? I hate the notion of cheering against your own team from a bad karma perspective, but I have to disagree with the Hoopsworld writer and say that the Bulls would be better off heading to the lottery. Unlike football or baseball, where moving up draft positions is almost never worth the thought of losing more games, the NBA, as I’ve noted many times before, is a boom-or-bust environment where you need a superstar to have a reasonable chance to win it all. Not only are those superstars almost universally lottery picks, but they are disproportionately drafted with one of the top three picks. I’m not one of those chumps that wants a “nice Bulls team” that gets to the playoffs regularly but never gets over the hump - I was admittedly spoiled growing up with Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen, so I want to see the team be in position to win more championships. As a result, I’d rather see the Bulls wait for some ping-pong balls in May than watch them get crushed by KG or Chauncey Billups in four straight games. This all could have been prevented by John Paxson last year, but that’s another rant for another time.

And finally…

(5) American League Preview 2008 (Siberian Baseball) - Minneapolis Red Sox is starting up his annual baseball previews and I’m sure he’ll have the National League shortly. He has charitably put the White Sox in third place in the AL Central (actually, I think that’s about right - I don’t know how some crack smokers think that the Sox will be worse than either the Twins or Royals this season, but the South Siders are clearly way behind Detroit and Cleveland as we stand today).

Enjoy the rest of the NCAA Tournament and have a great day!

1, 2, 3, 4… What the Hell am I Cheering For?

 

A few weeks ago, I wrote about my pretty good fortune as a sports fan over the past few years, with my various favorite teams winning a World Series and getting to the Super Bowl, Final Four and Rose Bowl in a relatively short period of time.  Well, folks, that run has officially come to an end.  The Illini basketball team wouldn’t be able to win tickets from a pop-a-shot game at Chuck E. Cheese, much less garner an NCAA Tournament berth this season.  At the same time, the Bulls are using the rules from ‘Survivor’ to figure out who they are going to play every night.  The Bears head into the offseason with the strong likelihood of losing a Pro Bowler in Lance Briggs while not gaining, you know, an NFL-level quarterback.  Finally, the White Sox technically have a chance to get to the playoffs in the same manner that Dennis Kucinich technically has a chance to win the Democratic nomination.  Essentially, none of my teams are going to be playing any games of real meaning from now until the Illinois football team suits up to play Missouri on Labor Day weekend.  So, what’s a sports fan supposed to do with nearly 9 months to go without having anything significant to cheer for?  Well, here’s a guide of how I’m coping with this period of sports oblivion:

(1) Your Archrivals Are Still Evil - The only good thing about the Packers being in the playoffs is that I have a vested interest in seeing them get spanked.  Believe me, I would rather hear two weeks of hype about the supposedly greatest football team ever in the history of the universe going for perfection (even though they would have never been able to hang with these guys) than deal with another instance of the media fellating Brett Favre’s “rekindled passion for the game”.  At the same time, as long as Satan’s Spawn is still wearing blue shirts at the helm of the Indiana basketball program, the rest of the Big Ten has found a friend in me when they’re playing the Hoosiers.

(2) The Young Guys Are the Future… Right? - As someone that is a whole-hearted believer in the teachings of Adam Smith, I completely understand that coaches have an incentive to play veterans as long as possible since they supposedly give their teams the best chances to win on a nightly basis, which means those coaches are more likely to keep their jobs.  However, there’s a certain point when bad teams need to face the facts that they aren’t going anywhere and start checking out the young guys on the squad.  The Bears mercifully started doing that by the last few weeks of this season, which resulted in the world’s greatest neckbearded alcoholic leading the team to a couple of victories.  I thought that the drafting of Joakim Noah by the Bulls was ridiculous last summer considering that they are already a team full of offensively-challenged frontcourt players, but now that he’s here and the team is going nowhere, he should be getting more playing time instead of being voted out by his lackluster teammates (and for that matter, get Tyrus Thomas some more minutes, too).  It appears as though Bruce Weber has finally realized that the Illinois basketball team is going to benefit a lot more from starting freshman Demetri McCamey at point guard as opposed to Chester Frazier (I think Illini Nation has been a bit harsh on Frazier with the booing at Assembly Hall - he should have always been a sixth man for defensive help off of the bench, but was thrust into a starting role as a result of Eric Gordon aligning himself with Satan’s Spawn).  As for the White Sox… well, they traded their entire farm system to Oakland for Nick Swisher.  Anyway, at least the others are giving us some hope that there might be something better in a year or two.

(3) The Drafts and National Signing Days! - Any yahoo can watch some regular season games and the postseason - you know, actual competition on the field of play.  If you’re a committed sports dork like me, though, the dates of the NFL Draft, NBA Draft, and the college football and basketball National Signing Days are up there with the Super Bowl and Selection Sunday in terms of importance.  The one saving grace of cheering for a bad professional sports team is that draft day beckons as a beacon of opportunity.  Sometimes, it’s a choice that alters the course of history in a spectacular way (Portland taking Sam Bowie in 1984, leaving the Bulls to pick a young pup named Michael Jordan) or, alternatively, crashes and burns to set back a franchise for years (Cade McNown, Curtis Enis, Rashaan Salaam, Cedric Benson… OK, I’ll stop now), but it’s almost always important, especially if you’re picking high.  (I haven’t included the Major League Baseball Draft in this discussion since the correlation between high draft choices and eventual long-term success is relatively low compared to the NBA and NFL.)  So, as a Bulls fan, do I want this team to stretch to grab the seventh or eight seed in the Eastern Conference so that it can be shellacked by Boston or Detroit in the playoffs, or would I rather roll the dice and see if we can get O.J. Mayo or Derrick Rose in the United Center on a full-time basis next season?  Call me crazy, but the latter option is more appealing to me at this point.  (As a sidenote, WTF do I do if Eric Gordon ends up in Bulls uniform next year, which is a real possibility the way things are going?  I’ve always taken the opinion that I will let bygones be bygones when it comes to college players that I couldn’t stand - such as Anthony Thomas on the Bears - ending up on my favorite pro teams, but Gordon would be at an entirely different level.  On the one hand, he, in conjunction with Satan’s Spawn, has done more damage to the Illini basketball program than anyone else in my lifetime.   On the other hand, he’s such a phenomenal basketball player that he would be that superstar that I’ve been begging the Bulls to get for pretty much the entire time that I’ve been blogging.  Let’s move on before my head explodes.)

The NCAA National Signing Days are the equivalents of draft days for college football and basketball programs, although unlike the pros where the bad teams get the first crack at the best players, usually the rich get richer when it comes to the college level.  You can count on USC, Ohio State, Texas and Florida to be getting the 5-star recruiting ratings every year on the football side, while UNC and Duke are always pulling their weight in basketball.  That being said, it’s when college sports fans can start getting excited again - the turnaround of the Illinois football program was based on Ron Zook’s ability to seal the deal on National Signing Day months before spring practices would start.  Fortunately, both Illini football and basketball look to be getting very good (if not quite stellar) additions to their teams next season, so at least I’ve got that going for me.

(4) No Clouded Judgment on Fantasy Sports Teams - This really isn’t much different from how I approach fantasy sports normally, but a lot of people have certains biases for or against certain players or real-life teams in terms of picking their fantasy sports teams.  I love those types of people in my leagues since I’m normally able to count on crushing them down the road.  That being said, I don’t feel quite as dirty picking a baseball team full of Red Sox and Yankees players when the White Sox aren’t very good.

(5) No Clouded Judgment on Wagering - This is where I have a little more of a problem as opposed to fantasy sports.  I’m able to compartmentalize my biases with respect to fantasy sports very easily, but it’s not quite as simple in terms of betting.  For instance, if I had done a BCS bowl picks blog post this year, I would have certainly taken Illinois +14 in the Rose Bowl against USC, not necessarily because I really thought that they were going to win, but I believed that they would have at least covered.  Fortunately, my flight to L.A. did not include a layover in Las Vegas or else the bank would be foreclosing on my house this week.  Unless you’re cheering for one of those pantheon teams such as the ‘85 Bears or the ‘96 Bulls (or maybe this year’s Patriots team), you probably have a bit of an inflated view of how good your team is if they’ve been playing well, so you’re not very accurate in your wagering.  If you’re team is not very good, on the other hand, you tend to look at the lines more objectively - there were only a couple of weeks where I was on the wrong end in picking a Bears game against the spread this season in a friend’s NFL pool, but I was awful at choosing Bears games during their Super Bowl run last year.

So, I’ve at least got a few things to look forward to over the coming months.  It could be worse - I don’t quite feel like this Cowboys fan.  As for quality play from my favorite teams, I’ll see you in September.

(Image from Cincinnati.com)