UMFan83

I keep going back to this game with Fields. I know it didn't end great, but for the first 55 minutes of the game he looked as in control and locked into the offense as I've ever seen him. He did have more time to throw in this one than I've seen in other games, but he also was comfortable in the pocket and not looking to break free when he got some pressure. While it wasn't flawless, in general he found guys downfield and made great throws. I believe this was his highest graded PFF game as a passer in his career. When I imagine what Fields could look like if he reaches his potential as a passer and gets some help, this is probably what it looks like.

All those reports read like evaluating QBs is flawed and often very difficult

This wait for stuff to happen is unbearable. Never cared about combine/draft stuff that much but now I'm counting down the days til the combine next week so things finally get going.

So long as there’s cap space it’s more of a “sure, it’s your funeral anyway” thing on who, how, when, where, and what the money is spent. Heck because all the cool kids did it and there’s a network, some real estate, and probably more serious agendas to promote (2024’s an election year!)…they might even gift us a biscuit and go over for a couple years Hate to quote myself but here’s Tom Ricketts: :confetticannon: "I won't promise a top 5 payroll or anything" - says the owner of the 3rd most valuable team playing in the 3rd largest market with the 3rd most expensive ticket prices in baseball after a decade of adding revenue-generating things that were promised to go back to baseball operations. I hate luxury taxes sooooo much.

This seems fishy. I’m assuming an offer like that buys out the rest of his arb years right? He had 4 years of control after 2018 and he made $22.4m in those 4 seasons. While you can’t know for certain Willson would make $10m in 2022, you can probably project something like this coming off an All-star season. Either the cubs lowballed him to an embarrassing degree or this isn’t right (or I’m missing a detail)

You mean the 2 fan bases who have watched Fields play the closest have a favorable opinion of him? I mean the two with the biggest emotional attachment to him. And why do they have an emotional attachment to him? I can assure you Cade McNown didn’t have many Bears fans fighting for him. Is there some homerism involved? Sure. But I’d take the opinions of a Bears fan who’s seen all 28 or so Fields starts over a random fan of another team on Reddit who sees Fields highlights on ESPN and a box score and says “lol he’s a RB”.

You're really hanging onto where he got drafted when Aaron Rodgers fell to 24 and Tom Brady went 199th? And you ignored HS rankings and pre-draft rankings that I pointed out. Fields was always 1B until he wasn't 1B on draft day. He wasn't 2nd tier to Trey Lance and Zach horsefeathering Wilson. The coaching staff not throwing is definitely not on him. You watched the same horsefeathering games I did and saw him getting hit or pressured at the last step of his drop. The Bears receivers were also statically the worst in the league at getting open (I'll find the tweet if I can). Again, I'm not saying he was the perfect prospect or is a sure fire star QB in the league, and many have said this many times, but you're clearly being contrarian for contrarian sake. You're like a flat earther disagreeing just because it's an unpopular side to take, and that's your brand. My take is extremely popular outside of Chicago Bears and Ohio State fandoms You mean the 2 fan bases who have watched Fields play the closest have a favorable opinion of him?

3. It would be a ballsy but reasonable thing to do. It's fundamentally a scouting decision at the toughest position in sports to scout This is said so passively as if we don't have data about the actual players we're referencing. It's a 8+ at minimum on the crazy scale. If you are trading Fields you'd better be 100% certain that Fields is not the guy and that the guy you draft is the guy. You are basically staking your career to that decision. I like GMs that aren't afraid to take some risks but that is way too much of a gamble based on what we've seen from Fields so far.

Pacers last 19 games: L L L L L L L W - 24 point comeback against Bulls L L L L W L L L L L W - 24 point comeback against the Bulls

I think they'll eventually get some funding but I'm guessing its going to be a bit of a battle before anything happens.

https://www.espn.com/soccer/fifa-world-cup/story/4877961/fifa-targets-2030-world-cup-host-vote-in-2024 The US has officially qualified for the 2026 World Cup! Second World Cup clinched in the last 365 days, hope we can keep up the pace! (I know this was all but official a long time ago, but good to see it formally approved)

I was actually looking for that when this topic came up, I enjoyed the first several episodes when Southpaw19 did but dropped off after a while. I couldn't find them when I looked the other day

https://blogs.fangraphs.com/the-2023-start-of-spring-zips-projected-standings-national-league/ ZiPs has them at 78 wins here Aren't zips projections typically more conservative for teams that focus on defense and run prevention? Or is that just something I'm making up in my head?

The Bulls one hope for the future is that Michael Reinsdorf is waiting for his dad to kick it before making changes to how the organization is run, ala the Blackhawks and Bill Wirtz. I mean all indications are its basically his show already. In any case I don't think the AKME-Donovan run was a poor process. Where they go from here though is :dontknow: . But unless MR is moving on now, which would hobestly be very soon, it's on AKME to still figure it out. I know its his show, but its one thing to run the org and another thing to radically change how the org is run out of respect for his 86 year old still present father who still technically owns the team and benefits from their profits. It's a little different with the Wirtz's because I believe Dollar Bill was running the show until he died, but when Rocky took over he literally transformed the organization overnight...within days of Bill's death he had worked out agreements with CSN to start airing home games for the first time in decades. It was like the entire organization was in stasis waiting for him to pass on. I know I'm gasping at straws but its really all we can do as Bulls fans because the other scenario is grim

The Bulls one hope for the future is that Michael Reinsdorf is waiting for his dad to kick it before making changes to how the organization is run, ala the Blackhawks and Bill Wirtz.

Maybe they don't win in 95 like how they didn't win in 95 with Jordan. LBJ is an absolute freak in terms of production for the number of miles he has on him. Kobe was broken down at 35. Jordan saw a clear drop-off in his final Bulls season, and at the age Lebron is now was a volume scorer with the Wizards. An I chalk 95 up to Bulls shifting to a post-Jordan era and Jordan clearly not being in full basketball shape that season. His numbers (particularly shooting percentage) were way down in that partial season and all went back up the next year. The 94 team was still the first 3 peat Bulls minus Jordan and plus Kukoc and Kerr, but after that year Horace, Pax, Cartwright all walked among other guys. Horace left in part because JR is a cheapass, but also stated that he thought there was a better chance to win in Orlando. Do they keep Horace if Jordan is still there and they've won 4 in a row? Then again, do they trade for Rodman if they still have Horace? We can play the hypothetical game all day long but the fact is that they won 3 championships, Jordan retired for the better part of 2 years (calling it 1.5 is very generous, he returned in mid-March), and then they immediately won 3 more starting his first full season back. Jordan's numbers dropped off in 1998 but silly to pretend he wasn't still a top 3 player in the league that season, and the numbers back it up (for instance was slightly behind Malone for #1 in win shares, 3rd behind Robinson and Malone for WS/48, still had the highest usage rate in the NBA, 3rd in PER, won the scoring title, etc.) We'll never know if that was a permanent decline or whether Pippen missing half the season and being limited in the time he did play affected some of his efficiency numbers. LeBron is a freak in terms of wear and tear and I said that it should absolutely be a consideration in the GOAT debate. But Jordan was pretty much an iron man himself when he wasn't off playing baseball, playing 912 of a possible 919 games in his career excluding the broken foot year (yes I know LeBron never had an injury that kept him out 60+ games, but that was literally Jordan's only injury in his career that caused him to miss more than a game or two a season). There's nothing to suggest that he wouldn't have kept that up if he didn't retire to play baseball or gained additional years by leaving UNC early for the draft. I started off saying I don't both with the GOAT debate and here I am responding to the board's resident Bulls hater lol. But what I said before is true, I am fine if people want to say Jordan and LeBron are 1 and 1a, or LeBron and Jordan are 1 and 1a. As the years have gone on LeBron has won me over for a variety of reasons. I just don't think there's any way he will be able to convince me that he is the GOAT over Jordan, but again I'm biased.

I’m not even upset and I can’t tell if it’s because they’ve been telegraphing this for a month or if it’s just complete apathy for the Bulls organization.

I'm guessing this is Hester not making the HOF because they are supposed to announce today, but who knows.

Sure and Moses Malone and a few others did too: I suppose Jordan could have applied for hardship or whatever the requirement was but it was simply not common as 99.9% of players went to college for at least 2-3 years before going pro until KG kicked off the trend in 1995. I'm not using it as a knock against LeBron just pointing out that the trend of going from HS to pro allowed him 3 additional years in the NBA to accumulate stats. I'm not giving Jordan 4 more championships. He currently has 2 more championships than LeBron. If the Bulls win in 94 and 95 (or heck 99 if they kept it together), he could have 2 additional championships, thus having 4 more than LeBron. You can argue that Jordan's sabbatical allowed him to take a break from the rigors of basketball after winning 3 straight titles, which helped him in the next 3 peat. Maybe they don't win in 96, 97, 98 if he plays in 94 and 95 who knows. Maybe there was just no way the Bulls win in 99 after playing on fumes in 1998. My point wasn't to award hypothetical championships because I said so, just pointing out that Jordan's resume looks even better if he has the additional 4.5 years of games.

Just another day in the NBA

I get what you are saying from a longevity perspective, but Manning/Brady probably isn't the best comparison. Jordan still has more titles than LeBron....when I think of Manning I think of a guy who was probably the best QB in the league in many of the years that he played but never the unquestioned best QB (mostly bc of Brady). And then the next thing I think about is how the only Super Bowls he ever won were against Rex Grossman and in the final year of his career with a defense that almost literally carried him and what was left of his noodle arm to a championship. The thing that makes the GOAT comparison difficult is 1) they played in much different eras and 2) they were different types of players, similar in some ways but you can't do an apples-to-apples statistical comparison. I absolutely think that LeBron's longevity should be a factor in his GOAT case, but not THE factor. Jordan had a long sustained peak that lasted as long as many careers, however Jordan didn't have the option of joining the NBA out of high school, or after his freshman year, or after his sophomore year. Not to say Jordan was ready for the NBA out of high school like LeBron was, but those are 3 years LeBron had to accumulate stats that Jordan didn't have as an option. Also he literally retired to try to play another sport in the middle of his prime which is still bizarre to me. Give him those 4.5 seasons and he still has more points than LeBron and probably 4 more championships than him instead of 2 more.

laaaaammmmmmmmmmmmme, one less thing to complain about

I've stopped weighing in on the GOAT debate. My opinion, even if correct, is biased. A huge chunk of the people chiming in either weren't around for most or all of MJ's career or are old enough that MJ was more of their generation so they remember it fondly. I supposed I would be in the age range of someone qualified to comment as the Bulls dynasty years were basically my teens and the LeBron years were my 20s and 30s, but being a Bulls fan gives me bias. I honestly don't mind people calling Jordan and LeBron 1 and 1a. I think Jordan was better but if you get into those arguments there are numerous statistics and things you can point out that can make either side look better. All I know is that even LeBron was gawking when MJ showed up at the ASG last year for the 50 greatest players thing. Jordan's mere presence freezes everyone in the room in a way that no other past or present NBA player has. He carries himself like he knows he's the GOAT and doesn't care what you think (though surely he does care). Does that alone make him the greatest? Not at all of course. But I do think it keeps him in the conversation with LeBron for the rest of his life at least.