David

i vote beantowncubfan should get to continue starting :flythew: CUBS WIN

first strike he throws and it's called a ball lol

lol should have walked but it's 2-2

if joe were really perfect he'd have brought rondon in there and someone else to get the final outs if it got to be too many pitches for him or whatever.

grandpa rossy forgot rizzo isn't over there

Uh, pretty much the same place. He's only started 3 other games, all losses. And his PH HR was in a 10-5 win. lol seriously such a weird post

WILLSONNNNN

if that washington report re: noah is true, it's kinda funny since that's the team whose front court completely dominated him that year he won DPOY

nice javy

you guys know i'm not the hockey guy...i'm confused. thought teuvo being traded was to let them keep shaw...that's what everyone said. wtf?

do they really blast that horsefeathering horn in the middle of a pitch? how is that allowed?

that's horsefeathering hysterical

Wait that has to be only 4 years right? So basically the max? I was expecting a lot of 10m backups and 20m starters, but if non superstars start making 30m... yea we can add one starter in FA, and that's it. yeah..here's the report. it seems way too insane to believe, though. http://www.sportingnews.com/nba/news/nba-free-agency-washington-wizards-joakim-noah-chicago-bulls-knicks-derrick-rose-bucks-timberwolves/1g5h2xcr8ello1ct5ne29gn4m5?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter

so if the wizards really are offering joakim $120M, how good do we feel about lopez right now?

as much as i wanted to believe that at the time and shortly thereafter, i don't anymore.

Not as disagreeable now that you spell it out like that. And my point isn't that we should tank, my point is that it is unlikely that we become a legit contender without a star that is better than Jimmy Butler. Now if the Bulls had a lot of intriguing assets that could either develop into an attractive team, or be used as trade bait for either a star or lottery picks, then yes I am completely fine with not blowing the whole team up. But this team is Jimmy Butler and a cast of mediocre role players basically. We are not going to improve our long term outlook by drafting high floor, low ceiling guys like McDermott and Valentine. We are not going to improve our long term outlook by trading Rose for a packaged headlined by Joakim Noah lite (I know Rose's trade value wasn't high and they did get a potential high ceiling low floor guy in Grant, but I'd rather have the cap space than a 3 year commitment to Lopez at 14 per). These are marginal assets for future transactions. So if we are a 50 win team with no hope of the title, that's fine if we are building toward something or accumulating assets, much like the 05-09 Bulls or the last 2 Celtics teams. But every move I've seen the Bulls make lately has been designed to keep the Bulls in that 42-47 win range without much long term upside and no asset accumulation. So yes I would prefer to blow it up and bottom out for what hopes to be a year or two than watch a team led by Jimmy, Taj and Robin Lopez struggle to make the playoffs. I understand the risk that it will make the team unwatchable and I understand 1-2 years could turn into 5-7 years, but at this point I am having a hard time finding other ways to compete long term. depends what you call a legit contender. a fake legit contender like the 2010-11 bulls, or an actual legit contender like whatever team has lebron and the warriors? i realize it's convenient to pick the two teams that were just in the finals but lebron is literally in them every year and very few would've predicted anyone to beat the warriors this year (at least before curry started looking vulnerable).

especially with the lotto. like i said, if there were a lebron type prospect in the 2017 draft, i'd blow it up and tell hoiberg he's fired if they win a game. and even then we'd have to make it through the lottery, but i'd do it.

imagine how the course of everything and our whole bulls narrative would have changed if that secret kobe free agency mission in 04 that (according to kobe) almost worked had worked. or even the 2007 trade effort. that's probably the closest we came to nabbing a superstar, depending on how real you think the initial lebron stuff was and how long the miami thing was truly realistically in the works.

seriously, though, is there a better expression for that? because i really didn't want to use it either.

I think (some) people are mistaking what I'm saying. I'm not cool with being a mediocre team. I want them to put together the best team they can. I want to watch a good entertaining team. I want them to construct a good roster, find value in free agency, find guys who might not be so much of a value but make you better. draft well. etc. I just don't want to say "well we're not gonna win a title with this bunch, so let's tank and hope we get a great player." and i don't think they need to (nor do i necessarily think it helps them) bottom out to become that type of very good team again. and i don't see how trading jimmy butler on a value contract for the 5th pick in a bad draft helps you do that - even if you're getting the great zach lavine too (which is how this conversation started - when UM said something like "i don't care anymore just blow it up"). the best team the bulls have put together since the dynasty was a really good and really entertaining team. it also had no shot, realistically speaking, at a title..especially with lebron on a superteam. i've come to terms with that. maybe some day in our lifetimes we'll be blessed enough to have another of that type of player fall in our laps, but i'm not willing to intentionally endure several terrible and unwatchable seasons on a very outside chance at that. like others have said, be as good as you can and try to maintain flexibility so that you at least have a puncher's chance when an opportunity at a move comes around. as far as blowing it up and tanking, the juice isn't worth the squeeze.

I had a lot of fun too, but it was always with the hope that they were going to take the next step, and it was always based on the hope that next year Derrick was going to turn into some semblance of his former self again and we could be a legitimate contender in the East. how much fun did you have watching this game? http://www.basketball-reference.com/boxscores/200504240CHI.html Because I had a lot of horsefeathering fun that day and I'm OK with admitting that.

[tweet] [/tweet] a new guy we can pretend to have an opinion on i guess draft xpress had him ranked in the mid 20s. i read some tweet somewhere that said the bulls convinced him to come over this year.

because it's not something you can really try to do in any realistic sense of the word. that's my point. and they've definitely tried. they've tried to throw their money at every superstar free agent that has come along. and it's been 13 years since the draft yielded that type of player in the traditional sense...if you want to include curry then, fine, but even then, that's not a guy you would've wound up with unless you failed at being bad enough. you could throw durant in there too, i guess, even though even he hasn't done it yet.

who said anything about wanting to be a 35-40 win team? i want to put a good roster around jimmy (kind of like they did with rose in 2010) over this offseason and next and win 50+ and then i'll deal with being heartbroken for 3-4 days when we lose to lebron again. jimmy is good enough to be the best player on that type of team. I don't see the roster construction, the cap room, or a remotely capable FO to accomplish that. In fact, with the escalating cap, I'd fully expect us to hymn ourselves firmly into a 35-40 win team. until this year and the nonsense with not trading gasol, i've never really looked at this as a bad front office. they did a great job making lemonade out of lemons in 2010 and put together a really solid roster. they've made solid draft picks late. they've also made some picks that haven't been good players, but what kind of success rate do you expect where they've drafted? do i think it's a great FO? no. do i think they're some sort of completely incompetent (as you put it, as bad as thoyer is good) management team that can't put a decent roster around a player as good as jimmy? hell no. the last 4 years are largely owed to the fact that derrick rose won an mvp out of nowhere, got paid massively (super max for the MVP), and then turned into a complete nothing. what front office is going to make something great out of that situation?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2000_NBA_draft and while that's an extreme example of a bad draft, the point is that there aren't superstars in every draft (far from it) and when there is ONE, plenty of teams are trying to get him and you have to actually win the lotto to get him. those odds aren't worth it to me. not investing years of suckage for those odds. can't really agree on williams either. didn't see near enough from him his first year to think anything like that. Or you could be Golden State and strike gold in like 5 straight drafts yeah i mean the alternative is hope a #7 overall pick turns into the best shooter ever and an MVP i mean, you give me a lebron in next year's draft and i'll 100% be on board with trading jimmy butler for the worst return we can get and telling the coach he's fired if they win one damn game (and even then, we still have a really good chance of getting fucked out of the pick, but i'd do it).