Chisoxfn

I'm sorry...that was on the ump. Harper shouldn't have been tossed. The ump and Williams couldn't finish their argument and then the ump got short with Harper, who had already gotten back in the box and then stepped out because of the continued back and forth between the ump and williams.

QUOTE (shipps @ May 21, 2015 -> 08:15 AM) Wow what a market out there for him. If the Bulls had any real intention of keeping him, I could assure you they would get a 1st round pick. Problem is, everyone knows that he's gone, so Bulls lost all their leverage in this public battle.

Fantastic outing for Johnson.

QUOTE (greg775 @ May 19, 2015 -> 12:44 PM) Yes. I was going to say he'll need to have a career to make enough money to support the family. Must be a hard decision. If he's close to making the bigs, he could make a lot of money in a short period of time. If he's not going to make it, better to get going on a real job. But Party City won't cut it $$ wise. Baseball teams should cut out the "clubhouse fees." Embarrassing a billion dollar industry makes the minor leaguers pay for peanut butter sandwiches. The NBA is quite different, NFL too. No minor league. Just join the big leagues out of "college" and rake in the money. He switched from party city to another job, but point is, when you are playing baseball professionally, you aren't going to have an easy time finding a high paying part time position (when you will be gone most of the year). If you read the peace, he switched from party city to a different, more high paying job, and I presume now that he is retiring he will get into a profession that he sees fit. Best of luck Mike!!!

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ May 19, 2015 -> 01:11 PM) It is funny that these articles are coming out saying the Bulls would be so much better off when Thibs goes, and his offense is so horrible, yet Pau had his best offensive season in years, Butler developed like a #1 pick not #30, they have free agent minimum point guards every year do something. Be careful what you wish for. The Mayor may be a good coach, but he's replacing a good coach. If Thibs stayed, I'm sure, assuming he stayed healthy, McDermott would improve. Mirotic didn't suffer in Thibs offense. They make is sound like the Bulls struggled to get to 70 points. I agree with you. I think the biggest thing is they need to get in a room and both sides need to realize their aren't a better fit and they both need to adjust a bit. I just don't know how realistic that will be given how things ended. It would have been much easier if we made a deeper run. Both sides are at fault in this.

Kendall Gill's take. Interesting comment on Thibs and whether he would command the "respect" of the players. By all accounts, Hoiberg is supposed to have an infectious personality and be a fantastic people person, so you think he would be able to command the respect of the current NBA players.

Stacey King speaks out. Interesting comments and hard to disagree with anything said. http://www.chicagotribune.com/sports/baske...0519-story.html

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ May 18, 2015 -> 10:51 AM) And neither will Derrick Rose. Agree on both parts, but the two of them with other good players, most certainly can, imo.

QUOTE (Buehrle>Wood @ May 18, 2015 -> 10:34 AM) Okay, well I promised lameness. I barely even remember the story and never thought much of it until now since I didn't know there's a potential Rose/Butler rift until reading this thread. After a recent game, both ended up going to RPM Steak. They were in a VIP area and the pretty much the only people around, iirc it was the upstairs area (never been there so not even sure if there is one). Rose was with a big group, his family and entourage and whoever. Butler was there with his agent and business partner to discuss some things. Basically, I guess it was extremely awkward and the two refused to acknowledge that the other was having dinner in the same room as one another. It became a game of who would go over to who at the egging on of Butler's agent, but Jimmy refused to in the end. I think the other people around just expected them to be bffs or whatever. There's more to the story and I'm not telling it right, but yeah its lame nonetheless. There's your nba tmz report for the day. You know...I've done that before, where I see someone I'm friends with but don't want to interrupt what they have going or maybe know that I have something important going and want to focus on that (say a business lunch). Not saying it is the case, but if I'm picking a player to build the franchise around, it is Butler, not Rose.

QUOTE (Quinarvy @ May 15, 2015 -> 09:57 AM) No one will take Jo at this point, which is sad seeing what happened to him. If they can clear Taj and sign Marc, that's the best case scenario. Start Pau and Marc, Jo and Niko off the bench. Niko gets the Taj treatment until Pau retires. Jo is an expiring contract and would still be a guy people would trade for. How much we get would be less then in years past but no way someone wouldn't take him. I am not very down on Taj, but his ankles are definitely a concern.

On a sidenote, I want to say that I would still welcome Thibs back, but it would only be if the front office and Thibs could come to an agreement and get on the same page. If they can't, then someone needs to go and it clearly isn't going to be GarPax so at that point Thibs needs to go. Players can't keep dealing with this sort of stuff. Reality is after losing like this, Thibs and Front office won't come to terms.

QUOTE (KyYlE23 @ May 15, 2015 -> 09:53 AM) "Pau, talk to Marc. Tell him about the opera" I love all three of those guys and they would be great fits. However, If I'm giving the money, I'm probably giving it to Love. Make Cleveland weaker and get the guy that is 26 years old vs. two guys who are on the other side of 30.

QUOTE (scs787 @ May 15, 2015 -> 09:53 AM) With Butler set to get a max contract more than likely, wouldn't that put them over the tax threshold thus eliminating the MLE? Or can they sign their MLE then Butler? Wes Matthews would be pretty sweet if he decides he wants to take the MLE as a "Prove it" deal coming off an injury. I think even after signing Butler to the max deal, they will be below the tax threshold.

Evidently, if the Bulls were able to time things right with Jimmy Butler's max deal, they would be able to move Taj / Noah and be in a position to offer max money to one of Aldridge / Gasol / Love.

QUOTE (scs787 @ May 15, 2015 -> 09:24 AM) What can they realistically do? Hearing a lot of build around Rose, Niko, and Butler talk. Assuming Butler gets his max contract, I believe that's 14M, so 39M between those 3 guys. The cap is gonna be at 67m. The following year the cap is set to jump up 20M. Do back loaded contracts happen in the NBA? Who are people looking at this off season? Who are you lookin to dump? This was a championship caliber team if healthy. It didn't play like one though late and obviously we missed Pau during the season. The problem is "if healthy" becomes a pretty big caveat given some of the long-term health issues some of these guys have sustained. To me the biggest thing this team was missing was a true point guard. Aaron Brooks is hot garbage (as anything other then a guy you bring in when you need someone to jack up shots and see if he is hot...when he isn't on fire, he is absolutely worthless) and clearly Hinrich is past his prime. Rose you are stuck with and you have to hope that this postseason gave him confidence (even though he finished week) in his knee and he'll finally have an off-season where he can think about basketball and making improvements, which should be huge. Niko will get better and the team will have MLE money to add a quality player which should make us better.

I like poaching two guys from winning organizations. Hopefully these guys were key parts to that in Bmore and Denver, respectively.

QUOTE (Rowand44 @ May 14, 2015 -> 10:18 PM) This is NOT a championship roster. Thibs deserves his fair share of the blame but this roster can't win a championship. Changes need to be made. Brooks +/- in the postseason had to be absurdly bad. That guy was such a liability.

I will say this. Bulls players deserve a lot of the blame too. I was annoyed at our sets after time outs, but more then anything, what bugged me the most was how much the Cavs bench stepped up and how much our bench disappeared (and so did Rose in the 2nd half, etc). I felt that the Cavs shot out of their butts from 3 point in this series and that was probably as much luck as it was anything else. All this said, I hope the Bulls will find a legitimate back-up point guard, probably the biggest need (and this PG would hopefully someone capable of starting in a pinch or when Rose is out). This off-season I expect Rose to take steps forward as with Niko. I'd say Butler will get better too, although I suppose he could be due for some form of regression. Noah should get better (hard to get worse), Taj should get better (similar to Noah, most of that better will be due to health) while I presume Pau will be slightly worse. Dang though, so sad how we weren't able to step up and so frustrating how we had this team on the ropes. Refs sucked but so did the Bulls.

They have played so undisciplined. It is why I am open to a new coach. Maybe Tom's act has grown old. That said, I hope I see a picture of Tom / Pax / Gar smoking cigars and sipping scotch after the Bulls win the title this year!

That should be interesting. Curious how he does. Could he get a more recurring gig or be groomed to come back. Maybe him and AJ in the booth together in a few years, haha.

QUOTE (BigHurt3515 @ May 14, 2015 -> 10:45 AM) I really hope this doesn't hurt Micah's psyche. I don't think he is that type of guy or player but we will see. Let's hope he does well at AAA and is back up at some point If this impacts his psyche, then he wouldn't be good enough to succeed in the majors anyway. More mentally difficult than any other sport.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ May 14, 2015 -> 10:47 AM) it's a shame that no one in the white sox front office has access to the stats from Birmingham and Charlotte to be able to judge such things. I am glad the front office isn't purely working off the stats and is also using their eyes.

QUOTE (fathom @ May 14, 2015 -> 10:35 AM) His approach has been good, but the results haven't been good enough to overcome how poor his defense has been. I think it's a great move, as Johnson will hopefully go down to AAA and get his timing at the plate ironed out. I think this is more about him working on footwork, making advances on the defensive end. Him working on his bat is nice, but if his defense wasn't historically bad (by advanced metrics), we wouldn't be making this move.

Very surprised at this. I thought we were going to be more patient with Johnson. Hopefully Johnson is able to take what he learned, work hard at it in the minors and then come up for good the next time. He has a bright future and he shouldn't have his head down. I hope Sanchez comes up and keeps hitting and does some good things. Would be nice to have a couple young players to be excited for (as I am still excited and high on Micah) but if Sanchez can play some good defense and hit solidly, he'll be a nice guy to have and an upgrade on the current roster (even though I think Micah's upside is higher).

QUOTE (Thad Bosley @ May 12, 2015 -> 04:48 PM) Hey, great speech, now welcome back to the point I was trying to make. Let's try some sustained winning by this organization for a change and see if that doesn't help cure what ails us. We haven't seen it in our lifetimes, of course, but I believe it can and it will. The "reality" is our fan base responds remarkably well to winning. Just look at how that one year of real winning we had in '05 brought a waiting list for season tickets the following year, and almost three million fans through the turnstiles to boot. Nothing fickle or compromising about that. And I can only imagine what the attendance would have been like during the next three or four years subsequent had the team gone on a run and continued to win the division, like the Indians, Tigers, and Twins have somehow managed to do since the Central came into being. You start winning at that clip and then all of a sudden the park is routinely inhabited by 2.8, 2.9 million fans, just like in '06. And then all of these superficial arguments about hands being tied behind the back and lack of resources and irrelevantly comparing us to the Cubs go away. That mindset coming up with those excuses is completely borne of this lifelong lack of a winning culture of which I speak. Simply put - I want reality to be about more winning. Period. Now back to our regularly scheduled programming. Look at the Angels. Consistently 2nd fiddle in the LA / OC market until they won the world series...they followed that up with multiple division titles and have been consistent contenders for the past decade. Payroll went through the roof and attendance was extremely strong. Sox could have been similar but they couldn't consistently make the playoffs (they consistently contended but fell short too often vs. building some serious momentum).