33 Comments

Draymond's out for "conditioning." I thought one of his favorite workouts was Natural Movements against European centers.

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Jan 15Liked by your friendly BullsBlogger

Natural Movements is the name of my new probiotic line.

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Jan 12Liked by your friendly BullsBlogger

I nominate Sean Kilpatrick.

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Jan 12Liked by your friendly BullsBlogger

The Ring of Honor just feels like another excuse to remind fans of the success the Bulls had in the '90s and to distract them from the state of the franchise since then. It's been almost 4 years since The Last Dance so it's about time.

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They gotta remind people that Bulls were relevant in the last century

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I also nominate the '85 Bears

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Jan 12Liked by your friendly BullsBlogger

while concocting my john-salmons-for-the-ring-of-honor bit i was reminded that joe alexander was also on that team. so i’m going with him instead.

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Jan 13·edited Jan 13

Didn't he set some kind of record for being the highest drafted player who didn't even get the 3rd year option of his rookie contract picked up? Like that option is picked up before your 2nd season begins. That's how bad he was. He was taken 8th! There were probably a few like Jay Williams due to catastrophic injury but even in those cases it's usually worth it to keep a guy around.

Edit: I just found out he has a youtube channel where he makes videos for literally hundreds of people giving (dead serious) advice like "don't ask your teammates any questions or they will know you're not a leader":

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cIFE_QTUnCs

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Jan 12Liked by your friendly BullsBlogger

Rasaul Butler sneaks into the blogabull ring of honor. I ironically nominate Jannero Pargo.

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Can never have too many Pargos.

J

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Jan 13Liked by your friendly BullsBlogger

"Honor"? I hardly knew her!

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oh man the Ring of Honor ceremony sure turned out hilarious. It's sad to think long-time loser dipshits can't hastily conceive a contrived money-grabbing event anymore without it turning embarrassing

and then you have the people working for the Bulls out there scolding. some of 'Bulls Twitter' also out there scolding, I don't get their motivation though

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why Mikey Reinsdorf didn't sell the team to the widow Krause right then and there out of dishonor I'll never understand

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I think the people who draw a paycheck from the org or its affiliates are scolding because they know the 'dorfs want them to do so. The 'dorfs can't be made to look ridiculous, and running Krause's widow out there in front of a bunch of Bulls fans and expecting them to cheer that particular guy's memory was a truly ridiculous decision.

It's okay for Phil and Michael et. al. to trash the shit out of the guy but the people who pay for the product are supposed to consume it silently and without opinion.

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I mentioned this in the game thread, but the forensics of this seem pretty clear.

1. I was at home, so I don't know why everyone employed by the team is scolding me or anyone watching at home. We weren't there, we didn't do anything.

2. I think what people saw in the stadium was very different than what we saw at home. Every time the camera pulled back, you saw that people were reacting not to the person on the court, but to the Jumbotron showing flashy graphics of the person being honored. The people themselves were little dots in chairs on the court who were shown on the Jumbotron after the flashy graphics and the name was announced. People were reacting to the jumbotron of Krause, not his widow, who was only shown, it seems, after the booing started.

3. Jerry Reinsdorf is boo'd on his own court to the point where he doesn't often make an appearance (he didn't last night. I wonder why?) Krause was boo'd during the "banner raising" as well as the post-firing "Jerry Krause night" (again, as I said in the game thread, this is a lot to do for an executive, other teams don't do all this despite having considerably more renowned executives). This was predictable and I'm astounded that the Bulls didn't anticipate and didn't think through how the presentation went. It would have been fairly simple to change this. For people who have passed away: "Representing his late father Tex Winter is (Tex Winter's son, I didn't catch his name). Tex was the architect of the Bulls' Triangle offense and blah blah blah." And hand them a bauble. There, you've defused the situation.

4. Holding this thing when you don't have a locked-in confirmation (complete with appearance fee if that's what it takes) from Michael Fucking Jordan, Scottie Fucking Pippen and Dennis Fucking Rodman (regardless of his intention) is just bush league. Clearly they really did plan this just six weeks ago, probably to get a sell-out during what was looking like a shitty season. I wrote in the discord that it looked like it was organized by the person who put together the office Christmas party... probably because it was.

The Reinsdorfs fell ass-backward into the greatest player of all time and still don't know what to do with it. It's amazing to think about.

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hey, and give the widow a heads-up, maybe she has a thick skin and would have smiled and waved at the boos, then would've gotten cheers

obviously they did half-ass this. If they put in more effort but still knew Jordan and Pippen weren't coming, then could adjust, because THEY ALREADY HAVE BANNERS. Krause has a fucking banner, as an executive? Why do we have to all respect and honor him again? Just induct them in absentia and show the banners on the jumbotron. Krause's gets booed, you move on to where it's not Stacey King saying "OH THE HUMANITY"

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Jan 14Liked by your friendly BullsBlogger

I was at the game and you have it exactly right. Although people were seated on the court, nobody knew who Krause's widow was. They put his pic on the screen and people started booing. I can't believe they cut to her as she was crying, but once they did people mostly stopped booing and many cheered. I was also at the Krause banner raising and that was another boo-fest. This was 100% predictable.

I'm not even sure that people were booing Krause because of their memory of him as much as he was the villain in The Last Dance. If anything, blame MJ and Phil for relentlessly trashing Krause-- including in the biggest sports documentary of all time. If MJ publicly said that he's moved on from his beef with Krause, most fans would move on, too.

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I hate the Krause hate. The man had good moments as GM (absolutely nailed the '87 draft, brought in Kukoc, brought in Rodman when he was radioactive) and bad ones (using a high pick on Stacey King, all of the other Jordan cannon fodder, dismantling the dynasty). And, if we are going to be perfectly honest, dismantling the dynasty and rebuilding was not the worst idea. That team was never going to win again. The entire point of that documentary was that they had nothing left.

The reality is exactly what you said. Two of the biggest trash talkers in NBA history labeled him a persona non grata and that was that (and I really hate Jackson's holier than thou Zen thing). The reality was that he was a slightly above average GM as far as these things go who was a bit heavy and maybe easy to hate. Get over it people.

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Jan 16·edited Jan 16

I agree with this 99%. The 1% is that Krause certainly brought a bunch of it on himself. Xmas Eve 2001, a bunch of reporters are told to drive to Deerfield in a blizzard for an urgent press conference. They have no idea what's going on. Krause walks in, thrusts his finger in the air and yells "YOU CAN WIPE THAT SMIRK OFF YOUR FACE, MARIOTTI" to the irritating in his own right reporter in the back of the room. No Phil, Jordan was in Washington. He would later insinuate Mariotti's use of "the Jerrys" to refer to him and Reinsdorf was an anti-Semitic slur.

Floyd for his part released a statement thanking everyone (and calling Reinsdorf a "misunderstood" but great owner) except Krause, who he pointedly didn't mention at all.

You're not going to get much flak for hating Jay Mariotti but to lead off a press conference where you either just fired or your handpicked disciple just resigned on Christmas Eve by acting like a goofy tough guy (in a sported of, it should be stated, actually physically dangerous people) was just surreal. We saw some shit here under GarPax, but nothing like that. Pax was smart enough to keep it off camera when he choked out his coach or ranted about Van Gundy.

So Krause being a polarizing figure is not surprising because that's just who he was, those guys didn't help but if they were shot in a rocket to Mars and never said another word, Krause would still be a figure that, as the pundits like to say, "provokes diverse opinions."

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Yeah, don't get me wrong. By all indications, he was a weird dude with a bit of an inferiority complex. But in hindsight, he built two championship teams around MJ and Scottie and in the balance should probably be viewed with ambivalence at worst. Admired for his scouting, pitied for whatever his issues were and disliked for letting a bit of power get to his head. But to actively detest him now tells me people like to pile on and are buying everything that MJ and Phil have to say.

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right, I get why Stacey King and KC Johnson were so upset

but why the chuggo guys, including MK from Australia with some totally pretentiously moronic takes? this popped up in the dreaded algorithm, some of the dumbest shit I've seen https://twitter.com/mkhoops/status/1746279421131227630

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> If we can’t honour the dynasty without trashing Krause, then we can’t honour the dynasty.

Maybe the most chuckleheaded fanjob bullshit I've ever read. I hope he starts writing about baseball, he seems like one of those guys who just wants to touch the ivy and have a good cry.

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i hope he doesn't start writing about statues of confederate generals

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B R U T A L I T Y

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the upcoming BlogABull ring of honor ceremony will do it right.

Ronnie Brewer, Marco Belinelli, Tyrus Thomas all committed to attend. Chris Duhon will be booed, but IN PERSON

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Jan 13Liked by your friendly BullsBlogger

Can't wait to see this baby on a big screen!

https://i.imgur.com/iwmoMfe.gif

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#neverforget

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Jan 14Liked by your friendly BullsBlogger

Chris Douglas-Roberts will be talked about as a possible attendee, but not actually attend.

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Marshon Brooks is there for some reason.

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