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2022 PLAYOFF PARTICIPANT CHICAGO BULLS WHO WERE BRIEFLY BACK LAST SEASON IN REVIEW After five years of inept tanking and becoming the laughingstock of the league, the Bulls finally made changes. And after a 2020-1 season with few major roster changes, team president Arturas Karnisovas and GM Marc Eversley went absolutely nutso, rebuilt the team from the studs up, and the team instantly transformed from cellar dweller to the top of the East. New Bulls Lonzo Ball and Alex Caruso spearheaded one of the most dangerous perimeter defenses in the league and DeMar DeRozan, left for dead in San Antonio, had the finest season in his career becoming a clutch superhero and absolutely destroying the league, earning an All NBA nod. The Bulls held the top seed in the East until Covid and injuries absolutely ravaged the team: both Pat Williams and Caurso broke their wrists getting clotheslined at the rim, Lonzo got a mysterious knee injury, and Zach LaVine finished the season sort of limping. By the end of the year, the Bulls plummeted to the six seed and were throttled in the playoffs by the Bucks as home fans had to watch the despicable Grayson Allen rain threes on them after his dirty, goony play knocked Caruso out for months. The Bulls are largely going to try to run it back this year and hope that being healthier and giving their guys another year will propel them deeper in the playoffs. DA COACH  The Long Island Legend. Donovan is in his third year with the Bulls, replacing noted bald maniac Jim Boylen. Donovan came in as a credibility guy after the last two Bulls coaches were first-timers who were in over their heads. I'm not smart enough about basketball to know how good Donovan is in terms of basketball strategy, but the team plays hard for him and there is not a lot of drama with this group and Donovan seems liked a respected Basketball Guy so I don't have a problem with him. He also has a J. Jonah Jameson haircut. WHO IS GONE Absolutely no one of note. Third string point guard Troy Brown is gone, as is deadline buyout pickup Tristan Thompson who was at least fun to google when it looked like the Bulls were going to sign him and instead getting a flood of insane celebrity gossip. WHO ARE THE BULLS LET'S FIND OUT  Zach LaVine, SG After another all-star season, the Bulls decided they are not loving around and signed Zach to a max contract. LaVine at this point in his career is what he is: an absolutely elite scorer at all levels who does insane dunks and is deadly from three. He is not a very good defender (although he at least tries) and a decent playmaker, and he is the the guy in Chicago for the forseeable future. The basketball nerds will say things like LaVine absolutely can't be the best player on a championship team and whine about his defense or whatever, but if you see one of them you should stuff them into the nearest garbage can and tell them that LaVine loving rules. He had knee surgery in the offseason and looked like he was still working himself back in preseason, but Zach will be fine. He is also probably the most pleasantly boring good player in the NBA.  DeMar Derozan, SF DeMar was loving incredible last year. All he did was hit ludicrous clutch buzzer beaters, score an insanely efficient number of jump shots, and remind the NBA that he is still a badass. His dinosaurian offensive game is the closest thing to how Jordan scored in the United Center, and we hard a lot of "since Jordan" records. It is hard to believe DeMar can replicate last year's season, but I think he will still be really good, and hopefully the team won't be so egregiously injured that their only offense is DeMar isos at the elbow. But man, I love to watch this guy cook.  Nikola Vucevic, C Vooch had a rough year last year, as Zach and DeMar demanded more touches and pushed him out to the line, where he struggled. There is a fear that the Bulls traded for him in an outlier shooting year and the Bucks basically just gave him open threes and dared him to hit them in the playoffs. He can hold his own inside defensively just by being big, but is not quick or jumpy enough to serve as a rim protector. But people fixate too much on what he can't do. Give him room to cook in the post, and he is one of the few bigs in the league with an advanced back-to-the basket game. He is a willing defender if he can get some help and has a soft touch inside. Vooch handled offseason trade rumors with good humor and seems to be happy here, but he is in his last year, so the Bulls need to figure out what to with him quickly.  Javonte Green, PF "There are five Javontes out there" is something Stacey King likes to scream about this extremely undersized hustle and defense man who loves to dunk. Green started a whole bunch of games at PF last year even though he's generously listed at 6'5" out of necessity but it looks like he will start the season as the starting 4. Javonte can't really shoot, he doesn't really need the ball, and he's ridiculously overmatched against any big man with size, and to be honest it's kind of alarming that he's starting at power forward, but Javonte loving rules and hopefully Pat can figure things out and send him back to the bench as a very useful dude to come in and dunk on people for 20 minutes a game. Somehow ended up playing for the Montenegro national team with Vooch, making the Bulls the official NBA team of Montenegro.  Lonzo Ball, PG When he was healthy, Lonzo was a force for the Bulls. He did everything they needed from a guard: he guarded the opponent's best perimeter player, made threes at more than 40%, and threw absolutely sick outlet passes. He can't finish at the rim at all and is not exactly the most tricky dribbler in the half court, but with Zach and DeMar absorbing a lot of the ball, he was a perfect complement-- for a few months. Unfortunately, the last we heard from Lonzo he was talking about how he still could barely navigate stairs and had not recovered from a knee injury sustained in January. He had another surgery and everyone is saying positive things, but there's a pretty decent chance that Lonzo doesn't play this season or if he manages to come back is a shell of himself. This is an absolute bummer. Get well soon, 'Zo.  Ayo Dosunmu, PG If there was one positive from the injuries last year, it was that Ayo, the fan-favorite second-year guard out of Illinois and from Chicago, unexpectedly played a ton and turned out to be good. An able defender and rim finisher who developed a good partnership with Vooch and loves to go coast-to-coast really showed something, quickly eclipsing Coby White as the first guard off the bench. Ayo was still a rookie, but he came in this season looking more confident shooting. If Ayo can get his jumper down and continue to defend, he will help assuage the Ball injury. He will start until Lonzo comes back and gets the announcer to do Frrrrrrrrrrom Chicaaaaaaaago in the intros, so that's cool. BENCH  Pat Williams, PF Penciled in as the starting PF, the Bulls are counting on Pat, their third-year #4 pick, to develop rapidly. Unfortunately, Pat is 21, missed most of last year after getting gooned by Mitchell Robinson, and appears to have lost his starting power forward job to a backup shooting guard. The organization is still really high on Pat who, along with Ayo, is the only young guy with upside on the team, but the hope that he could somehow turn into a star player looks dim. I still think that Pat can be really good and the organization loves him, but he might be too young and raw even in his third year to be useful on this veteran team. Because of this Pat is the subject of a lot of scrutiny and I hope it doesn't gently caress him up and he just balls out, I will defend Pat with my life.  Alex Caruso, G Bulls fans loving love this guy. An undrafted hustle guy on the Lakers, Caruso made himself into an absolute bulldog of a defender, wreaking absolute havoc on opposing guards, getting steals and throwing down dunks. The Bulls hoped Caruso would be able to continue his efficient three point shooting in a larger role, but he's not particularly good on offense. But Caruso will go through screens, take charges, get steals, and throw sick passes all day.  Andre Drummond, C Well, it's Drummond. I hated this signing because Drummond, even though he's not even 30 yet, seems to be on the washed veteran pipeline and despite his bulk he isn't really a great defender. At least once a week, Drummond will do the absolute dumbest poo poo you've ever seen a player attempt in a professional basketball game. But despite that, Drummond has a few things going for him: he is absolutely enormous, which is a need for a team that got shoved around by the big guys in the East, and he is still an absolutely nasty rebounder. He is basically a much better version of Tristan Thompson, and if he remains engaged and in the system, and makes it so I don't have to see Tony loving Bradley failing to catch another pass, he could be a useful bench piece for them. He even shot some threes in the preseason, lmao.  Goran Dragic, PG Dragic offers everything the Bulls need: a steady passer in the halfcourt who can shoot and run a team. Unfortunately, that was Dragic four years ago. At 36, he could be completely washed. He is coming off a bizarre season where he refused to play for Toronto and waited all season before he got bought out and played not particularly well for the extremely dysfunctional Nets. Hopefully, a full season with a more stable organization will let Dragic flourish as the gritty veteran providing some shooting off the bench, but this team already has a gazillion guards and if the Bulls are counting on him for anything more than running some bench units, they are in trouble.  Coby White, G: Because the Bulls didn't make any major moves this offseason, they desperately need Coby to be their bench shooter. Coby showed some flashes last year after missing a large chunk of time to a shoulder injury and is better in his role of bench gunner than as a disastrous attempt to let him run point, but the Bulls don't have a lot of shooting on this team and need Coby to hit a poo poo load of threes because apparently you need to shoot threes to win games in the Modern NBA. Coby is in a weird spot in the last year of his deal and someone that might be dealt, though he is worth more to the Bulls than any other team right now.  Dalen Terry, Wing The rookie out of Arizona already looks like a future glue guy who defends, shows some vision, throws down some cool jams, and that's pretty much it so far. Terry is a fun dude with an infectious personality who seems to love being in Chicago and I hope the Bulls find some way to get him on the court this year, hopefully it isn't because the entire team is injured. If they can't, he might go get some burn in the G League.The front office seems to love these long defensive guys with vision who can't shoot. Derrick Jones, Jr., F: A skinny 6'5" guy who somehow ended up playing backup center last year. Throws down absolutely insane dunks. Tony Bradley, Jr., C: This guy is still on the Bulls, lmao. Marko Simonovic, C: If this guy is playing minutes outside of Hoffman Estates, something has gone horribly wrong. SEASON OUTLOOK The vibes around Bulls fans, despite coming out of nowhere and having an incredibly fun season last year, are kind of lovely. Part of it is the fact that they went into the shitter last year; a lot of it is because they didn't make any big moves while their rivals in the east made all kinds of splashy signings. It seems like the Bulls are treading water while the East is swimming laps. More ASSET-pilled fans would note that the Bulls blew their draft pick load putting together this team, which looks like it might top out as a team scrapping for the six-seed and they got owned in the Vooch trade while the trade that sent away Daniel Gafford for Troy Brown, Jr. looks pretty bad as well. In a league that thrives on transactions, the Bulls offered none. You can take Karnisovas at his word that they are counting on better health and, in his words, "continuity" or you can assume the Reinsdorfs are being cheap and won't let them go into the tax. But all of this sourness occludes that this team is fun as hell and rules, and I think will be much better than people think. DeMar, Zach, and Vooch are really good professional basketball players and the team that limped out of the playoffs is the worst version of them. Maybe I'll be wrong and they'll be stuck in the play-in and then blow it up, but here's one thing I know: the Bulls aren't tanking, I'm not watching dogshit players struggle under the dumbest loving coach I've ever seen with the shittiest front office in the game. They are going to be competent and competitive, and if that's what this group tops off as I'll take it. There's been a ton of movement in the NBA again, so let us know: who are the guys on your team R.D. Mangles fucked around with this message at 05:21 on Oct 13, 2022 |
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Oct 13, 2022 04:10
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| # ¿ May 15, 2024 06:03 |
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wait, northwestern basketball legend Mr. LaCrosse pat Spencer actually made it to the fringes of the NBA??????
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Oct 14, 2022 22:30
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DJ_Mindboggler posted:I was so confused as to what this stocky white guy was doing during the preseason games, but he actually looked okay, even had a sick dunk. Could end up being the 14th/15th man. The one thing about Pat is that he's a crazy athlete and can get up. Dude just showed up to play DI basketball* as a grad student without playing competitively since high school and was actually decent. * i mean technically northwestern is division I.
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Oct 15, 2022 00:05
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no worries, i watched a lot of this guy play basketball and i am stunned that he is playing professionally at any level.
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Oct 15, 2022 02:36
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