Bulls robbed, Bears altercate
The Bulls were robbed tonight in the closing seconds of their loss to Portland. Luol Deng missed a potential game-winning shot, Andres Nocioni went for the rebound at the same time as a Theo Ratliff, and it appeared by the replay that Ratliff had knocked the ball out of bounds. The refs called it Portland ball. With one second left on the clock, the game was all but over and the Bulls fell to 0-2 on their annual circus road trip. Despite losing, they actually played pretty well tonight. Mike Sweetney put up 24 points and 14 boards, and he's been trying damn hard to make us forget that Curry fella. Gordon, Hinrich and Noce had nice games as well. I feel pretty good about this team. A blind man can see that they're a bit undersized, but they've got some real talent on that roster. Deng and Gordon are simply brilliant at times, and completely invisible at others. If they can keep the brilliant times and simply raise the invisible performances to “mediocre”, they'd be all-stars.
The big news at Halas Hall this week, of course, is the fight, excuse me “altercation”, between Olin Kreutz and Fred Miller. The media is naturally going crazy with this news and in a way, I can't blame them. The Bears really have been void of interesting characters for going on 20 years now. They've had a handful of good players since then, but the biggest non-football stories in this time were probably Urlacher's “one night in Paris” or Alonzo Spellman's “no shirt/no shoes” freeway hike in the dead of winter. So you can forgive the media for feasting on this morsel of spice that the altercation has delivered. Ultimately, I suspect it's a complete non-issue for the team. A couple slabs of beef got in a pissing match, slapped each other around a bit, and that's that. The only real story is that Lovie Smith believed their lie that Miller got hurt in a household incident. Lovie should have known better. Everyone knows that “household incident” is code for something dirty. Usually it means the guy got drunk and tripped over his dog or something. This time there was a little more to it. Lovie should have pressed the issue a little more and found out what really happened. Now he looks like an assclown that doesn't have control of his team. I don't think he's an assclown, mind you, but the media is blaming him for the whole fiasco. I personally think the story has run it's course and it's time for the media to move on. Lovie's been doing a terrific job with this team and I'll trust his judgement to discipline his players as he sees fit. I don't want people telling me how to raise my kids so I don't tell them how to raise theirs. It's that simple. So let's move on beat the tar out of Carolina this Sunday.