 What's the word, y'all? Welcome to a series that I've been trying to do for like two years now. It's finally happening. Though it is fun to just talk hoops about myself, I wanted to give other people voices. So what I did is I found 30 prominent fans of 30 NBA organizations. I'm gonna bring them on one by one to talk about their favorite team. Because listen, I'm a die hard basketball fan, but I'm not completely locked in to all fan bases. So this is a way for me to learn a little bit more and we're also talk hoops. And I think it's just right to start off with my Chicago Bulls, right? I mean, there's so much to say after last season, expect taste for this season. Why the heck did they not spend the money? I don't really know. But I decided to invite my friend Rusty Buckets onto the show. Oh no, one last thing. I need a name. I need a name for the series. 30 for 30 is taken if you didn't know. 30 for 30 is such a fire name. It can't be that. So I'm here for different ideas. Anyway, let's just talk about the Bulls. I am now joined by Jacob, AKA Rusty Buckets, another Bulls fan. It just felt right to bring you on to the show for the first episode. I don't think you understand how difficult it is to find 30 NBA fans to schedule and have everybody come on. So I appreciate you. You're the first one. So you should feel honored. Luckily, there's no problem with Bulls fans. There's plenty of us everywhere. Everywhere. Like I asked the people in the comment section, who do you want to see? It was you. Korazemba. No, actually, I don't know if I saw Korazemba's name. I don't know how public it is that Korazemba is a Bulls fan. I don't know. I feel honored that I was the one that was picked, though, because there's plenty of options for that fan base. And I'm sure Connor is going to get OKC, because who the? Why are you spoiling my show? You're spoiling my show. But no, definitely. Connor's OKC. I got some prominent names in the community, representing teams. I'm excited. I'm wearing my only Chicago shirt that I own, because I'm the polar opposite of you when it comes to NBA merch. I don't wear any NBA shirts. See, that's yeah. That's definitely how me and you are different. And I decided not to wear, because I felt like it would have been too normal for me to wear it. But I have the calves on later, and I have a sexland shirt that I have to wear for the calves. Yeah, I have to wear. Let's talk about our Bulls, man, because last season, a lot of ups and downs, a big rollercoaster of emotions between the organization and us fans. We start off so great, even at the All-Star Break, we were sitting at, like, tied for the one-seat out east. We fall all the way down to six. We luckily take a game for the Milwaukee Bucks in the first round. But ultimately, we fall completely short of the expectations that we brought upon ourselves a couple of months into the season, man. Yeah, that was actually painful to hear it recap. Yeah. You know, when people joke, like, ah, my basketball team or my team's success determines my mental health, I could literally feel a direct correlation. When the Bulls were kicking asses, like, I could not be happier than I am right now. And then the calendar year turned. And after, like, January 9th, they just went on, like, a huge losing streak. And I remember, like, I want to die. I was so depressed during that stretch of time. Like, and in my theory, because everybody blames that I'm injuries, which was a huge factor. But my theory was, even when everybody was starting to come back, because eventually everybody but Lonzo was back on the roster. And Lonzo's important, but I don't think Lonzo is the difference between us being a 60-win team and a 40-win team, you know? The difference was our identity early on in the season. That got lost when everyone got hurt. When they came back, what they were doing as a team, their chemistry, and all of that, wasn't there when everyone came back from injuries. And it just became an accumulation of talent and not a team. Now, there were moments in that book series, especially in that, I believe, was game two that they won, even though we should have won game one as well. Oh, man, do you remember? I remember us winning game two, and I had flashbacks of us being up 2-0 on the Boston Celtics in the Rondo year, thinking that, like, we should have been up, because game one was close. It was a dog fight. It was terrible, but it was so close, and we should have closed it out. And we were making a ton of mistakes. Yeah. It was an ugly series in general. We shot, like, 20% from three as a team. You know, it was really, really, really bad. Also, I should preface, I try not to do the we thing when I'm alone, but when I'm with another Bulls fan, I'm saying we all fucking day. You know what, I can agree with that, man, because, like, some people will make the jokes of, like, oh, you can't talk because you're a Bulls fan, you know, when you're having a higher-level conversations. And I always say, I'm not on the team, so it doesn't matter. But when we're talking, like, casually like this, it's definitely a we. It's 100% a we. That was my thing, and my whole hope is that, like, even Lonzo or no Lonzo to open the year, like, a training camp that's just kind of a repeat of last year, hopefully, like, I don't need the Bulls to be championship contenders, but I think it'd be a 50-win second round competitive team. I'm really happy with that. And to see them be, like, I think they were that level of team to open the year, and then they weren't, that was really sad to me. So I would like to see, I really think that was the difference maker, was the heart of the team died with everybody going down. The thing about last season is what, like, I came in with expectations of being a playoff team. You don't trade all those picks, plus a young player, to get boots, and you don't, you know, give up all of that to get the Marta Rose without thinking you're going to be a playoff team. But I thought that was like, I'm going to be our ceiling four to 60. I guess that was true, because we fell at number six. But throughout the course of the season, they started to make me believers that something real was happening. And we would go onto the pod, and I would try to, like, say, like, nah, you know, it's just bad competition. You know, strength of schedule has been bad. And then, like, there was the one game against the Lakers and Staples, or I guess Crypto Dot, whatever. And they ran the Lakers. And at this point, just before, we knew that the Lakers were terrible. We fought the Lakers for good. We were like, yo, we fucked up on the Lakers. Exactly. Lonzo hit, like, seven three-pointers. I'm like, oh, we might actually be good. And then the change happened. He hit that game winner on the Nets. We made a 40-point comeback on the Celtics for the Celtics for the Celtics. It was a good half of a season. That 40-point game, that 40-point comeback on the Celtics is the best Bulls basketball game that I've ever watched. I made a whole video of, like, man, the Celtics are in trouble, aren't they? And hit AR going to the NBA Finals a couple months later. People made jokes, and I completely agree. Like, the Bulls and Celtics just swaps places. Like, obviously, the Celtics had a higher ceiling than the Bulls. But, like, they sucked to open the year, and they were great to close, and we were great to open, and sucked to close the year. It was very simple. So we had those, and the Cavaliers had that as well, where they started off so great. Theirs were so heavily injury, though. ours a little bit of both and some other stuff. They were so injury. And then for them, the team that took them over was the Raptors. The Raptors won on a big streak on the second half of the season. But let's talk about this offseason, because, you know, it was a small one, I guess we can say. They hit the middle of exception that they didn't use all of it. I can only tweak the Kevin Durant, Tony Kukot's picture so many times before I start to realize it's not going to happen. So how do you feel about this offseason? A signing drumming, signing Drogic, and re-signing Zach Levine. That's like our entire offseason. And Daylan Terry's on the roster now. Well, I will say, first of all, I was like the entire year, like it makes zero sense for Zach Levine to leave the Bulls, please shut up. And I was very vindicated for that to be exactly the case. He didn't talk to another NBA team. I was like, you guys spent all this time with this bullshit. And I knew he was going to be back. And that had nothing to do with me being a fan. If I was a fan of another team, I knew he was going to be back. Like there's no way a team commits to Zach Levine to the degree that the Bulls do. And then he just doesn't come back. He'd have to be like the biggest asshole on the planet. Which I've heard some, I've never personally met Zach, but I've heard some things about him personality wise. I don't know how true they are. Oh no, is it bad things? They are suspect. But again, they're like other people's accounts with him. I've never, I can't confirm or deny that they're true. And actually, since they're telling me this, I don't even want to confirm or deny it because I've been rooting for the guy for five years now. Now, so if he's a jerk, it's going to, it's going to suck. I met DeMarta Rosen at Las Vegas Summer League. I mean, Michael Jordan was a jerk. But, good point, good point. He was Michael Jordan. But I met DeMarta Rosen at Summer League and he was like the coolest, nicest dude of all time. So it was like, no matter what, he's got a fan. If I meet Zach and he's kind of a jerk, I'll still be a fan, but it would just be a fan of the basketball player, not so much the person. Either way, off season. And I tell you an awkward experience. I had a summer league that kind of relates to that. Of course. I didn't get back to that. I saw AK and I tried to get a photo with him. And apparently it was the wrong time to ask if some guy pulled me aside as like Navro, no photos. And the AK just gave me a dirty look. I was like, ah. I was on the flight with Mark Eversley on the way to Summer League. And what he did, he's, he got off the flight. He went right down to Vegas and like an hour later, they tweeted the picture of them in Vegas when Zach Levine signing his official contract. I was there. I was there for it. In my mind, I was there. No, but that's, that's, that was like the, not nightmare, but I was like, that guy's only, if he ever thinks of me, he's just gonna be like, that fucking guy trying to take a photo with me. I'm like, I'm sorry. I want to be like, man, why don't you use the fucking mid-level exception? Anyways. Really, really though. That's the real conversation we should be having because they invested so much, right? First round pick equity, Wendell Carter and another pick to the Spurs to get to Marta Rosen. They were building this team around Zach Levine and we saw what the ceiling might be. You know, I think that organizations and players see things a lot differently than us as fans. Like me and you can say, oh, that wasn't sustainable, but in their minds, absolutely it was. So why don't we go balls to the wall and spend all this money to make the team better? I think, I think it is one of the biggest front office red flags in the world when you're pretty good and your team doesn't use, doesn't go into the luxury tax. Because that tells me they A, no, they're not like that. And B, are not going to be willing to spend the money to be like that. Like, often mid-level exception is not gonna be the difference between being a championship team or not. But I understand, to my understanding, that mid-level was like, we like skeetered the line of like $2 million between paying the luxury tax or not. And like, if you're that afraid of paying the luxury tax, I really worry about the franchise like prioritizing money over winning. I mean, that's been a real thing for the Reinders family across basketball, across baseball, with the White Sox. They just don't like spending a ton of money. Real Robert Sarver-esque decision. Exactly, exactly. Without the recent team's success. This next season is very interesting to me because like we mentioned, there were some red flags about last season that I could see potentially carrying on the biggest one being Lonzo Ball. He hasn't played basketball in a very long time and any time anybody's asked about it, they just hope that he's ready for training camp. And that just feels so very far away. They cannot give us a clear answer on him at all. And like you mentioned earlier, he is such a big connector to what we do. He was the guy that can help us in the half-court and help us run. Because without him, the offense in the full court was about average, but he's one of the best playmaking passers in fast break play in all of basketball. I mean, if you think about what our identity was early season, it was running the floor unselfishly, like throwing full court passes and shit that happened all the time. Perimeter defense, specifically ones that forced a lot of turnovers. Like we were one of the highest break teams in the league, partially because our defense caused it. Forcing turnovers, starting breaks, throwing passes, that's like everything that Lonzo does. And then our biggest weakness by far and something I hoped we would address a lot more than we did this off-season, three-point shooting. Yes. Lonzo Ball is one of the best three-point shooters in the NBA. He didn't play for the second half of the year. And our best shooter after that was, who even was that? Zach Levine? Zach Levine, yeah. But he was also playing injured. So he was the most inconsistent player in the world at that point. Like our three-point shooting took a huge hit when he was gone. And I was really hoping we would get some more shooting this off-season that did not happen. It felt like they were going to be on the phone for a lot of different trades. Just with so many people being out there available, it just felt like something bigger was going to happen. I'm not thinking Kevin Durant realistically, but just adding another good rotational player. I really, really wanted Duncan Robinson, Joe Harris, or Seth Curry, one of those three. I mean, that would help, right? We were dead last in three-point attempts on the entire season. Part of that is because our star player is DeMar DeRosen. And you know, DeMar DeRosen doesn't attempt three points unless he absolutely has to to win a basketball game. So we very much struggled there, and we saw once we got to the playoffs, the Milwaukee Bucks were allowing us to shoot threes, and we still weren't doing it. They were giving us the three-point shot, and nobody felt comfortable enough to take the shots. And that also hurt that Mavooch, his three ball, fell off the cliff. Fell off the cliff. And I think that's another thing that's on my docket here. Can we see a Vucevich redemption? When we traded for him, he was coming off a career year. And even in the moment, I think a lot of people looked at what he was doing, and we were like, ah, that's probably not really who he is, because he was having an amazing season when we traded for him. He was shooting amazing from the three, offensively he was a powerhouse. The 20 games or so, like 25 games that he played when he was traded for us at the deadline was like, oh yeah, we're making the playoffs next year just because of this guy alone. And then this season comes around. And a lot of the things that I really liked about his game once he got here, whether it's him spacing the floor or him being a trailer when we did run, all fell off a cliff. It was games where he would shoot like three of 15. And I'm like, I understand you're a jump shooting big, but you're still a big, you know, you're still a big. Let's get back to the core of what you are. He even got worse at finishing at the basket. Like everything was just not what it was. Maybe I'm just an optimist. He's going to be better. I don't think he's gonna be the all-star that he was two years ago, but what we got last year just feels like it can't be worse, but then again regression is a real thing. And he's also with 32 years old at this point. I mean, he's a center in the NBA. So he could be getting worse. This could be the decline of his career, but as us as fans, as we try to talk ourselves into the season. Well, listen, I've had this conversation with people. We cannot guarantee that France is going to be our pick. So I'm not even looking at France. I'm looking at just the people that were there. France would have been great. Even when Dale would have been great, but there's the conversation. Wendell is better than Vucer. Wendell is better than Vucer. And a better contract. He's under contract for a good amount of time on a penny of a dollar. But you can make the argument that we don't have DeMar DeRose and Vucer. It's just not there to help. So that's how I've been justifying it in my head. But then I look at Wendell and France. You know, it's another thing. Who knows if we're able to keep Zach Levine around if we don't buy in for him starting last season. I get it. You fully sold me. I got it. Okay. If DeMar and Zach are the price, then it was worth it. But who's worth it? But we have to start thinking even bigger picture than that. Cause I think we're still a playoff team this year, even though there are some teams that are getting better. Vucervic was talking contract extensions on Twitter and stuff like he wants to be here. I don't know how we feel about that as a fan base. It was funny when he tweeted after GoBear got traded. Like, I guess I don't have to keep looking at the houses and Salt Lake city. Yeah. I was so ready for Rudy GoBear to be a bull by the way. I was maybe the most on the Rudy GoBear train of any bulls fan because I am a big believer in Rudy GoBear. Same. So I was like, I was, I literally like was talking about it like it was inevitable. Yeah. And I was sad that it didn't happen, but also I saw the fucking hall that the Timberwolves gave him and I was like, we were never in that conversation. Not even a little bit. That's what was available. Like we spent this whole time like arguing like, are we going to put Patrick Williams in the trade? Which first of all, dude, yes. But second of all, Here's our first disagreement. But second of all, if we weren't going to include Patrick, no fucking chance we were going to get that over the Timberwolves. Yeah. I can argue about Patrick Williams all day. Let's do it. I am still on Pat Eyler. I'm looking at the entire thing. Now I understand the perspective of like, if we're going to go do it, do it. If you want to get Rudy Gobert to anchor a defense, you have to give a Patrick Williams. I'd fully think like if we had Rudy Gobert, wear a contender. I would still question some of the other things. I think we'd be the best defense in basketball and we have the shot creators to be at least a respectable offense. We, but respectable doesn't necessarily win championships. But number one defense and 15 offense, that can at least border out. It will make us have a mini parade for making it out of the first round. Being number one at something is a big deal, dude. It is. No, 100% it is. But like, you also got to think about the other stuff and the same problems that we just had in Milwaukee offensively would still be the case whether we have Rudy Gobert or Wusevich. Actually, they might even be fucking worse because it's Rudy Gobert on the offensive side of the ball. Screen assist is a real thing, but we still need shooters around there. I mean, Rudy Gobert has that upward gravity and if Ujjavic isn't even fucking shooting, making a jump test to begin with then. But let's get back to the Patrick Williams conversation. Yeah. Because I think our foreseeable future really lies on his shoulders. DeMar DeRozan, what he did last season, it feels like that's not sustainable. He went to, he was all NBA second team and he was legitimately getting like other NBA players saying he's the MVP of the league at one point of the season, right? Back to back game winners. Like that was a real thing that I don't think is going to be sustainable for next season. Zach Levine, on the other hand, I think we're going to get a better season from him because he should be relatively healthy and now he's got another year playing alongside DeMar. But our ceiling is really with Patrick Williams because he could be the connector to the connector, right? Well, we see flashes of him being able to play roller in a short role, make the right passes. Flashes is the exact word. That's exactly what we've all, that's the only thing we've got for Patrick. Now I'm giving him a slight pass because he played six games before Mitchell Robinson broke his finger or hand or whatever. And then he came back and then the team was guns blazing, winning hella games. And now he's trying to figure out where he holds. I was listening to Zach Lowe and they were having this conversation about him. And his usage rate is one of the lowest in all the basketball on the offensive side of the ball. And it makes sense when you're playing with two ball dominant guys. Now I don't think he's going to turn into Kawhi, Linda 2.0, what we talked about when he was drafted in order for us to get excited about him. But I do believe, what's up? I hate that nickname that Stacey King gave him. The Paul? I hate it. I kind of, I like it. I don't know his middle name, but Patrick, if his middle name is Andreas Williams, it's like P-A-W. And I understand it's going off of the claw, but I like it. The man's hands are large as hell too. So it works. It's too based on him. He was doing that tongue-in-cheek. It's like when he was calling Thad, he was calling Thad Jig Johnson. I love that too. That one is cute. Yeah. Because obviously Thad Young is not Magic Johnson. He was for like two weeks. Yeah, he was. Well, like for a young player to give them like a fucking mamba nickname. Like there's not a lot of irony in that. You're just saying that guy's gonna be the next Kobe. Who is Baby Jordan? Why do I feel like Deshaun Stevenson was Baby Jordan? It was somebody obscure like that that didn't pan out to be anybody crazy. Okay, Mayo. I don't know. Either way, back to Patrick Williams. I do believe that he's extremely important to us to become into whatever it is. And I think my next question to you, and I know you don't probably have the answer to this because if you did, you have a front office job. How do you open the window to become a contender with this current Bulls roster? What can the Bulls do to go from what people believe is just a playoff team to a real life contender? I mean, first of all, do you know how many of their picks are locked in because like the Stephanie and Rule, like what future picks do we even have? I know we have 23 Portland, 27 hours, 28 hours, 29 hours. I could be mistaken there, but I know we gave up two, one of them being Frans and then the other one is still to be conveyed this year. And then we gave up one to get Damar. But we also got one in the Derrick Jones Jr. trade. Yeah, I feel like we're not allowed to trade in the first round picks for like another year. It's rough. Yeah, they basically put themselves committed to this current core and didn't give them any, a lot of wiggle room to make the roster better as far as top end talent goes. I think the Bulls are setting themselves up for the like good ass team for sure, but like not a contender and not really any way to get there. Like the only thing I could hope for as sad as this might be to people is Patrick Williams has like a great third year and he's like one of the most highly touted assets and then we can move him for a superstar. Like, and here's my whole Patrick Williams thing. I also love Patrick Williams. In fact, if you go back and look at my original takes about the guy, I think originally, like there was a trade proposal that was talked about that was like a cat for Patrick Williams. And I was like, in no world am I training Patrick? Which now obviously I would do that. Yeah. So I've changed my mind on him in that while I believe there's a lot of potential in that guy. And part of it is the system. I don't know that he has the wiring to really be like a go-to score. It doesn't seem like that's necessarily in his DNA. I think he's gonna be one of the better defenders in the league and like a 16 point guy on good efficiency. And like, that's a damn valuable player to have, but am I gonna not trade that guy for Rudy Gobert? Fuck no. Right. So you sound that what you just described a really good defensive player, 16 points. It's not like OG on a nobie. If we can blossom him to become OG on a nobie, I think a lot of Bulls fans are excited. But can you imagine not trading OG for Rudy Gobert though? Maybe Masai. The Raptors would do that. I don't know, man. The Raptors would have done that. I'm sure they would have. They were looking for center play. Yeah. There was a lot of talk about Rudy Gobert to Raptors. I mean, maybe I just followed too many Raptors fans, but. I think it's gonna be a very interesting season. Would you be surprised if we are lower than the 16 next season? Absolutely. And what would be surprising about that? Well. Presuming health is on our side and I'm right about the chemistry being fixed in the training camp. If that's the case, yeah. If we open up the year kind of slow and like we're having injury issues, then I would not be surprised at all if you were like the seven seed, but I'm also content with the fact that I don't think the Bulls are really gonna be a contender for a while. I can live with that. Same. I'm good with just to play off team because they have been good for, I have witnessed 150 wins season in my entire time as a Bulls fan. I wasn't even there for Derek Rose. Oh. Oh. I was there for the season following Derek Rose tearing his ACL. Interesting. That's my first year as a Bulls fan. Is that your first year as a basketball fan or like did you swap alliances? Well, I played basketball like just played it, but I never watched it. I play, I've played basketball since I was like six. Like I was addicted to playing basketball. Very young. But I didn't really watch it. The guy who got me to watch it was Nate Robinson. That season following Derek Rose ACL here, Nate Robinson was like a folk hero in Chicago. Yeah. Help us beat the Brooklyn Nets in the playoff series. That game winnery has literally like my favorite basketball memory. Yeah. Too bad his legacy is kind of tarnished a little bit now. Because he got his ass wet by Jake Paul. Yeah. Yeah. Dang. That's what he's going to be known for. That's fucking rough, man. It's definitely rough. Was that worth the money for his legacy to be that image of him just flat out? I bet he actually believed that he was going to win, though. He probably did. I think most of them going to that fight be like, oh, it's just a Paul brother. He's a YouTuber. I'm an athlete. Those guys know how to fight. Those guys are built. But yeah, they're fucking assholes, but they're built. They know they're doing out there, man. Money making machines, too. OK, so opposite of that, I asked, would you be surprised if we were the 60 to lower? What is your overall expectations for this team this season? And you can interpret that any way you want to. I don't know. It's hard to say the line of expectation because there's so many factors. Like I kind of, the more I do this as a job, the more I kind of hate predictions and lists and things like that because I realize how many variables there are that just makes them obsolete and like just. You don't want to get clicked out two years from now with a bad take? No, well, well, that's every fucking day for me. But like, I kind of hate doing the speculation thing now just because I know there's so many factors that change things. But like, if I'm going to look at it positively, I'd say 50 wins, like probably 10 in defense, 10 in offense. And will they beat any good team this season? That's a big thing is beating the good teams. Because I'm sure we can beat up on the bad. That's not a problem. That wasn't a problem is once we get to the top end talent where the boys fold, I mean, we got to 49 wins without ever beating good teams. So like we could still get to 50 without doing it. All you need is one more. Yeah, beat one good team and we're fine. I mean, we lost plenty of games to bad teams, too. So like that one Rockets game where Garrison Matthews whooped their ass Garrison Matthews got a full guarantee contract because of the bulls. Like that was that two week span of them winning nine games in a row because of Garrison Matthews turning to Gary Bird is what they were calling them on the broadcast. Turn like turning the prime Kyle Korver like 2015 Rocks Kyle Korver, Garrison Matthews. Maybe something I'll never forget. Any time I think about Garrison Matthews, it's going to be that way. All we needed was that one win instead of Garrison Matthews dropping 40 or whatever the fuck he did. It was only like 20 points, but it felt like 40. And they at that point, I think they were on like a 10 game losing streak. We started, we jumpstarted their win streak. Like crazy. But if I remember correctly, the Rockets that game hit like 25 threes. That's why I'm thinking of like all the threes. But anyways, Garrison Matthews tangent aside. I think 50 wins is reasonable assuming that health is within reason as well. And I'm just hoping like first round exit if we get an unfavorable matchup, but we put up a fight. Like if we got the bucks around one again, I'm not going to be mad if we lose that series. But like second round exit, hopefully again, put up a pretty good fight. Like I would hope that we match up against the contender and I don't expect us to win, but like don't make it easy for them. Like give them a game or two and like really sweat it out. I feel that, I feel that. Well, is there anything you would like to plug as we wrap up this episode? What do you have going on in your YouTube life or anything outside that? I'm finally trying to get back on top of shit because I've fallen off a cliff in terms of content production. So I'm trying to get back to like five videos a week on both channels. So I have a main channel where I do more like highly edited shit and like the higher quality stuff, scripted, edited. I have a deep dive series, which is really high end on that shit. And then my second channel is kind of similar to this one. I just turn on the mic and ramble to the camera and do it about 70% as effectively as Kenny does because I don't have his charisma. But yeah, that's my plug. Ladies and gentlemen, if you don't know who Rusty Bucket is, all of the links will be in the description to the two YouTube channels, to the Twitter account, even though I would probably steer away from this Twitter account, but it will be down there in case you're interested. My Twitter account isn't exactly basketball content all the time. It's usually, I guess I won't say that on here. Just, you just gotta click the find out. If you wanna know what the content is, click at the find out. Content. Content. I'm nearly at 40K, so go follow me on Twitter. There you go. I appreciate you coming on, Jacob. Yeah, hell yeah.