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https://twitter.com/billazbbphotog/status/1533981751801835520

Hate that ump in the clip above. Lots of entertaining college baseball games happening right now and I hope the ratings are up.

They have the Bulls taking Tari Eason: One of the highest-rising prospects during the pre-draft period and someone I like for the Bulls was taken 2 picks later at #20:

Kirk Goldsberry has the Warriors winning in 7. I think it will be a close series and I agree the Warriors will win, but think they'll do it in 6 games.

Pretty cool moment. He looked great in the game I went to. It's early, but I'm super impressed with Morel.

Well, this is good news for the Cubs because I don't think they would win a bidding war for him at the trade deadline this year. Mike Rizzo is in the last year of his contract so I wonder if this decision will be decided by the next GM/President, like the Mookie Betts situation when Chaim Bloom took over in Boston.

I always enjoy his articles and I feel massive sympathy for Dr. Jazayerli. As bad as we have it as Cubs fans, it is SO much worse for Royals fans. They have a terrible President of Baseball Ops in Dayton Moore and a horsefeathering awful manager in Mike Matheny... I know Frank Schwindel isn't the long-term answer at 1B for the Cubs, and I'm pretty sure Alfonso Rivas isn't the answer either (I do like Rivas and think he's a solid player). The Royals have two very good 1B prospects in Vinnie Pasquantino and Nick Pratto. Both of them made Fangraphs 2022 Top 100 Prospects list and I know Eric Longenhagen is a fan. Pasquantino is definitely ready to face MLB pitchers right now and his hit tool is pretty advanced. Pratto is the better defender at 1B. I'm not a huge fan of 1B prospects in general or trading for them. And I'm not even sure if it's possible to trade for either of them, but the Royals might make a good trade partner down the road. Some of their young pitchers have stalled in their development and the overall outlook for the team does not look promising right now. I wonder if one or both of them struggle initially when called up, maybe then a situation might arise similar to what happened with Anthony Rizzo in San Diego a decade ago. Maybe the Royals decide to move on and the Cubs can capitalize and repeat history.

Man, that Tennessee team is so incredibly loaded with talent. Not sure who knocks them off this year.

Wow...

This guy is getting a lot of positive attention now and was impressive in Chicago in front of NBA scouts and execs. Jalen Williams looks really good in that clip above and fits the style of recent picks under AKME. Should be a good two-way player and reminds me of PWill a little bit. Not sure if he has scheduled any private workouts with NBA teams, but I'm sure they're coming in the next couple weeks.

For anyone bored and wanting to learn more about NBA Draft prospects: https://www.tankathon.com/mock_draft I used to get Walker Kessler every time I did this mock simulator, but now I get Baylor SF Kendall Brown. I don't really have a favorite draft prospect (at least not for this draft) right now in the range where the Bulls are picking. I was super high on Australian guard Dyson Daniels a few months back. We have no shot at him now, unless we traded up quite a few spots. One of the most impressive players in the G League.

True. No one thinks Robinson and Capela are better than Luka or Steph. They aren't. But they grade out higher on win shares because centers have a horsefeathers ton of utility. A more useful stat for an individual's value might be win-shares equalized for the position they play. But that's not what we're talking about. No idea what you mean about me posting WAR comparisons. I don't think that's something I do often, since I don't remember it. I just read what you said and thought "hmm, Jokic and Embiid were totally dominant this year, and most stat nerds seemed to agree" so I looked up how centers fared this year. I'm going to default tangible stats over internet take from internet guy (who claims to know the minds of insider NBA stat guys) and some dudes I've never heard of waiving their hands. I'll conceed that maybe win-shares isn't a great stat, as basketball is a much more difficult sport to quantify than baseball, but it's what I trust, given my options. I should have clarified what you do too much of I guess. I've noticed you don't believe or trust things you can't quantify in baseball (much of scouting) and want error bars and confidence intervals and the like... I mean, sure, it would be nice if we had all those things but we don't. Scouting is still very important, even if it is subjective and occasionally very off. You've never heard of John Hollinger? He invented the stat PER and worked at ESPN for many years, and then worked in the FO for the Memphis Grizzlies. He's an analyst who actually really cares about stats and trying to quantify the sport. Ah, I think the dude is pretty damn credible. You've never heard of the Second Spectrum tracking system and how it is transforming the game? I mean, I guess not everyone knows about it, but that's not my problem. You're the one who brought up win shares in this argument. A better stat or framework for evaluating a sport/hobby will always come along, so I usually like to keep it simple but I couldn't do that here obviously. I get the point you were trying to make, but experts and former players and many observers all echo what I'm saying about centers in the NBA. Jokic and Embiid are freaks, but they're also just 2 players with exceptional skill sets. Most centers can't do what they do, and most centers are terrible shooters away from the hoop.

I could probably put this in the Bulls threads, but I'll leave this here to better illustrate my point: Look how much detail Alex Caruso goes into in this video on defense, and this is why analysts/execs/coaches watch so much film in the NBA. To properly evaluate defensive contributions you have to watch film and see how the defense might have broke down and where the blame resides, or where the credit goes for a defensive stop. NBA Court Optix does have some cool metrics and analysts for NBA teams are using Second Spectrum to better quantify NBA defense for individual players, but they don't use one catch-all stat like UZR or OAA in baseball.

In 2022, centers accounted for first, third, fourth, fifth, and seventh in win share. In win share per min played, centers literally make up 3/4ths of the top 20. https://www.basketball-reference.com/leagues/NBA_2022_advanced.html#advanced_stats::ws. I see 9 Centers listed in the top 20 on basketball-reference for win shares for 21'-22'. Sure, you can look at this stat, but no one thinks Mitchell Robinson and Clint Capela are better than Luka Doncic or Steph Curry lol. Like not even close in value honestly. This isn't MLB where you look at WAR to compare players btw (and I actually hate when people do this, and people who work inside MLB hate when people do this also). You actually do this way too much, but that's a whole other separate thing. In basketball, you can't simply measure a player's worth/impact based on a stat like Win Share because defense is so damn hard to quantify in this sport. Simply looking at steals + blocks to compare players on defense is stupid, and the Second Spectrum tracking system has revolutionized how they view NBA players (especially on defense with switching, showing, closest defender to another player, total distance covered, etc.) I can explain this in more detail if you would like... Anyway, back to the concept of centers losing their significance. I didn't just come up with this spur of the moment. John Hollinger, Kevin O'Connor and plenty of other experts who are FAR more knowledgeable than either of us have been saying this for months now. You can see it in the postseason very clearly... John Hollinger wrote that in an article breaking down his top 20 prospects for the NBA Draft. Teams are definitely devaluing that position and realizing small-ball lineups with talented guards/wings who can dribble, penetrate, create for teammates and hit shots from the perimeter are better. I'm not saying the elite Centers (Jokic, Embiid, KAT, Gobert) are bad and they totally deserve their MVP bonafides. If you want to add Giannis to that group (okay) that makes the group a little larger, but it's still a select few players. I can find a few more articles and videos explaining how centers are losing their significance in today's NBA, but I feel like it won't matter. Not when you use win shares as the crux of your argument lmao

Steve Kerr is awesome and I hope he inspires more coaches and athletes to speak out on this problem and other important social issues. ---- I wonder if the huge number of blowouts and lack of close games this NBA postseason is due to the increasing % of 3s and just the game-to-game variance in 3-pt shooting between teams. It's not a good trend, and I've ranted about this plenty before -- the NBA needs to move the 3-pt line back and widen the court. Centers are completely losing their viability/utility in today's game and it's not aesthetically pleasing to watch when NBA teams are bricking shots from long range and are down by 20 at halftime.

Sign and trade. AD? I don't know... I think the Lakers would want LaVine without having to give up AD in a sign-and-trade. The Bulls would probably try to move Vucevic + additional pieces to get AD and then re-sign LaVine to form a big 3 of DeRozan, LaVine and AD (this trio would be super talented but also pretty scary in terms of health/availability). Also, you don't have to be a basketball savant to know a Russell Westbrook/Zach LaVine backcourt wouldn't work. That's why I said their #1 priority is figuring out a way to dump Westbrook on some team. It very well might be an impossible task this offseason because the Westbrook experiment seems to fail everywhere he goes. The Lakers and their fans can dream I guess.