SpongeWorthy

It's not unreasonable to expect Illinois, with all of its resources, to field a powerhouse program in either football or basketball.

Seemed like from my newbie eyes that some of the Hawks top line guys waited for the perfect shot rather than the good shot right in front of them. On that last mad scramble in front of the net Hossa had the puck on his backhand and decided to wield it some more to get a better look.

Maybe the powers that be subscribe to the sulley theory of everything that goes badly is a nefarious cosmic conspiracy rather than holding anyone accountable.

ONLY MY TEAMS GET RAINED OUT

Green seems like he has to be the odd man out in OKC. He's a decent player but you never contend with those tweener forwards.

You're not breaking any news. There isn't a single person in the universe, including imb, who would honestly take Westbrook over Rose. Westbrook's a piece, a very nice one, but not a franchise guy and he's in situation where he won't ever have to be that. Plus his jumper is defective. Basically the only guy in league history that was a legitimate franchise player (excluding bigs) that had a broken jumper is Jason Kidd for a few years in a terrible Eastern Conference.

Your troll is almost as obvious as your drunk posting.

Kudos for the top notch smack talk snoodmonger.

Dallas sporting a cool 31/4 assist-to-turnover ratio.

And who is this French [expletive] on the Mavs tearing us up?

Bulls have no chance against good teams, or bad ones for that matter, when Deng plays this badly.

I'll give Forte the benefit of the doubt because he had his knee scoped right after the season was over. He had been playing on a sprained MCL almost the entire year. But yeah, even if he is 100% going into the season I would expect a fairly even workload for him and Taylor.

lol ebanks

That should be one of the better front 7s in the league if we can stay healthy.

Cutler targeted Olsen a LOT last year. I'm sure he felt a rapport with him but it's not like he put up huge numbers ala Gates or Clark. Either way, the receivers need to step up big time because they're going to see a much bigger percentage of the balls.

If we can get two motivated years out of Peppers and Tommie simultaneously I will consider it a victory.

Done deal? http://sports.espn.go.com/chicago/nfl/news/story?id=4969071

Who said far past? You people are ridiculous. I never said he was done or should be retired. I said it was a lot of money for an old backup RB. He is an old backup RB. I didn't say he's worthless. I said he's an old backup RB, and is an old backup RB. I also said he's a nice complementary back for Forte and that I like that they are going away from the one back situation. But there is a significant difference between 25 and 31 in the world of professional sports. It's not enough to make all 31 year olds obsolete, but there isn't a physically demanding sport where being 31 instead of 25 isn't meaningful. You said earlier in this thread that you would "never" spend money on running back in free agency. Perhaps we're not the ones being ridiculous with the absolutist statements. In fact, all we're saying is that you can't conflate all 30 year old running backs. It's a perfectly reasonable position. And if Forte doesn't play WAY better than he did last year, Taylor will be a backup in name only.

30 only seems old because the only running backs who even stay in the league long enough to play into their 30s have taken a lot of hits so those are the only ones you see. From a pure biological standpoint, there's no way a well conditioned athlete is far past their athletic prime at 30.

They're at a money disadvantage because the max deal to reup with your own team is bigger than it is if you leave. Or if anyone wants to sign in Texas or Miami they don't have to pay a state income tax--which is a big, big chunk of money over the life of a contract. Chicago is a great market but so are Manhattan and Brooklyn. The Bulls have a better team than the Nets and Knicks but the Knicks can sign two max guys and maybe you get to play with Wall and Lopez in NJ. Miami is a really nice market too and they no state income tax AND they can sign a max guy alongside Wade. Cleveland is clearly on the precipice of a championship. The Bulls have a leg up on Toronto which should give us some confidence. They probably have a leg up in the non-money issues over Utah and Phoenix as well but I'm not crazy about Boozer or Amare anyway. They're nice but not going to put this team over the top, IMO. I understand the Bulls sales pitch, and it is attractive but it doesn't exist in a vacuum either. If this team starts to slide badly there will be a lot of negativity surrounding the team from the front office on down. It certainly won't look good. If you don't think that sort of negative image matters just look at how the league wide disdain for Jerry Krause torpedoed our last real efforts in a loaded FA class. It won't be THAT bad for the Bulls, fortunately, but you'd like to avoid anything comparable.

It's hard to say. I'm talking about potential risk factors and you're totally ruling them out as any sort of consideration. I think my way works better if you're trying to run a team. Although I would be wary if a free agent thought the Bulls collapse was totally attributable to Joakim Noah's injury. If losing Noah, a good but by no means great player, can turn your team into a dumpster fire then maybe they're more than one missing piece away from being a championship contender. If you thought Salmons was going to opt in then you had to trade him or Kirk. I would've dealt Kirk but apparently the FO is too in love with him or the rest of the league just knows how much Kirk sucks and wouldn't deal. That's fine. The Bulls have no money advantage. At BEST, they're at a slight disadvantage when it comes to dollars. Now other things come into play like the city, the quality of the roster, and a million other little variables. All I'm saying is that you want to have as many checks in your pro column when it comes to wooing a stud free agent. On top of that, there's the intangible factor of going into an offseason with positive momentum. Just do a little thought experiment: If the Bulls come off the rails the rest of the year and miss the playoffs do you think they'd be in as good a position to get a true superstar free agent as they would've been if they had the money going into LAST summer after the Boston series? I don't think you can very reasonably argue that they would be as attractive. The atmospherics matter. How much they matter is up to interpretation. This isn't like what the Bears are going through right now where they can just outbid other teams. The Bulls can't outbid anyone unless it comes down to overpaying for the David Lee's and Anthony Morrow's of the world. My sites are set higher because that's how far the team away is.

Are you talking about the massive amounts of money that is actually substantially less than the massive amounts of money they would get by staying on their current team?

http://www.nationalfootballpost.com/Biggs-Busy-day-ahead-for-Bears.html Biggs seems to think the Bears will sign Taylor and Manumaleuna fairly quickly too.

Also, watch the negativity build up when the Bulls reel off a long losing streak with the tough schedule coming up and then try to say we look as attractive to FAs as we did before. Guys who are going to get paid no matter where they go will have a visceral reaction to the Bulls looking like crap and falling out of the playoff race in a weak conference.

You simply aren't watching the games if you think there hasn't been a downgrade (and a fairly sizable one at that) from Salmons/Tyrus to Flip/Warrick. Salmons is a much better player than Flip and while Warrick can give you some offense, he's a horrific positional defender and rebounder.