I would like to personally apologize to all the Cubs fans out there for the loss yesterday.
Clearly, my presence at Saturday’s game brought the luck needed to beat the Cincinnati Reds. In fact, not only did the Cubbies win, but I also got to keep my job! Brett told me beforehand that my future at Bleacher Nation road entirely on whether or not the Cubs won that day. Harsh, I know. But fair.
Nevertheless, I’ll have to make an effort to be at every Cubs-Reds game in the future – to prevent any additional losses. But for now, let the basketball content commence!
The NBA Finals are set. In a shocking turn of events, the Golden State Warriors made it out of the western conference, while in the east, the ever-so-predictable Toronto Raptors secured their spot to the championship series on Saturday. Okay, sarcasm aside, this has been one heck of a ride for the Raptors. We can all say that the Kawhi Leonard trade (even if it is for only one season) has been completely worth it, getting that franchise to the finals for the first time in its 24-year history. But, when it really comes down to who put together the best Raptors team ever, it was clearly the Chicago Bulls.
Okay, sorry, that’s sarcasm again. However, the Bulls really do tie into quite a bit of the storyline for the Raptors 2018-19 season journey. Toronto’s head coach Nick Nurse, who took over the team after the firing of current Pistons head coach Dwane Casey, had a four-year history within Bulls organization. From 2007-11 he was the head coach of the Bulls D-League affiliate team, the Iowa Energy. After winning two championships during his time in the D-league, Nurse was hired as an assistant in Toronto. Then, once officially being promoted to head coach, Nurse brought on Adrian Griffin as a new assistant. Technically, Griffin had three separate stints in Chicago – two as a member of the roster and one as a member of Tom Thibodeau’s staff (2010-2015).
If you want to read even more about all of this, K.C. Johnson (who beat me to the tweet about this during the weekend!) wrote a great, quick piece mapping out all of Chicago’s connections with the NBA Finals. In case you forgot, the Warriors have at least one big connection too *cough* Steve Kerr *cough.*
Anyway, here is a look at your 2020 NBA Finals MVP…
Reminder: Bulls lead assistant head coach Pete Myers announced at the end of last week that he would be stepping away from the team due to personal reasons. In total, he has spent 13 years with the organization. It’s safe to say this was a relatively unexpected move, and now the Bulls will head into the offseason with an assistant coach vacancy to fill. Johnson with the Chicago Tribune talked a little bit more about his departure.
All you Bulls fans are powerful people. Plenty of Chicagoans have been backing an offseason free agent move that would bring Patrick Beverley into the United Center. The 30-year-old point guard is a Chicago-native that gathered heightened attention during the NBA playoffs when he played some hard-core defense on Kevin Durant. Also, I think Durant didn’t realize how much saying “he’s a Chicago kid… so those dudes play with a different kind of grit” would energize Bulls fans. If a player has Chicago blood, the city will defend him as much as they would deep dish pizza. Anyway, people have even made videos trying to influence the man to come to Chicago, something he has begun to acknowledge.
Also, for what it’s worth, David Kaplan, Will Perdue and the boys over at SportsTalk had an extensive conversation about the Bulls point guard situation. During it, Kaplan mentioned that Beverley “is not on their (Chicago’s) board.” Of course, free agency hasn’t even started, and we know a lot can change by June 30th.
Kris Dunn just can’t get his name out of the headlines. With the Bulls making it obvious that they’re looking for a point guard, Dunn has appeared to be left in a state of limbo. We have talked about his potential role, or lack thereof, several times already, but the Chicago Sun-Times’ Joe Cowley maps out how Dunn got to this point.
I’m adding this in here because we all deserve to watch LeBron look absolutely silly…
Elias Schuster is the Lead Chicago Bulls writer at Bleacher Nation. He started with BN full-time in 2019 immediately after graduating from the University of Illinois Urbana Champaign with a degree in Journalism (yes, he started with the Jim Boylen Era). Since joining, Elias has been the driving force behind Bulls and NBA content for both the site and social accounts. You can follow him on Twitter/X @Schuster_Elias.
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