Open Game Thread #82: Bulls vs Toronto Raptors

We meeting for the draft again?

with a new & better coach (than boylan) things should get a lot better, quickly, for the bulls next year.

http://blogs.chicagosports.chicagotribune.com/fullcourtpress/2008/04/no-noah.html

Gimmie a fucking break.  The guy was going to a funeral for a close friend out of town.  If he had said he was too emotionally distraught to play tonight, probably no one would have even questioned him.  But he tries to come back and play in a meaningless game, but since he was late, he gets benched.  Fuck you, Jim Boylan.  I hope you enjoy fetching coffee for Scott Skiles next year.

The crowd was small, alternating between desperate enthusiasm and restless apathy.

When the shot-clock malfunctioned, there was a protracted period of time during which various members of the crowd performed 1980's robot dances to such timeless classics as "Bust a Move." Even the players were watching the jumbotron and laughing.

Tyrus spent most the night chatting with a few fans in the court-side seats, whom I presume he knew. At one point, after his resounding put-back dunk, he even glanced over at them and did a little shimmy.

It was nice to see Tyrus finish the season on a high note, even in a meaningless game. I don't know if I'll ever see him again in a Bulls uniform again. He deserves to be on a team which values his development and his talents, not one that believes he is a back-up to a fat guy with a beard.

They interviewed Tyrus on the floor after the game and tried to extract a promise about next season. He said, "All I can promise is that next year we'll be back where we belong."

Which made me wonder, where do the Bulls belong? The answer to that question depends in large part upon Paxson. If he continues to manage in the myopic, paternalistic manner that has become his unfortunate modus operandi, concerning himself more with the off-court character of his team that the on-court exploits, then the Bulls deserve to languish forever in mediocrity. If he has the temerity to play the team he drafted, perhaps the Bulls belong in the playoffs.

I stood for quite some time in the arena after the game ended, trying to memorize the look and feel of the sprawling cavern: the ushers in their black uniforms, the electric halo of red scoreboard graphics, the lattice of cables, the mammoth corrugated steel plates that surround the ventillation louvers, the Lovabulls hugging their goodbyes, the angry Bull staring up from mid-court, Jordan and Pippin and Love and Sloan and Jackson and even Kraus, the championship banners moving sluggishly in the rafters. I'll hold those things in my mind until October, to tide me over, along with the undying hope that next season will be THE season, the return to glory.  

One final note. You can call this a meaningless game but Tyrus's drilling of those long range jumpers was a great way to show Paxson he would be a fool to trade away this young talent with so  much potential.  He may have cemented his future with the Bulls in the past few games and I believe will play a significant role in what I predict will  be a Bulls turnaround next year.

If the biggest positive event of the year takes place tomorrow, the ultimate addition by subtraction improvement, even bigger than the trading of the corpse....which of course is the demise of Boylan, things will immediately be looking up.  The light at the end of the tunnel can be seen once again and I can drop my sign in name  forever.  I wish Jim well and with the resume he has padded during his tenure, I see a very great possibility he could become an assistant manager at one of the local Dunking Donut emporiums in no time, in spite of his  ethnicity.

So Matt, will we have to rework our profiles, or start over with the change of the website, or will the transition be almost flawless.