seanimal

if ozzie was trying to do 1 or 2, then a chicago radio show is not the best medium to accomplish those goals. and i'm pretty sure the teams that sent their own scouts wouldn't just throw their input out the window based on ozzie's opinion, so that does away with 3. ozzie isn't exactly a master of subterfuge, so if anything, the only intent there was to perhaps manage expectations.

it doesn't look like any of those things

I've already started praying to it. with a little help from google maps i was able to pinpoint the precise direction to pray in from each room in my house

i think we'll finish with an identical record

it's like the baseball stadium's answer to the goldfish platform shoe

yes, because kobe bryant is the baseline for judging a player's peak

hahahaha, a few too many seagrams escapes for cc

i mean seriously, how could you possibly call what ben eager does on the ice as anything other than awful with a side of two penalty minutes a game?

WHAT?!? ben eager is [expletive] terrible. he's almost unspeakably bad. he's averaging like 8 minutes a game on a terrible team and has a total of 7 points this season. [expletive] jammer has more points than him

absolutely. unless we're getting blown away with the package, which we're definitely not at this point, i just don't get the eagerness to trade garza. sure, we should be converting coveted major league players into long-term assets, but at some point it basically becomes a fetish that could ultimately hurt the organization long-term. what we forget is that the talent development capabilities of this organization, until proven otherwise, are not that great. until this group is getting results turning prospects into big league performers, we might want to think about holding on to the ones we have.

i hope you didn't spend too much time on that

SECOND i vote that his name start with d and rhyme with mingus and be dingus i don't get it

it's astonishing how truly bad our defense is as a collective unit. keith's positioning is so baffling i'm wondering if he got crosby'd at some point over the last year and a half and i somehow missed it. seabrook doesn't seem to be the same since his clock was cleaned earlier this year. crawford lost his virginity or something in the offseason and is now just all kinds of sucks. for all of the brilliance of bowman's moves to get us under the cap, he really got fisked on the niemi thing, and now the lack of campbell is really rearing its ugly head. is there even close to his type of talent available via trade or, when we bow out of the playoffs, in free agency? two really, really costly decisions that this team is just not bouncing back from.

it looks a lot better with the 3d glasses on

he's just upset concepcion doesn't have red hair and nice toes

haha

oh absolutely. my worry with the pacers and the sixers of the world is not that they'll take the bulls out in the playoffs (though, it certainly isn't completely out of the question given the way those two teams have played thus far), but that they'll force the bulls to grind through a grueling 7-game series. the east is real tough right now. and even though the balance of power seems to lean towards heat/bulls as the upper-most tier, that second tier of atlanta/indiana/philly is pretty scary. good to great basketball being played night in, night out by five teams in the east.

This is stupid, meaningless hand waving. don't take it personal fella. jumping to the conclusion that a bulls team that is at worst the second-best team in the league, while missing two of its most important players, should be trembling at the thought of drawing the overachieving philly team in the playoffs is laughable. We were the over achieving team last year. We aren't entitled to being an elite team again. The Boozer sucking thing, which is what I'm mainly concerned with, is more trend than one worrisome game. over-achieving in what way? the 2010-2011 bulls had the best defense in the league and overcame their lack of offensive potency by having superior depth. the 2011-2012 bulls defense is still arguably the best in the league (despite having probably their best defender miss significant time already), while seeing a decline in boozer yet still managing to hang pretty close to where they were last year with scoring efficiency and ppg. again, because of depth. if boozer doesn't get back up to speed and we can't mitigate his supposed descent towards terribleness, then yeah, this team might have some difficulties. but at this point, until rip and lu are back in the lineup, i find it hard to get my worry warts inflamed based on what i've seen so far.

Pointing out that the effort was really poor tonight is not embarrassing themselves. overreacting and taking this as some sort of statement game is pretty embarrassing. the bulls were the second-best team in the east last season and improved in experience and talent-level this season. in a shortened, compressed season, this team's two biggest priorities are: get to the playoffs healthy, beat the heat. unless we're seriously suggesting that losing to the [expletive] sixers before the all-star break is some sort of harbinger of playoff doom, which is pretty silly, then the unmeasured reactions to tonight's loss are a little embarrassing. unless you don't value patience, maturity, or perspective. then yeah, perfectly appropriate.

This is stupid, meaningless hand waving. don't take it personal fella. jumping to the conclusion that a bulls team that is at worst the second-best team in the league, while missing two of its most important players, should be trembling at the thought of drawing the overachieving philly team in the playoffs is laughable.

lol keep your pants on boys, you're embarrassing yourselves. the heat lost to the bucks ffs. this loss means nothing.

i thought the story was that mad dog got the offer from the braves and took it back to the cubs but by then himes had signed a chump or two and couldn't/wouldn't match it.

You don't get points one-at-a-time when you win shootouts. You get 2. They've gotten 6 points from OT wins, another 8 from SO wins, and 7 points from OTLs. They've outscored their opponents by just 17 goals. I don't really get that they've been wildly inconsistent as much as they just haven't been very good. They had a nice stretch in the middle of November, but that's about it as far as impressive success. Their longest win streak is 5, and that started with 3 OT/SO wins and was against some pretty weak competition. They've lost 3 games in a row on 3 different occasions already. They aren't a bad team by any stretch, but they just aren't impressive. It's disappointing to me that after all the turnover they haven't been able to take a step forward yet. To date they appear to be a pretty clear tier below the elite teams in the league like Boston, Detroit and even the Rangers. And it's not like they've dealt with the issues that a team like Pittsburgh has had to deal with, missing MVP caliber players for extended periods of time. goal differential is slightly misleading, since they're tied for second-worst in goals against in the west yet lead the west in goals scored. they do two things consistently: score a lot and get scored on a lot. yet, they don't necessarily always do both of those things at the same time, edmonton for example. what i'm ultimately most baffled by is the expectation that one of the younger teams in the nhl, which as you clearly point out, has undergone pretty significant roster turnover, should be elite. maybe you should think about adjusting your expectations. this team has very clearly taken a step forward in regards to the young talent brought in through trades and the draft. however, getting rid of campbell and choosing jammer over niemi are probably the ultimate moves that have put this team in the position it is in. that's not a problem with taking a step forward, that's a problem with undermining forward progress by miscalculating roster moves. this team doesn't play defense well. however, the fact that they can light the lamp with the best of them should give a little more optimism that if, and only if, quality defensive talent is brought in, this team will take the next step.

i think maybe we forget how dominant that stanley cup team was during the regular season. their puck possession and sog were so far above what everyone else in the league was doing, it was just obscene. i doubt we'll ever see a team that good again, regardless of how well our young players grow

One of those teams is Edmonton. Who has our number in a bad way lately. this team very much plays to the competition, unfortunately.