ZoomSlowik

There's a bunch of stuff I'm looking forward to early in 2015. Will probably get at least 2 of Evolve, The Order 1886, Bloodborne, Mortal Kombat 10, maybe Dying Light. Hopefully Uncharted 4 comes out relatively soon. Right now, still playing a ton of Destiny. I took a few weeks off, but some other people that will remain nameless dragged me back in. Eventually I have to get back to Shadow of Mordor (only about 10% done), Last of Us Remastered (played it a ton on PS3, so not high priority) and going to pick up GTAV at some point.

I think a lot of you have unrealistic expectations for Illinois. We knew going into the season that they had mediocre bigs and questionable PG play. That's why they were widely picked to be middle of the pack in the conference. Both Michigan teams have been bigger disappointments thus far.

QUOTE (raBBit @ Dec 30, 2014 -> 12:50 PM) Someone please correct me if I am wrong because I don't know the NBA like the MLB but Butler is going to be an RFA next offseason. So as someone said, I think Kev, the Bulls will end up matching whatever the offer sheet is. So he's not looking at 4/80 or 5/100 he's looking at 3 years 50ish or 4 years at 60+? Am I right here? You don't really know what the numbers will be yet until the cap figure for next year is determined. The max is based off that number. Kyrie Irving just signed one for 5-90, but as I posted earlier, Butler can't get a 5th year because Rose is the Bulls' designated player. The best guess is in the 4-70 range. However, that could go up if the cap jumps significantly or if Butler qualifies for the "Rose rule" that allows him to get 30% of the cap instead of 25%, which would happen if he makes the All-Star game or All-NBA the next two years (admittedly, I'm not 100% sure that applies if you're not a designated player).

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Dec 29, 2014 -> 02:55 PM) Something close to 5/$100, depending on exactly where the cap winds up next year. The Bulls can't give Jimmy Butler a 5-year extension Designated player rules. Derrick Rose is the Bulls' designated player.

QUOTE (SoxFan562004 @ Dec 29, 2014 -> 02:16 PM) and won't that be before the expected salary cap expansion based off the new TV deal? So it might hurt them some short term, but if cap expands as expected it becomes less of a burden. His extension wouldn't kick in until 2016/17, so that's when they'd start having issues. Noah's contract also happens to be up at that time, but as you said, the new TV deal should kick in at that point.

The Bulls will simply match the max offer sheet Butler gets. Not terribly concerned. The Spurs did the same thing with Kawhi Leonard.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Dec 28, 2014 -> 01:47 PM) You included Davis on that list, take a look at his rookie year. He was a decent player but he was no star. Look instead at how he's grown since then, I think you can even make a case that Davis having to stay in college for 2 years wouldn't have robbed the league of anything all that important. It was clear he could turn into a great player that year, but he also wasn't there at the time. I think that makes an important point about how big the physical difference is between these college sophomores and seniors when they're in the league. The problem is you have to make assumptions about what would have happened when he stayed in college. Maybe he gets hurt. Maybe he doesn't improve at the same rate because he's facing inferior talent, has limits on his practice time and can't spend as much time with his coaches. One thing we do know would happen is he enters the league a year later, meaning it will take him longer to get to his second contract and likely cost him a high-salary year down the road. We also don't know that the league "loses" his rookie season. Perhaps he still puts up similar production to his rookie year after a second year in college and we're deprived of a season of Anthony Davis awesomeness. There's an assumption that staying in college means they're automatically going to keep improving, improve their stock and be more "ready" for the NBA. There are numerous examples that it's not always the case, especially among lottery pick type guys (Cody Zeller, Jared Sullinger, Perry Jones III, Isaiah Austin and James Michael McAdoo are a few recent examples). There's a progression; you have to improve moving up from high school to college and college to the pros. Once you're dominating in college, moving up is the next logical step. I also feel like people think guys would be a finished product if they just stayed an extra year or two when that's not the case. No matter how good guys are when they come into the league, they still get better with more experience. This rule affects a very small portion of college players, and most of them are talented enough to handle the next challenge. Someone like Davis or Okafor doesn't really have anything to gain by spending another year in college. The only party that definitively wins in that scenario is the NCAA, who already gets to not pay a guy to make them a bunch of money.

I really don't think the one-and-done rule is that big a deal in the grand scheme of things. The rule really only affects a dozen or so guys every year. IMO, it's the middle ground for each side. The NBA definitely suffers with high school guys (only 4 guys were "ready" by my definition: Lebron, KG, Amare and Dwight. Perhaps Durant, Oden and/or Davis would have been), and it's not remotely fair to force someone like Jahlil Okafor to stay another year so he can dominate overmatched college bigs.

Has anyone else tried anything from Pipeworks? I went a bit nuts trying their stuff the last few months. On the plus side, they make some solid beers and do a lot of interesting (or weird depending on your POV) stuff. The downside is I feel like I actually need to read the label on every one of their brews and god knows if you'll ever find the one you like again.

QUOTE (Jordan4life @ Dec 21, 2014 -> 10:12 AM) That and this pathetic (for now) hyped up 2014 class that underwhelmed in college and is doing even more so in the nba. There have been some injuries. But even with that, this class hasn't impressed at all. 2015 is looking pretty good, though. 4 of your top 6 college players are out (Embid, Parker, Randle and Gordon) and Smart missed time too. We knew Wiggins wasn't there yet and Exum was basically a high schooler. It's hard for a class to look good under those circumstances. 2015 looks interesting at the top, but there's not a lot of depth. Mudiay is the only interesting guard, the wings aren't nearly as talented as Parker and Wiggins, and the non-Okafor bigs will need some work.

Geez people, we know Kobe isn't Jordan. That's beside the point. It's not like people think Karl Malone is the 2nd best player ever. He's had an amazing career, he's a top-20 player ever and the #2 shooting guard ever (you could argue he's higher overall, and the only debate at the 2 is West, who was more of a combo guard).

Cooperstown is #1 on the list. Not only for the HOF, but I can stop at Ommegang, which is one of my favorite breweries! The Final Four is another big one. My Dad used to buy tickets from the lottery regularly, but would wuss out late and sell the tickets. I was never happy about that, especially when one of them was 2005, my senior year at Illinois. There are a ton of other ones I'd love to do as well. A lot of the college venues would probably be next (haven't really been to any of the famous ones other than ND on a non-game day way back). A Premier League game, all the baseball stadiums (only been to 5 active ones), and a World Cup knockout stage game would also be on there. I don't have nearly enough funds to do ALL of them though.

QUOTE (Brian @ Dec 7, 2014 -> 06:16 PM) Hard to disagree. Scrooged is the best Xmas movie. Die Hard.

QUOTE (Brian @ Dec 7, 2014 -> 05:21 PM) The worst Xmas song is Last Christmas by George Michael. There are a lot of good candidates. That one is up there. All I want for Christmas is You is pretty horrific. I also can't stand the Bruce Springsteen version of Santa Claus is Coming to Town (well, any version really, but especially that one).

QUOTE (KyYlE23 @ Dec 7, 2014 -> 09:51 AM) Rowand44 is portraying Scrooge in the Soxtalk production of A Christmas Carol. Shysocks will portray Marley They'll have to beat me out for that role, and I have quite a resume in that department.

QUOTE (Quinarvy @ Dec 7, 2014 -> 10:22 AM) I've had to avenge Zoom in Shadow of Mordor five times in the past 24 hours. Ha, I didn't even know you could do such a thing. I only played for like 2 hours. I keep running into large mobs on the way to missions and dying. Those two captains keep chasing me down and get the kill, think they went from like level 5 to 17.

QUOTE (witesoxfan @ Dec 6, 2014 -> 01:41 PM) So being the n00b I am, I started the Vault of Glass strike and figured it would go through the typical strike protocol where it finds guardians and yada yada and it did not. So, anyone interested in organizing a Soxtalk Vault of Glass strike? I'm up for it, though i'm not on as much as I used to be. Some advice... Don't try it with less than 6 people, especially since it's your first attempt. I did that my first few tries and it didn't go well. Because of that, try to schedule it when every has like 3 hours just to be safe. Mics help a lot. Most sections require coordination, so you're going to have a bad time without them. It'd be really helpful to have an experienced raider to run things. Unfortunately that's not me, I think i've only done the whole thing twice (I have nofFriends ) and I have little experience using the relic. Most of my friends haven't been on in a while, so I'm not going to be much help getting more people.

I love Kopp's, unfortunately there are only 3 and they're all in the Milwaukee area. Double cheese burger with the works. Only downside is it's a minor miracle if you don't need a triple bypass after finishing it, and you need to leave room for custard.

QUOTE (Buehrle>Wood @ Sep 25, 2014 -> 10:10 PM) And he plays f***ing Eli manning. I seriously could not get worse luck this year. Just absolutely unbelievable. Same thing happened to me.

For the higher level Destiny players: the Queen's Wrath event is a fairly easy way to get legendary gear. 1) Accept one of the Queen's bounties and complete it. 2) Select the new mission you get on the left of the main destination screen. It will be a random level 24 epic mission (wasn't THAT hard and I'm barely 24) and you get a legendary item. The one drawback is it sounds like you can get the same item several times.

QUOTE (bigruss22 @ Sep 22, 2014 -> 01:21 PM) I think the problem is that one of my friends is terrible, there have seriously been games where I get 100 kills, another friend gets 80, and he'll be at like 40. I just don't get that. It also hurts that two of my friends are blade dancers which suck in co-op but are great in PvP. I wouldn't worry about his kill count nearly as much as his death count. Reviving guys gets you killed. Having a defender or sunsinger would help, but is not crucial. I was a 23 voidwalker and he was a bladedancer. Both are squishy damage dealers. The key for me was blinking out if I got mobbed.

QUOTE (bigruss22 @ Sep 22, 2014 -> 11:27 AM) So anybody doing one of the cults? My friends and I decided to go for New Monarchy (I originally started Future War but they wanted to do NM). A bit frustrating that it takes so long to level up in those but probably a good thing to keep it interesting. You should really get at least vanguard 2 first (which takes forever), the cult rep replaces vanguard rep. Sort of related: I should have a good old time grabbing loot this week. Nearly crucible rank 2 so I can buy s***, up to 10 coins and like 20 motes for Zur, and you can keep getting stuff from the cryptarch after level 3. Cave farming helps with that.

QUOTE (bigruss22 @ Sep 21, 2014 -> 09:43 PM) It really is. I just wish I had a stronger guy (at lvl 23 right now) so I could do the raids/heroic weekly strikes. Right now we just get s***ted on in them. Heroic should be doable with at least one other high level guy. I did it with a 24 Hunter, should be easier if you get 2, especially if one is a defender titan.

QUOTE (GoSox05 @ Sep 17, 2014 -> 04:35 PM) I was watching some footage of people playing Vault of Glass. It looks crazy, it's hard to even tell what is going on. I know it takes a few hours to beat. Actually I just read it took the first team to beat this ten hours. Ten! Yeah, I think I read that the team combined for over 1600 deaths too.

QUOTE (bigruss22 @ Sep 16, 2014 -> 10:50 PM) Yea the story was lackluster, we discussed it briefly last night, but it could've been so much more. It wasn't bad, just wasn't really developed. However, it set itself up really nice for strike missions, and that's really what the game is about. Super smooth gameplay with difficult but not impossible co-op missions. And I love that, there should be a ton of DC material coming out to keep the game alive and the multiplayer is pretty great (but seriously, can they ban shotguns from all PvP shooters). It's pretty much all auto rifles and shotguns in multiplayer. What's funny is they already buffed hand cannons and pulse rifles from the beta. I heard the Vault of Glass raid is insane. It'll be a while before I hit 26 unfortunately at this rate.