 What's the word, y'all? Here are two teams that I think might've been left behind by their competition. Before I even talk about those two teams, I do wanna say last year around the same time I dropped the video where I was saying that I think the goal to stay word is gonna be good, but I don't think they was gonna be good enough to win a championship. Obviously, I was completely wrong, and that's what the offseason is all about. Making predictions behind logic, of course, and inevitably, being wrong, and then talking about those wrong predictions a year later when people laugh at it. Because yeah, some people legitimately had that video saved and tweeted at me like minutes after the Warriors were raising the Larry O'Brien, which is like extreme level pettiness, but I understand it. If you believe that your team from the very beginning is one random dude, a microphone set, ain't not gonna be good enough, clip it and send it to him a year later, and these two teams might be able to do that. Because, well, at least one of these two teams I still believe could be title contenders, but actually, let's start over. The first team is the Chicago Bulls. Now, this is not the team that I said could be title contenders, because I think even everybody in Bulls Nation understands that the Bulls are not a title contending team. They're not structurally built to win 16 games, come playoff time, especially when you consider how stacked the Eastern Conference is. I do want to say that last year was the most fun I've had as a Bulls fan since 2011 when Derrick Rose was taking over the league and winning MVP. So I do want to say shout out to them for doing that, but now it's like we got to the point we made the playoffs, that was cool, but now we looking at it like, okay, what else can we do? Because we are the Chicago Bulls and at one point in time we were like this staple of NBA success. And since then, we ain't really had a lot of that now. A lot of that is due to the fact that LeBron James in the Eastern Conference for 14 years or whatever it was. But nowadays, the team has bought into this core, but I'm looking around the league and I'm like this roster, this roster. I'm taking that roster against the Bulls. This roster, this roster. I'm taking that roster against the Bulls. And it has me looking at my predictions for this NBA stands. We're like, man, are we gonna make the play in this year? Now there are a lot of things that scare me about this upcoming season. There's a lot of things to be optimistic about for sure, but let me go down to things that scare me quite a bit. The first one is the Lonzo Ball situation. Now, if you didn't know Lonzo Ball got injured around January of this last season and they were like, it's about to be a three week injury. And I think Bulls fans were pretty okay with that because we're gonna go into the All-Star break and after the All-Star break, Zo is gonna be back. We're gonna keep this momentum because if you didn't know around the All-Star break, the Bulls are like the one seed or two seed. Like we were really rad and hot. Even I think majority of us understood that. Anyway, he got injured. We were like, okay, he'll be back. And obviously he never came back. And just a few weeks ago, he was reported that we don't believe or they don't believe that he will be back for the start of this upcoming season, which is extremely, extremely scary. Now I know some people that know some people and some of those people said that that report is somewhat cap. So there is room for Lonzo Ball to come back for the beginning of the season, but I'm gonna take the report at face value and say he's not. And that is extremely scary for this current team and the future of this team. As we watched the Bulls last season, specifically in the first half, Lonzo was there. The defense was insane. And that was one of the main things that people were questioning when they looked at the Chicago Bulls roster. Lonzo, Ball, Zach Levine, DeMar DeRose, and Patrick Rooms, Rusevich, at least three out of those players, probably even four are negative defenders because Patrick Rooms was yelling. That's all I'm saying. How is this team gonna defend? And the answer was damn good when Lonzo was out there. That man was a man amongst boys on the defensive side of the ball. He was everywhere. He was a menace. And don't get me started when Alex Caruso was on the court with him. Nobody was scoring. They were locking your favorite players up. And then he got injured. And I slowly saw this team that was like ranked top 10 in defense, go down and down and down. And they got to the point where the last month and a half of the season, I mean, the Bulls were like so far in the take, they were like 25th in defense at that point. And it's not all about Lonzo Ball's injury, but it's a huge part of it. So if Zo is not coming back anytime soon, what does that leave us? Now I think the most optimistic of Bulls fans will listen to this Lonzo Ball part and be like, don't worry, Kenny, we got depth at that position that defense. Alex Caruso was great. I wouldn't have voted him all defensive team, but he disrupted so many plays, so many individual plays where he's like locking up legitimately for 20 seconds and causing a turnover or causing a miss shot. And then we all said to rookie, I would assume out of nowhere, Chicago's very own stepped in on the NBA court and decided to clamp up. Those are great positives, but they don't outweigh the negative that is the Lonzo Ball being out. We got to talk about DeMardo Rosa, man. Oh man, what an amazing season was to watch. Every single game in this year, I was amazed by DeMardo Rosa. First half of the season, Bro was basically averaging 28 points per game. Last year in San Antonio, he was at 21, not even really sniffing an all-star appearance. This year, all-star game starter, all NBA for the first time in some years, it was amazing. Bro hit a game winner on the last day of the calendar year in 2021 and then the very next night, January 1st, 2022, hit another game winner. Something that you're gonna be hearing about on NBA Jeopardy 40 years from now. The answer is DeMardo Rosa, don't forget. And then we get to the second half of the season where it not died down, that's a stretch, but it definitely slowly dipped a little bit. And for DeMardo Rosa, he did from an all-NBA player to an all-star player. It ain't like he turned into a bum because he was very, very far away from that, but we probably got the more realistic version of DeMardo Rosa. Now I'm not gonna be one to underestimate DeMardo because it seems like Bleach Report is doing that every single year for us, but I'm just saying what he did last season seems like it's gonna be hard to replicate. And I think the way this team is built right now, they kinda need him to replicate that plus another jump form from Zach Levine for us to really be in the core of where we wanna be. I mean, you gave up window card the first round pick to Yvusevich, you gave up a first round pick to DeSperse to get DeMardo Rosa. We put a lot of eggs in this core. And I ain't even talking about Yvusevich's down season. That scares me too. I'm Googling the NBA standings from this last season. And I'm gonna read you the teams that were below the Chicago Bulls. And we're gonna really determine if these teams got better what we should be scared for the Chicago Bulls. The Brooklyn Nets. There's so much going on in Brooklyn, but I will say on paper, they look better, especially if we gonna get Kyrie Irvin for a full season and whatever's left of Ben Simmons. The Lettahawks traded for Dijontag Murray. The Cleveland Cavaliers traded for Donovan Mitchell and didn't lose any core pieces. And then we got like the Charlotte Hornets, not really worried about Charlotte, but like the Knicks got better. The Wizards got better. And then you got those younger teams like Detroit and Orlando. I don't think we have to worry about them too much this upcoming season, but there are a few teams that were beneath the Bulls this season that undoubtedly got better while the Chicago Bulls kinda improved the depth a little bit. Andre Jama's on the teams. One of the better backup centers in all the basketball. And I think the front office might've known the Lonzo Ball News and they got the dragon to come in. That's cool. But those other teams got all star upgrades. And we did it. But here's the room for Optimism Bulls fans cause obviously I'm still rocking. You never catch a time while I'm not rocking with the Chicago Bulls. It is ingrained in my blood. It's tattooed on my leg. Optimism comes from Zach LaVie potentially being completely healthy this season. Anybody that had been keeping up with the Bulls last year knew that he was dealing with some hand injuries. He was dealing with some knee injuries and all of that stuff got fixed up this off season. So like we could see another explosion which is something I think that we would need in order for us to continue to be at this level or even higher. Vulsivic has such a down year that I could see both sides of the coin where people are like, man, Vulsivic is just trashed now. We's gotta wait for this contract to end and then it's over with. But I can also see the Optimism Bulls fan to be like, hey, this last season for him was bad and he will not be worse than that. I don't know really which one it is. I'm gonna be Optimism on this one. We're not gonna get the all star version of Vuchigan probably. We're gonna be better than what he did last year. And then we have the young guys. Ayodo Sumo, we got the young guys. Patrick Williams who look good in these off season runs. But something that scares me a little bit about the Chicago Bulls young core is like because we have Vulsivic, Zach Levine and DeMar DeRose, these are three people that in their mind are all star caliber players and one all star caliber shots. We might not be able to see the blossom that might be Patrick Williams because he'll always at the top of it be fourth in the pecking order, always. Unless this year he just blossoms so crazily that we like, oh snap, we gonna take four shots away from DeMar. We gonna take two shots away from Vuch. No, let's take six shots away from Vuch and two away from DeMar. It's unrealistic, I think, to see him take that type of jump. So he might be pigeonholed to be the fourth best player on the team and the fourth most impactful offensive player. Anyway, we'll see Vulsivic fans. I'm riding the dime, which y'all, you feel me? We gonna be there open the night hopefully and we'll be there in the playoffs once if we make it. Now this second team is on a whole different level. Right, the Chicago Bulls one is like, man, are we making the playoffs? This team undoubtedly is making the playoffs. There's no if ands and buts about it. But this team doesn't have playoff aspirations. This is a team that is trying to compete every single season. It's the Miami Heat. Hear me out, y'all. Again, there's logic behind this even if you disagree. Kind of similar to the Bulls in the sense that I look at the teams that are around them and be like, did this team get better? Yeah, they did. Did this team get better? Yeah, they did. Did this team get better? Yeah, they did. Did we get better? I think that us getting better is some people outperforming. I get memed a lot for saying the sentence, but it's a fact. I was listening to Zach Lowe's podcast with Chris Herron earlier today and he asked a question. He was talking about the Phoenix Suns, but he asked a question I think can be applied to a lot of different teams that are contenders but didn't win a championship. Is the improvement from your roster coming from the outside or the inside, right? Is this something that we gotta trade for somebody for or do we believe somebody on our roster is gonna help us fix the holes that were there for last season? But it's just still something missing about this roster when I look at it. Now, to every argument, there's a counter argument because I know there's some Heat fans out there typing, right now, Kenny, if Jimmy Butler hit that shot, what are we talking about? We're in the finals and we don't make this video. If Kyle Lowry don't get injured, then subsequently gets out of shape. What are we talking about? If Tyler Harrow doesn't get injured and only plays six minutes in game seven, what are we talking about? And all of those are very good counter points. But I still look at this team and look at what I saw in the conference finals last year and be like, something is missing. But this is a whole new season, y'all. And again, I'm looking at the teams around them. The Boston Celtics got better this season with this off season. I mean, on paper, of course, everything that we're talking about is on paper, right? Even with the Bull segment, it's on paper. Malcolm Brogdon comes in and he helps the team. Golanara was going to help the team get well soon. But that team, the team that beat you in seven, got better. The Marquis Bugs didn't get better per se, but they did get healthy. That's the idea is that their off season improvements is like Chris Middleton will be healthy. At least that's what we're guessing once we come play off time. But even that, I think that if Chris Middleton is healthy last season, they probably win the Eastern Conference. And then the Philadelphia 76ers who are also on this tier one want to come to Eastern Conference, got better. You lost PJ Tucker to them. That's a team you're going to have to go through again more than likely. Now, the Anthony Meldon might not have a great track record when it comes to playoff times, like legitimately. His numbers are staggeringly bad, but it's still an upgrade of some of the stuff that they were trying to play in the playoffs last year. So like the teams that are around you, this top tier Eastern Conference teams all got better. And what do we do as the Miami Heat? Brought back Victor Lodipo. And if Victor Lodipo could be as good as he think he could be, then all of this don't even matter because he answers so many questions. But realistically, it probably is not the case. The answer is, is Cal Lauri gets back in shape and he looked good in the picture that I saw this off season, but he's still like 38 years old or something like that. Is Tyler Hero trying to improve his game well around his game? Is Bama DeBio realize that, hey, in that game seven, I was kind of doing my thing. I need to do that in game one through six, two. But can we get all of those things to work together for us to legitimately win a championship this year? And I think it's hard to say yes to that. And Jimmy Butler got dreads now. I don't know, bro. There's something about it. Something's off about it. Something's off about it. Something's off about it. I ain't dread it up. I ain't locked my hair. But this is years of growth, Jimmy. I've been working on this for years. You just come in and get a hairstyle and you'll hear low in the mouth. No, man. No, man, you got to really put that work in. And I look at that starting lineup and it's like there's missing something that like the four position, right? And people are speculating it's going to be Kayla Mard. I'm making this video now. Watch Kayla Mard once most improved player or something in, you know, the Miami, he did it again. But they're definitely lacking in that spot. I read somewhere that Heyward Heismith is going to get some run at the four. Don't know much about him because he played spot minutes last season. But again, I think that when I compare their roster to the other three rosters of the top tier Eastern Conference team, there's a lot to be desired. Luckily for them, they have Jimmy Butler. Boys, a goddamn dog, especially come playoff time. He's a goddamn dog. Forget about the Buck series from a couple of seasons ago. Other than that, he's been a dog in the playoffs. Stupidly locked in. I understand it, Jimmy. I understand. Stupidly locked in before and it lost a Valorant match 13 to 6. Like that was me too, Jimmy. Either way, hopefully this is the anti-jinks. So both of those teams be successful because one of those teams is mine. You feel me?