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The Official 2008 Chicago Bulls Off Season Thread: BG Signs 1 Year Deal; No one cares; BASEBALL FTW
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[h2]http://blogs.hoopshype.com/blogs/smith/2008/09/19/take-the-money-ben/[/h2]
[h2]Take the money, Ben[/h2]
September 19, 2008 @ 7:38 am · Filed under Ben Gordon, Chicago Bulls, Josh Howard
Three guys show up for their job orientation and who knows what they did, though it seemed to involve drugs and sex. Another guy makes a video apparently demeaning his country and finding enough vile words for an HBO special.
I know I'm excited.
It means our favorite guys are back.
Yes, it's just about time for the NBA season.
Of course this is an overstatement. But that's the inescapable burden of the NBA. I've been around this league for almost 30 years and believe its people are better than in any sport. No, golf isn't a sport.
But part of the fun of loving the NBA is our guys do some goofy stuff.
I'm hereafter nominating those goofs for my Reggie Harding memorial award.
My preseason nominations are the Kansas Three, rookies Mario Chalmers and Darrell Arthur from Kansas and Michael Beasley from Kansas State. No, kids, you aren't in Kansas anymore. And you shouldn't have brought Dorothy to rookie orientation. Or her sister.
Then there's Josh Howard, who slammed the national anthem this summer on a video (don't these guys ever learn, Melo?) as the topping for his drug use admissions last season and excess partying in playoff defeat.
I'm told all Dallas Mavericks players this season when standing next to Howard will have to wear those "I'm with stupid" t-shirts that Kenny's mom wears in South Park episodes.
And then there's Ben Gordon, who really is a very good and decent guy, who seems to have turned down enough money to bail out Wall Street while working through an aimless free agency.
Oh yeah, Reggie.
Reg was a troubled young man who was one of the first to be drafted by the NBA without attending college. He was a seven footer from Detroit. He played four decent NBA seasons (twice even averaging a double/double through trouble shortened seasons) and one double/double season in the ABA, and was shot dead on a Detroit street corner in 1972 at age 30.
Reg wasn't the brightest guy and so the story goes once, wearing a mask, he decided to rob a store in his neighborhood. The owner recognized Reg as there weren't a lot of seven foot holdup men around.
"Reg," the man said, "don't do it."
Replied Harding: "It ain't me, man."
You'd think Ron Artest retired this trophy, but Josh is working hard to wrestle it away.
As for my man, Ben, I weep for him.
Eventually, Gordon will be a rich young man. You'd say he probably is now since he'll likely sign a one-year qualifying offer for about $6.4 million this season and thereafter become an unrestricted free agent.
And then what?
That's the rub, and I understand Gordon's position, much stated to the Bulls.
Ben: "I'm the leading scorer on the team for the last three years. I should be highest paid."
Bulls: "We like you and believe you are valuable and would like you to remain with the Bulls. But you turned down $10 million a year for five years last year and you and the team had a bad season. So we'll offer you maybe $9 million or so for six years, again more than $50 million. But you really are a classic sixth man, a great scorer with limited ballhanding and passing skills and you're, what, six foot tall? We haven't gotten any trade offers for you (OK, Miami said they were thinking briefly about Shawn Marion and Marcus Banks, but who wants Banks' contract and Marion's pout?). Go get an offer somewhere and we'll make a deal. And, who, after all, is going to give you $10 million or more of saved cap room next summer when everyone is waiting for 2010 and LeBron, Wade and Bosh?"
And so Gordon sits with the rest of us suckers watching our money disappear.
Hey, I should have sold my house last year. But I didn't. Now I can't.
It's timing. It's life.
Sorry, Ben, the market for six foot shooting guards, no matter how good a guy you are and hard you work, isn't there.
Take the $9 million or $9.5 million (estimate) and be a very, very, very, very rich man.
OK, not as rich as some of your friends.
But, hey, the guys at Lehman Brothers thought they were rich last week.
I understand well how this works.
It's about respect, right?
No, it's about competition.
You don't become a pro athlete unless you compete at everything. They compete in conversation. So when all us old timers who are trying to find the airline without baggage fees say you are rich whether you make $8 million or $12 million and never can spend it all, anyway, we don't get it.
It's the same in your office. A salary of $75,000 might sound great until you find out the sinkhole at the next desk makes $85,000. Then it's misery.
Especially with athletes.
It really isn't about the money. Sort of. No one really realizes how good they are until you try to play against them. What gets you to that level is the desire (and we'd love to see it more often when they are there) to compete all the time.
Gordon's like that. And he's a worker.
I hate this being him because he is a dedicated guy. I've traveled with the Chicago Bulls on and off the last few years and just about every city the Bulls land in Gordon gets off the plane and heads directly to a gym to shoot. There are few guys in the NBA who practice as much, certainly not on their shooting. Every summer, Bulls coaches rave about all the work Gordon has put in.
And then it turns out he's still six feet tall.
No one on that Bulls team gets as much defensive attention, so it didn't go so well with Ben Wallace averaging $15 million. Geez, and the guy can't make a layup.
Gordon asked for $15 million last season and didn't budge. The Bulls offered $10 million and didn't budge.
Next!
So this summer Luol Deng signed after he rejected a deal last year close to $60 million for five years. It was announced this time at more than $70 million. But with, according to league sources, perhaps $20 million deferred in the first five seasons, the present value of the contract is believed to be slightly less than Deng was offered last season. The Bulls are believed to have made a similar proportional offer to Gordon, like Deng, slightly less than Gordon could have made last year. But seemingly a lot of money.
Gordon averaged more points than Deng as well and now Larry Hughes is there making about $13 million a season and he's no Ben Gordon. Where's the loyalty?
So Gordon remains unsigned.
It seems clear the Bulls will not trade him, and though Gordon this summer talked of having played his last game for the Bulls and never playing for the qualifying offer, he has nowhere else to go.
Were he even to get an overseas offer, he'd still be a Bulls free agent when he returned as you cannot by rule play out your free agency somewhere else. Plus, the European offers have been even less than the qualifying offer and much less than Gordon keeps rejecting here.
So he'll come in and disrupt the team by, what, shooting all the time?
Duh.
It's what he does.
Gordon's not going to hurt the team, and the Bulls know it.
First, he's not a bad guy, and he would become unrestricted if he signs the one year offer. Not a great time to lay down.
Plus, he always comes in shooting anyway. What's he going to do to undermine the team? Pass?
So the Bulls will panic because they can't afford to lose him in free agency and get nothing in return? Right? Hardly.
Admittedly, it's not a great free agent class next summer, though Carlos Boozer and Hedo Turkoglu could be there. The teams most likely to be $10 million or more under the cap to sign someone unrestricted likely figure to be from among Memphis (not spending money), Oklahoma City (probably not with the big relocation fee due), Portland (got guards), Miami (going for Boozer, we hear), Indiana and maybe Minnesota. So if you are spending, you lock in Ben Gordon and pass on a chance for Wade or Bosh? LeBron is going to New York or New Jersey, as we know.
No. If Gordon wants to go anywhere and get paid he probably would have to come back to the Bulls anyway for a sign-and-trade. Which is why the Bulls don't seem in any hurry to make a deal.
And with a signed Deng and No. 1 pick Derrick Rose, they need Gordon. Who else is going to score? Gordon has a chance to have a terrific season, and perhaps the team improves as a result.
The Bulls have made it clear they aren't going to make a bad deal to accommodate Gordon, and they aren't about to panic. Most Americans' portfolios don't look like they did two weeks ago, and so the timing isn't great for Gordon, either.
But Gordon still has a chance to be guaranteed some $50 million or more. Hey, it would be more than Josh Howard got.
I know, I know. Bad example.
My guess: Gordon ends up re-signing with the Bulls at some point.
http://blogs.hoopshype.co...09/19/take-the-money-ben/
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Derrick Rose's family stands strong behind the Bulls' top pick
Derrick Rose : : : Flower Power
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With the love and support of his family, Derrick Rose says he's ready and looking forward to facing the challenges of the coming NBA season.
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September 18, 2008 | By Anne Stein
You can thank a peach tree in Chicago's Englewood neighborhood for Derrick Rose's dexterity with both hands. At age 8 or 9, as family lore goes, the future Bulls point guard was climbing the big flowering tree in his family's backyard and took a tumble. Unaware that he'd just broken his arm, Rose dusted himself off, grabbed a basketball and joined his brothers and friends down the street at Murray Park to play hoops.
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As a prep standout at Chicago's Simeon Career Academy, Rose directed the Wolverines to back-to-back state championships in 2006 and 2007.
(Courtesy of the Chicago Sun-Times)
[/td] [/tr][/table]When one of his brothers smacked his hand during the game and Derrick couldn't feel a thing, it dawned on him that maybe the injury needed some attention. His arm was put in a cast, but that didn't put a damper on Derrick's summer schedule; instead he spent hours learning to dribble and shoot left-handed, a skill he puts to very good use today.
Born October 4, 1988, Derrick Martell Rose is the youngest of four boys: Dwayne (now 34), Reggie (32) and Allan (27). A large baby, he was nicknamed 'Winnie the Pooh' by his grandmother for his size and skin color at the time; by age two, he was simply called 'Pooh,' which is what family and close friends still call him today.
The four boys were raised in a close-knit, extended family by Mom, Brenda Rose, who instilled pride, achievement and success in each of her sons, despite the rough South Side neighborhood they all grew up in.
"There were other people in the neighborhood who wanted their kids to be something, so we watched out for each other. You knew and they knew what your children were doing," explains Brenda.
She often took her boys to see other neighborhoods and to Chicago's lakefront and museums, to expose them to the arts, other people and other ways of life. "Kids see stuff that goes on in the street, and you tell them, 'you don't want to be like that - you want more out of life.'"
Her children not only took her words to heart, the three oldest formed a protective wall around their baby brother, keeping him focused on school and basketball and steering him away from the crime and gangs outside their front door.
"The biggest support system I have is my family," says the 6'3", 190-pound Derrick today. "My mother helped me a lot because I used to go somewhere in the neighborhood, and she'd call 10 minutes later to check up - and I used to hate it. But she was being a caring mother, and I thank her for that."
The brothers still keep close track of each other and Derrick. "My whole family puts their hands around me so I don't get sidetracked," he says.
Everyone in the family had basketball talent. The three oldest boys played at Hubbard High School, and by age two, says Brenda, Derrick would sit on a basketball in the family's basement and hang out with his brothers' teammates, no doubt soaking up basketball tips and knowledge.
By age four, says Brenda, Pooh could dribble. "The team would come over and Derrick would get in the middle and you'd see a ball bouncing, and that'd be him," she recalls with a laugh.
His first organized game was at Randolph Magnet School in fourth grade. "He had the ball a lot and he could shoot," says Brenda. His team won and, later, Derrick led them to a city championship. By seventh grade, the family knew his basketball talent was special.
"We were watching TV at my mom's house, and Derrick put a tape in," recalls Reggie, who later organized an AAU team around his little brother. "Some guy ran down the court in a blur and threw the ball up. And Derrick said, 'You see, you see!!'
"We said, 'that's not you.'" The brothers rewound the tape and slowed it down; sure enough - it was baby brother catching an alley-oop and slamming it home.
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A native of Chicago's Englewood community, Bulls top pick Derrick Rose is the youngest of four boys in his family.
(Jonathan Daniel/NBAE/Getty Images)
[/td] [/tr][/table]Though he was (and still is) a ferocious competitor on the court, the quiet youngster was always sweet and humble off, two traits he's retained to this day. It's due to spending so much time with older relatives, insists Brenda. "Until Derrick came along, there hadn't been a baby born in the family for a while, so everybody just took him," she says. "He learned how to respect older people."
His grandmother and great uncle, who was ill, lived with the family, and Derrick became his uncle's good buddy and caretaker. At age five, Derrick would often watch TV and fetch meals for him. The two would also sneak loads of candy into the house (reinforcing the Pooh nickname) and hide it from Mom.
By the time Derrick was eight, the first of his five nieces and nephews were born, and Derrick - who still loves hanging out with the family - spent hours with the new babies. "People in the neighborhood used to tell us all the time that they never saw brothers hang out as much as we did," says oldest brother Dwayne. "For example, If you saw me, you'd always see Allan."
And Derrick, says Dwayne, has also been a special kid. "Even before basketball, there were no problems with Derrick-ever. When he'd come over to my house, I'd ask him to take the garbage out and he'd do it. Then he'd come over the next time and do that and other things without ever being asked. Then he'd ask if there was anything else I needed. With basketball he's even more special. He's one of the best baby brothers you could ask for."
Derrick wasn't just born with talent, however; he worked to perfect it. "When he misses a shot he tends to beat himself up because he really wants to be perfect," says Reggie.
By Derrick's sophomore year in high school, his natural talent and the hours he spent practicing paid off, and he returned from a St. Louis Nike camp ranked the number one high school player in the country. Despite all the accolades, the humble, quiet kid remained, well, humble and quiet.
"He's just not the type of person who wants to shine over anyone," says Reggie's wife, Shanda. "He's always the one who steps back and lets everyone else get the limelight. He's been like that all his life."
In fact, it took nearly a month for Derrick to stop calling his current agent, former Chicago Bulls guard B.J. Armstrong "Sir."
"He's very polite," explains Armstrong with a smile. "He's very conscientious. That's just who he is, and he learned it from his family and his coaches." And on the floor? "He's a very tough kid who loves to compete."
But the always-humble Rose insists he doesn't always live up to what he's trying to be. "I try not to mistreat people because God's always looking," he explains. "But sometimes I slip and forget - I'm not perfect, I'll say that."
Maybe not perfect, but he sure strives for it, showing leadership and generosity on a regular basis. After helping lead his Simeon Career Academy high school team to the Illinois Class AA State Championship in 2006, he led his team to a 33-2 record and their second straight state title the following year, and was named 2007 Illinois Mr. Basketball. Yet in that second championship game, he scored just two points, often passing the ball to teammates he'd spent years playing with.
Though Rose won't say he was being generous, Brenda says he played that way for a reason: Derrick had been in the limelight for so long that he felt it was time for others to share in it.
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Extremely confident, yet also quite humble, Derrick Rose looks to be the perfect fit to head the Bulls' new-look attack.
(Fernando Medina/NBAE/Getty Images)
[/td] [/tr][/table]"He decided that on his own," she says. "Those were his friends, not just teammates."
His successful high school career in Chicago led to several scholarship offers, which Derrick narrowed down to Illinois and Memphis. But he wanted family with him for the ride.
"He asked me if he chose Memphis, would we move with him," says Reggie. "I'm like, hold on, Derrick, let me talk to my wife. Shanda (who deserves both wife and sister-in-law of the year awards) agreed to it, so we moved there."
In Memphis, Reggie and Shanda lived only 20 minutes away from Derrick - "to give him space and let him grow up to be a young man" - but they were close enough for him to come over on weekends for home-cooked meals or to stop by for advice.
It took just a short time and a long chat last season with Memphis Head Coach John Calipari for Derrick to learn that he had to lead his team. It's a job he did well in his one and only year there, though being Derrick he actually asked teammates if they minded if he started taking a few more shots. He led Memphis to the 2008 NCAA Championship game vs. Kansas, where he scored 18 points, grabbed six rebounds and handed out eight assists in a heartbreaking, overtime loss.
The Bulls are hoping he'll lead his new team to similar heights, though they'll give the 19-year-old time to reach that goal.
"I have all the faith in the world after getting to know Derrick," says Bulls Head Coach Vinny Del Negro. "He's got a lot of confidence in his ability, and he's going to work hard. And, when he's ready, we'll put him out there, and he'll run the show."
"This pick is about adding a player who has unique ability and, in my opinion, who hasn't touched the surface of what he's going to be," says Bulls General Manager John Paxson. "I think Derrick will grow into his role, and for our future he's simply a terrific pick."
And just as they've been so far, Derrick's family and close friends will be right by his side. He and his best friend from high school will share a home near the Bulls practice facility in Deerfield, and Reggie and his wife are moving back home from Memphis and will also stay nearby.
In fact, Mom is planning to move up north from Englewood to lend support. "Everybody will be here for him," says brother Dwayne. "It's nothing new for us - we've always taken care of him and watched over him."
As for fans and teammates, Dwayne promises they'll enjoy watching this Rose bloom. "Fans are getting a good person, a really great individual. And his teammates are getting a good teammate. He loves the city, and I think the city will love him back."
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single game tickets go on sale friday right?
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i still would like to see BG in a bulls uni for years to come
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Too much bad blood, he really has taken what the organization has put him through as disrespect
You can tell in interviews he tries to be professional but you can tell its not good
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yeah thats what ive been reading. i would have liked to see him and rose play together for a while. i hope we give thabo some good minutes, i like hisdefensive game and length a lot
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yo how was that line for tickets
anyway...
anyway...
Bulls forward averaged 6.6 points, 5.6 rebounds and 1.1 assists per game last season
Noah poked in the eye; likely out five days
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Bulls forward Joakim Noah
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- AthletiCo Injury Report
Posted October 3, 2008 at 11:15 a.m. CT
Bulls forward Joakim Noah has a left eye Hyphema (blood in the anterior chamber of the eye) and will likely be out five days pending the resolution of his symptoms.
Noah was poked in the left eye during practice this past Wednesday. He will be monitored daily by the team's medical staff.
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Winning solves a lot of problems...
Hopefully it will be a good year.
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