Balta1701

QUOTE (TheBigHurt @ Sep 23, 2010 -> 05:35 PM) KW has been "tweaking" the roster for years without (being able to?) addressing some of the biggest holes in the team and signing old guys to try and hope they relive their glory days with us. That doesn't work very well. Aside from CF (and the failure of Anderson) can you name a single position that has remained a gaping hole over a period of multiple years that hasn't been solved, even temporarily?

QUOTE (jasonxctf @ Sep 23, 2010 -> 03:31 PM) Not sure if its the same thing or not, but adding a child to my individual plan at BCBS was going to cost $1,700 per year. My plan costs $2,400 per year including Dental. Adding a single person to a plan costs significantly less than a plan for just 1 person in most cases.

QUOTE (TheBigHurt @ Sep 23, 2010 -> 03:56 PM) Um, CLEARLY it's nowhere NEAR as simple as that. Well...honestly, it could be. This team was competitive for most of the year as it was. Rolling the dice again with some slight tweaks might well put it over the top. That said...KW doesn't do "small tweaks" in the offseason.

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Sep 23, 2010 -> 05:22 PM) Defensively? Hell no. Yount , Trammel, Ripken... those guys were not at Ozzie's level with the glove. Ripken? He won the 2 gold gloves right after Ozzie won his...and was only stopped from winning more by the reign of golden terror promulgated by one Omar Vizquel.

QUOTE (TheBigHurt @ Sep 23, 2010 -> 05:09 PM) Oh, I agree... I'm just saying that's not the way it always turned out. Look what KW said directly to the media about Frank. Whether it's just Ozzie or KW actually fires back, I'd be genuinely surprised if Ozzie doesn't fire venom at KW and the organization if he gets canned after this season. I think it's obvious Ozzie can be hotheaded enough to do such a thing despite looking for a job elsewhere. Yeah...but with Frank, no one's going to really care if he rips the team or if the team rips him. If you're a free agent looking at a team...and the Sox offer you the best contract/best place to play combo, you're going to the Sox. Conversely, if you're a hitter and you can still hit, even if you ripped your last GM, someone's going to hire you to hit. But if you're a managerial candidate and you just ripped your last GM...there are other managerial options. I think Ozzie could well decide to go off on the team...but that would tell me he's not nearly as "Street smart" as he's been played off to be, because that could easily be a ticket to being someone else's 1st base coach for the rest of his career.

QUOTE (TheBigHurt @ Sep 23, 2010 -> 04:21 PM) Even though I generally like the warm part of Ozzie's personality, I can almost guarantee you if he gets fired, the venom fired between KW and Frank will look like child's play in comparison. Well...worth thinking about...a manager and his former GM ripping each other in public is going to hurt their chances of finding a new job a lot more than a player and a GM ripping each other. Managers and GM's are supposed to keep their mouths shut and look out for their bosses and players. If you were a GM and you saw Ozzie get fired and then go off ripping KW to pieces...would you have any urge to hire that man yourself, so that he could air all of your dirty laundry in the future?

QUOTE (Soxbadger @ Sep 23, 2010 -> 02:52 PM) With a core of Boozer, Melo and Rose, the Bulls will be able to grab guys with MLE, etc to play a defensive center position. And if Noah wont sign, he isnt really the team player everyone is making him out to be. If he wants to be a Bull, sign the contract and end the talk of being traded. This of course assumes that things like the veterans exemption, Bird rights, and the MLE actually do survive the CBA renegotiation. Just for scale while we're talking about replacing Noah with the MLE...Brad Miller got the full MLE ($5 million) for 3 years (3/$15) from the Rockets. So...the level of center you're talking about for the MLE on the FA market...is someone like Brad Miller. I'm not going to say it can't be done and I'm not going to say that moving Noah is the wrong move...but replacing Noah with a MLE level Center would be a substantial downgrade in the current market.

QUOTE (Iwritecode @ Sep 23, 2010 -> 02:45 PM) Kids have tons of required shots from the day they are born through high school. I'm not sure that many people would go without insurance until the kid actually gets sick. Have you noted what the cost of an actual insurance policy for a child in the individual market? You're talking about several thousand dollars, maybe over 10k if the child is in a high risk group. The cost of those shots would pale in comparison to the several thousand dollars you could pocket.

QUOTE (Soxbadger @ Sep 23, 2010 -> 02:24 PM) And by customers you mean 31 million who they will gladly charge premiums one day, while the next day they try to deny every claim the customer submits. In theory we've banned that too. In practice...we'll see.

QUOTE (ZoomSlowik @ Sep 23, 2010 -> 02:10 PM) If someone could somehow convince owners/GM's that maybe 10 players are really worth max money, not all big men with a pulse are worth $10 mil, and that just because you have a $6 mil MLE doesn't mean you have to give all of it to a marginal starter/bench player, the system would be fine. Unfortunately, I don't know how one would do that. It's not just convincing them that they're not worth it...it's convincing them that they can win without it. And the reality is...they can't. If the Bulls let Noah walk for nothing in 2 years...they're not replacing his production cheaply. If the Bulls trade Noah before he becomes a FA, they're not likely to replace him cheaply. If the Bulls trade Deng for salary cap relief, they're not going to find a SF as good as Deng for less money.

I think it's pretty much mandatory that you have to laugh at that.

QUOTE (ZoomSlowik @ Sep 23, 2010 -> 01:48 PM) That line of thinking is exactly why there is likely to be a lockout. Teams would rather grossly overpay decent but not stellar players like Joe Johnson, Rudy Gay or Andre Iguodala than drop from mediocre to bad. It's even worse in the east because if you're even close to .500 you're in competition for the playoffs. Just look at teams like the Blazers, Sonics/Thunder or Bucks, they shed expensive contracts like Wallace, Randolph, Allen, Lewis, Jefferson and Villanueva and are in better shape now than they were before. But inept GM's and owners keep signing expensive vets chasing wins even if they aren't remotely close to contending. You're 100% right...this is the key problem that will drive the lockout...over-competitition and therefore over-pricing of role players. Hell, you could easily argue that Boozer's contrat is the same way. At least IMO, the only way around it will be NFL style, partially-guaranteed contracts, but I'm open to better ideas if others have them. Either way...I'd hate to set up the team with the idea it's going to be competitive for 1 year and then start letting people go post lockout because of money.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Sep 23, 2010 -> 11:10 AM) Which is exactly the plan. This is why these kind of provisions are the first coming on-line. They want to drive the private companies out of business so that they can step in as the government. Obama knew public opinion couldn't do it all at once, so they instead made sure they would do it in steps, demonizing all of the way, just like anything else the Democrats want to control. I think it's worth pointing out that the Republican "Pledge to America" plan announced today includes these clauses about what they want to do with health care: If you'll note...some of the things that they want to do that I've noted here are the exact things which break the insurance companies and force everyone on to Meciare. You make pre-existing condition denial illegal without some sort of mandate to have insurance, you break the system. Same reason why you'd drop a child-only plan the moment they make pre-existing condition coverage for children mandatory; if a 2 year old gets sick, then you buy insurance, not before. While you may want to demonize the Democrats for this part...the Republicans want the exact same thing because it's hideous policy to not do so...they just are willing to pretend that it wouldn't kill the system entirely, while the ACA worked around that problem.

QUOTE (jasonxctf @ Sep 23, 2010 -> 12:18 PM) So the plan is, to keep the baby on my wife's until next year, (enrollment period) and then add her to mine to save the $. I'd just like to note...any system set up that requires decisions like this is inherently unstable, cost-ineffective, and bizarre. The ACA won't change that.

QUOTE (Steve9347 @ Sep 23, 2010 -> 12:45 PM) Argument is invalid, as the player who WILL be overpaid and a player who IS overpaid can be traded for a player you CAN'T overpay. Let alone, the argument there certainly cannot be referencing the Carmelo Anthony talk, because he's not a MLE player, and the Bulls don't have a MLE anyway. Actually the article was referencing more the "Dumping Deng to a team with cap space because his contract overpays him" talk more than the Anthony talk. At this point though I think it's correct. Once you get to a certain level in the NBA, you have 2 choices; either you overpay people to stay where you are, or you decide to let them walk or trade them and decline. At this point, overpaying someone by $2 million over what they might be worth in an ideal system isn't going to kill the Bulls. Hopefully...if the NBA owners have an ounce of functioning brain matter...they find a way to change this problem next CBA. This part of the system is what has rendered it impossible to both turn a profit and to run a competitive team for the long-term.

I don't have time to type my reply before a seminar but I want to leave with this point:

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Sep 23, 2010 -> 11:23 AM) http://www.denverpost.com/news/ci_16120503 http://www.latimes.com/health/la-fi-kids-h...,0,799167.story Just remember when people start screaming that the 25% rate increases are because of the ACA...they were proposing 25% rate increases before the bill passed. 25% rate increases every couple years has been the norm for the past 20 years.

QUOTE (since56 @ Sep 23, 2010 -> 09:26 AM) At least we would get a real pitching coach. Really, we're taking serious digs at Cooper now?

QUOTE (ChiSox_Sonix @ Sep 23, 2010 -> 09:16 AM) Hmm well i'll still give it a shot. A good premise/story to me is worth it even if the dialogue leaves something to be desired. At least initially. I'd say it reminded me a lot of "Justice", a brief series that ran on Fox a few years ago. Good setup, writing was too over the top. Conveniently, that was also a Bruckheimer legal production. And both starred Eamonn Walker as "the black guy".

QUOTE (nitetrain8601 @ Sep 22, 2010 -> 07:51 PM) From Wojo: http://sports.yahoo.com/nba/news;_ylt=AvxF...questions092210 I wonder if this means that the 5/$60 numbers are being leaked by Noah's side and not the Bulls' side. Even if they're far apart...I'll bet you that something gets done before the season. It just makes zero sense for Noah's side to do anything other than cave if it locks in a long-term deal with a raise for this season...prior to the looming lockout.

QUOTE (mr_genius @ Sep 22, 2010 -> 09:51 PM) Brady would appear to be opening a wide lead. It'll be interesting to see if he does indeed win, will he cut the state budget as much as he has proposed? What you're saying is...if I do get offered that job at SIU...make sure I get everything about money in writing. Gotcha. Still can't be worse than california.

QUOTE (IceCreamPants @ Sep 22, 2010 -> 11:44 PM) This is what is called Thread Homicide.

QUOTE (ChiSox_Sonix @ Sep 23, 2010 -> 08:52 AM) Anyone watch The Whole Truth? I missed it but have it DVR'd. Interested if it was any good or not Watched it because it had the guy from num3ers who I've met. The setup was cute, the dialogue was frankly...bad.