Chisoxfn

You have to hope the Bulls can use Parker's expiring contract during the season to facilitate a move for the long-term. I.e., Parker + a young piece or two for a very good player. Parker will not be on the Bulls long-term. I could be wrong, but you can just see he isn't a LT fit (unless they move other parts).

I watched a good chunk of last night's game. Lavine looks different this year (in a good way). Much more efficient scorer and much better movement without the ball. Plus he's finishing in the paint (something he was off with last year). Looks freaking explosive. He's going to have a massive year scoring the basketball. Hard to judge the defensive improvement this early in the season and I'll also warn all of this judgement is off a very small sample size.

I seriously wonder what people's views of Portis would be if he was a higher pick. The dude can flat out score. I got to hand it to the Bulls, him, etc on his overall development. He's a weapon. Prefer him off the bench because I don't know how well his game plays over a full game vs. more limited spurts. Plus, defensively he has certain challenges, but he's a pretty darn dynamic scorer. His advanced metrics were pretty solid too. PER was on the up-tick and solid win-shares. Not sure what he does with more minutes, but he turned into a pretty good 1st round pick. Of course pretty good doesn't mean squat without elite players. So freaking hard to find those "elite" guys.

I am not saying he's handling this properly. I think he needs to have someone get in his head as there is a much better approach/tact. That said, sometimes it helps to understand where others are coming from in those situations and I can see things from Jimmy's shoes, albeit, if I were in those shoes I would handle it much differently.

Oh, I agree, I think Thibs heard Jimmy's press conference and heard..."your telling me their's a chance".

The on the court stats with Butler were pretty staggering, in terms of how much better the Wolves were with him vs. without him. I don't believe that is purely on Butler's individual play, but also his ability to make others better. I think you have to understand how Jimmy operates. He was someone who made himself great and with that, I think he genuinely believes players can make themselves great, if they work, so he is disgusted when guys don't put in the work. He wants nothing to do with it. He also wants to be pushed because he thinks it makes him and others better and sometimes what he says is about him wanting to get pushed more. Interesting interview with Nichols which confirmed my speculation...that the request didn't just emerge this year and dated all the way back to last year. Whether you believe the comments from the interview or not is a whole separate story...but I think Thibbs thought time would heal all wounds and that ignoring it would make things better...but it didn't. I would love him on the Bulls...I'll trade Portis and Parker for him and than sign him to an extension and make a run at Kyrie or someone else in the off-season. Carter Jr, Mark, Buckets, Lavine, and Kryie with Dunn coming off the bench. Note: Wolves aren't trading him to Chicago and Bulls aren't trading for him.

This, exactly this.

But I think Glen Taylor is strongly in KAT's camp, hence him getting the big contract, etc.

There were reports right after the season ended that he wasn't happy with Wiggins / Towns. I think he probably wasn't "strong" enough in those intents and Thibs assumed he could smooth it over. Instead everyone just thought time would heal all wounds and Jimmy decided (not the best timing) that he was going to strong-arm the organization to go somewhere else (technically by making the move when he did...he certainly gave himself all of the leverage).

Disneyland, as in the one in Anaheim? If so, good luck. They don't do discounts, especially on one day passes. IF you know someone, maybe they can get a socal ticket...but not sure if you need to show an ID to prove you in the zipcode when you arrive at the park. I also don't know if they have any current socal resident offers right now anyway. I'm presuming not. Universal usually has deals. I'd google it.

The Wolves saga is even better. Apparently Buckets took the 3rd string unit in practice and whooped the crap out of the starting unit. Buckets is proving his point...the other guys on the Wolves are soft and not capable of winning a title. He wants to be in a dynamic where when he does that, someone steps up and knocks him on his butt or works even harder to shut him up. That is what he wants. He is no different than many other great players in that regard. Whole thing is hilarious and yes, I'd still take Buckets on the Bulls...as long as we were going to bring in another star to go with him.

They will not get a 2nd rounder for Howard. No way, no how. Unless he goes off for like 1600 yards or something.

He really is saying something many others believe, especially around Wiggins. His tone is just different. This isn't much different than how Kobe or even Jordan would have done things. If you weren't going to really put in the work and be a good player, you didn't need to be there. Buckets is basically telling the front office, you should have done something and listened and made the move to bring us better winning players. Instead you ignored what most said about the Wolves (their non Buckets best players were soft) and stuck with it hoping Jimmy would be happy.

Unless the Bears get insanely blown away, there is zero chance they are trading Howard within the conference. Zero. Far more likely they make a deal for Bell.

The Bulls FO has to hope that someone else, Jimmy's caliber, pulls a similar stunt this season or next season as I presume their plan is to land one guy via a "value" trade, surround him with Mark/Carter Jr., and whichever non Mark/Carter Jr. pieces they didn't trade, and use that nucleus to try to add via free agency. Butler is going to get traded for pennies on the dollar.

No young team is good at defense. Its the facts of life. This team might always be bad at defense, but it is a big reason why many pundits still expect Bulls to be really bad. I will point out, Lavine had another electric offensive performance. Like dynamite.

Probably the safer flex choice. Mahomes is must see tv right now.

The Stat I was quoting was representative of purely NEW US auto sales. Tesla represents 2% of NEW US auto sales.

Technically speaking, the Camry outsold the Model 3. Camry sold 30K units in September vs. 22K from Tesla. What Tesla is though is the undisputed champion of all things EV. Not even close...they are the market. You can take all the other major EV players and combine them together and they still fall short out of Tesla (in the post Model 3 world). The interesting concept will be what will Telsa's go-forward run rate look like since they had a huge order book going into launch. Either way, while I question Tesla's long term ability to be a sustainable car manufacturer...I do not undersell the impact they will have on the auto industry. Tesla, post Model 3 success, represents ~2% of the US marketplace. Prior to the Model 3, they represented roughly .3-.4% of the US marketplace. Additionally, electric vehicle sales represent barely much more than the Tesla market-share. What Tesla has accomplished is astonishing and if EV ultimately becomes fully mainstream, they will be the reason why (or at least a huge driver in why it emerged when it did, etc)...that said, the sheer mass production capabilities of the major auto manufacturers can quickly pivot as the scale/margins evolve. This is not to say that Tesla doesn't have a massive head start...it does...but it also has certain material limitations around production/distribution (including robust worldwide capabilities). At some point Tesla will be acquired...but not for a long time as they are way way too expensive (valuations > than every other auto manufacturer on the planet). Instead companies will continue to reverse engineer and pour more and more into R&D as the EV marketplace continues to emerge. We can look back in 10 years at this post and see how crazy wrong I am haha.

The Dodgers will not collapse. They have all the money in the world and like 5 top GM's all on the same payroll. I might be exaggerating slightly but they have legit bench talent throughout their organization. From front office execs to scouts to coaches. They are run like the big "investment" funds and have spent millions acquiring top baseball talent (i.e., scouts and front office people) to pick "investments" (i.e., players).

Maybe their owner wants Buckets and is now going to bring someone in who helps get him Butler?

First off, I'm not ready to get ahead of ourselves. Superstitious or whatever. But that aside, I don't believe NBC can flex games that early in the season. I thought it was only during the last 6 weeks of the season or something?

I figure the Bulls have too many injury prone guys that very rarely will they have all of their guys on the court. That said, I'm prioritizing Lavine, Mark, Carter, and Dunn (and obviously Hutch) over pretty much everyone else. I say Lavine because if he healthy, he has all of the athleticism and skills to be a top notch player. He may still end up being nothing but a chucker, but his basketball tools are off the chart, imo. Basketball IQ is a separate discussion though. I still think this year is about development in the younger pieces and getting a roster decent enough that you can start to land some impact guys via FA or trade. One thing I think people are underestimating is how a piece like Jabari can be used to facilitate a trade for a player looking to leave.

Parker's fit on this squad is still an extremely odd one. I view it as one of those why not lottery ticket moves that they did more than anything else.

I like Portis and think he's an extremely valuable bench contributor and think he can play a nice role in a contending team. However, if you are having him eat up a good chunk of your cap space...welp, you are going to have a hard time being a contender. Love Portis attitude and energy, etc, but I'm worried that this will be one of those deals that gets in the way of us doing something special in free agency, etc. If we already had a championship roster and you were just going to be dealing with JR and company paying luxury tax or at risk of that, I'd have a different view because I generally like Bobby's game. He can score in so many ways and whether he can play enough D to be a starter or not, he can certainly be an extremely valuable 6th man who can spot start. But I'm not taking up $15M of cap space for that.