ZoomSlowik

Is this supposed to be an auto-draft, or are you waiting to set a draft time?

I've got way too much depth, so if anyone is interested in getting two solid players for a stud let me know. Definitely staying: Hanley, Utley Anyone else can go in the right deal. Highlights are: Teixeira, Upton, Reynolds, Votto, Werth, Haren, Peavy and Nathan.

QUOTE (Chisoxfn @ Feb 12, 2010 -> 01:20 PM) If the Bulls can get 2 max fa's to work, keep Deng/Noah/Rose....they will most certainly be willing to pay the luxury tax. No f***ing doubt about it. That team would contend and I believe win multiple titles. Jerry won't pay luxury tax for Byars because Byars doesn't make the team ridiculously better. My question is can the Bulls even have enough room under the cap to offer 2 max guys without moving Deng/Hinrich/Salmons? I didn't think there was a way to do it if Deng was on the roster, but I might be wrong? It's unlikely. Rose, Deng, Noah, Johnson and Gibson adds up to about $23 mil. Add a couple of cap holds on picks and they're probably pushing $25 mil. That would leave them $26-$28 mil in cap space most likely, which is a bit short unless you convince one of them to take a fair amount less money or both of them to take $13-14 mil to join a contender (seems unlikely). They'd most likely be able to do something like Wade and Boozer/Lee in that scenario, I don't think they could add two of Lebron/Wade/Bosh/Johnson/Stoudemire.

Your post makes no sense. In the first part you claim that they won't go over the salary cap because of what might happen two years down the road, but then in the next part with actual quotes they're trying to add at least one max salary player, if not two. If you're really peterified about a $52 mil luxury tax two years down the road, wouldn't you think not paying someone $17-18 mil a year (since it's two years down the road we're factoring in raises) would be a good way to avoid it? If they go the two-max deal route, that'd be over this imaginary $52 mil luxury tax that has yet to happen with two max salaries, Rose, a likely Noah extension and the remaining roster filler. If they moved Hinrich and Salmons, they'd probably be over it with a max deal, Deng, Rose, the same Noah extension and the rest of the roster (even if you got Noah at $6 mil, they'd only have $10 mil left for the other 8 active roster spots). About the only way they could avoid the tax in that scenario is if they didn't make any trades, let everyone walk that expires between now and then and filled out the roster with guys making no more than $5 mil, which might cause rioting among Bulls fans. If the luxury tax really fell that far, they'd be f***ed not matter what they do, so I have a very hard time believing that they wouldn't use the current $52 mil of cap space. Besides, even if they went $10 mil over that theoretical tax they'd still be at roughly the same roster expenses the Bulls had the last few years, so assuming they'd still avoid it like the plague is a pretty major assumption. There's a pretty big difference between not adding an end of the bench guy that won't make an impact to definitively avoid the tax on a team that already has a payroll around $70 mil while struggling with the .500 mark and threatening the long-term health of your team by not spending on starting talent to possibly avoid a tax two years down the road that is almost $20 mil below what you spent the last several years.

QUOTE (nitetrain8601 @ Feb 11, 2010 -> 08:18 PM) If they trade just Salmons for an expiring, they'll get rid of $5,808,000. Say they trade Tyrus for an expiring and draft pick like they're rumored to want to do. That leaves them at $31,850,976. Let's say the cap is at $52 million. Now raises are factored into the previous $31,850,976, but let's look at draft holds. Let's say they get a 15th pick for Tyrus. Say the Bulls draft 17th and 47th which they're currently projected. That means 15th pick: $1,398,200 17th pick: $1,261,900 47th pick: $825,497(rough estimate based on league minimum) Right now, the max salary threshold for Wade who will have been in the league between 7-9 years is $16,224,600. If he's signed and traded his number would be roughly at $17,149,243. We will go with the lower number so we can dream big. $31,850,976 $16,224,600 $1,398,200 $1,261,900 $825,497 = 51,561,173 Now that roster only includes PG-Rose/Hinrich SG-Wade SF-Deng/J Johnson PF-Gibson C-Noah + 3 other players. If we pay the Minimum to those 3 other players to have at least 12 players, we would be in the luxury tax easily. Heck, I think it works even if we don't trade Ty and just flat out renounce him, but I could be wrong. It appears that you're confusing the salary cap and the luxury tax. While the Bulls would be right against the salary cap, the luxury tax threshold for 2010-2011 is expected to be $65 mil. Using the minimum salary exception, they have WAY more than enough room under the luxury tax to fill out the roster.

That game royally sucked. NU didn't play well at all, but Iowa still needed to shoot 12-24 from the arc to maintain their lead. They didn't really have much of an at-large shot before or after this game, they'd pretty much need to beat Wisconsin and win at least 2 in the conference tournament.

Just a heads up to anyone that was commish of a league last year to re-new the league. It's really quick and painless, I did it for the keeper league in about 2 minutes including invites to past participants. I see the league 2 thread got bumped, I already did the keeper and sent Knightni a reminder for league 1. I have no idea who the commisioners were of the other leagues, so if someone let me know that'd be nice.

I haven't been there, but Atwood Cafe looks interesting and I've heard good things from some friends. Also, you can't get much closer.

Weird, they have us allowing 80 more runs despite a healthy Jake Peavy?

QUOTE (CryptviLL @ Jan 27, 2010 -> 02:14 PM) I'd love Gay + bosh since i've always been a big fan of Gay, and let Luol walk (TRADE HIM!), that guy seems selfish from all the reports I've heard. You're going to have a hell of a time convincing someone to give up an expiring contract for Deng entering this free agent class. A straight trade isn't going to happen considering Memphis is rumored to be too cheap to match a sizeable deal for Gay, who's quite a bit better than Deng. I'm already prepared for this eventuality with the class of 2010: -Lebron stays -Wade stays -Bosh signs with Miami because Wade is still a better player than Rose and Florida is warmer and has no income tax -The Bulls end up throwing all of their cap space at someone like Stoudemire, Boozer or Johnson who makes their team better but still only gets them to the 4-6 range in the East. They lose in the first or second round for the next five years and continue to aggravate their fan base.

f***ing Hoffarber.

We definitely need a Soxtalk auction draft this year, I did a couple for basketball this year and they are amazingly fun. The only problem is you can get royally screwed if you're not there, though you can pre-enter auction values.

QUOTE (RockRaines @ Jan 19, 2010 -> 07:34 PM) Zoom, was Shurna highly recruited? I could see how teams could overlook him because he's a bit unorthodox, but he's a hell of a player. Someone needs to buy him some proactiv though. He was a 3-star out of Glenbard West, I don't really remember what his other offers were (probably a lot of mid-majors and lower-tier power conference schools). He was listed at like 190 when he signed, so I would imagine most schools saw him as a 'tweener. Crawford looks like a similar steal out of Naperville Central, though not so much in this game. I'm not sure why he wasn't more highly regarded, but he's our best athlete and can hit the 3. If he learns to find his shots he's going to be a damn good player. Unfortunately those are probably our only two guys athletic/skilled enough to make a difference against an athletic team like OSU or MSU. Everyone else needed to shoot really well from deep, which obviously hasn't happened.

QUOTE (RockRaines @ Jan 19, 2010 -> 07:04 PM) NW needs to stay away from that horrible trap zone if they want to stand a chance. They're screwed no matter what D they play in this game. They sure as hell aren't quick enough to play them man-to-man, we've seen what happened with the matchup zone, and I doubt the 1-3-1 will fair much better.

Well, that was an ugly half. OSU is way too quick for them, but it'd be a lot closer if they could actually hit some shots. They've missed 7 or 8 open threes and at least three layups.

That was pretty god damn embarassing for the Bulls, they lost by 17 to a Warriors team that only had 4 healthy rotation players. The frontcourt was especially awful, though I don't think you can say anyone played particularly well.

QUOTE (kev211 @ Jan 18, 2010 -> 04:38 AM) Wow ISU is sooooo good so much better then my ISU.....your in the big 12, and my ISU would probably beat yours like 50% of the time. That's saying something. You should really stop claiming that Illinois State is just as good as decent major conference teams when they're losing to weak mid-majors. They've now lost to a 10-9 Niagra team (who played without their second leading scorer that game by the way), a 9-8 Ohio team and a 8-11 Drake team. That doesn't exactly suggest that they could play to a draw against a respectable major conference team like Iowa State.

That deal sounds WAY too good to be true, especially if they could extend Bosh. Getting rid of Hinrich's contract alone is probably worth it as long as the pick is lotto-protected for the next couple of years.

QUOTE (chwhtsox @ Jan 6, 2010 -> 01:20 PM) How much are season tickets? generally, nothing fancy. It depends heavily on what section you get them in. I'm not sure about upper deck seats, but I would guess any lower level seat (except the premium lower box and scout seats of course) is somewhere in the $2000-$2700 range per seat.

QUOTE (Quinarvy @ Jan 3, 2010 -> 10:45 PM) Which is why I'd rather move Deng for Butler. Last year Salmons played well at the 3 for the Bulls, not so much at the 2 this year. But if you can move Hinirch for Butler, than Deng + James and/or Salmon for T-Mac, you'd have enough cap to sign, like, 3 big FA's, wouldn't you? There's virtually no way anyone could have enough room for three max-deal free agents, you'd have to have less than $10 mil in total salary commitments for that (which I think Miami actually has a shot at if Wade opts out). The cap is likely to be in the low-50's and three max deals will run you $42-48 mil. Butler alone likely doesn't leave you enough room for three, and when you add in Rose, Noah, the two rookies this year and another first rounder (plus you'd still have to renounce Tyrus), it's not a TOTAL lock that they'd have enough room for 2 max free agents depending on how the cap falls.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Dec 31, 2009 -> 10:04 AM) You want Joe Johnson at SF? And on the court at the same time as not only Rose, but as Wade as well? I think we could live with 2 guys who need to have the ball in their hands if 1 of them was Rose. I can't imagine that working with 3 of them. I got to agree with that, the two FA approach doesn't really work unless one of them is a scoring big like Bosh/Stoudemire/Dirk/Boozer. It's VERY hard to win a ring without a big man that can produce easy baskets, Wade/Lebron/Johnson/whoever would have to play epically well to make you a real title threat with a Noah/Thomas/Gibson froncourt.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Dec 31, 2009 -> 08:51 AM) Very impressed with NU. They're an offensive machine. The question is what happens when they don't hit their 3's. Last night they could have easily won by 15 or lost by 15 depending on if their shots were falling. Is that going to be a year long thing? Or has there been enough evidence this year that they're one of, if not the best, shooting team in the nation. And to think these guys are missing their best two players. Pretty impressive. Who's the other one, Ryan? He was going to be a forward off the bench that frankly hasn't shown much of anything in his career. Thompson and Shurna were easily #1 and #2 after Coble got hurt, and then probably Crawford on raw talent or Mirkovic on the hopes that he built on some flashes of solid play last year (he hasn't thus far). They definitely have an array of dangerous perimeter shooters, but they're going to need to find a way to get some buckets inside against better competition. The best candidate appears to be Shurna, he can make some shots inside but floats out around the arch more than I would like (I don't have a problem with 2 or 3 attempted 3's, but he's attempted 6 or more in half of their games and he's not a consistent threat). He's shooting 55% from inside the arc and well under 30% from behind the arc, he really needs to take it inside more since so far it doesn't look like Mirkovic or Rowley are going to help offensively this year. To continue on the Crawford thing, he's got the potential to be NU's best player, though it would take a lot for it to happen soon with Coble hopefully back next year and Thompson and Shurna playing very well. He has shown flashes of dominance where he'll bury several 3's in a row, make a drive and finish to the hoop that a typical NU player has no hope of completing or rising up and making an explosive dunk or block like that late put-back jam last night. He has long stretches where he doesn't do much offensively though, he's still trying to find his place in the offense. He generally gets his points on relatively few attempts and is shooting 51.7% from the floor, which is virtually unheard of from an NU wing (I think Jitim Young might have done it as a senior or Mohamed Hachad). On raw talent, he's probably the best player they've had since I started following NU back in the Evan Eschmeyer days.

QUOTE (danman31 @ Dec 30, 2009 -> 10:20 PM) I think a lot of people who haven't seen them play will think that. I missed most of tonight's game, but they play half court basketball extremely well and their athleticism isn't as far behind as it has been. Unfortunately they still have some athleticism problems inside. Nash and Crawford are very solid on the wings and Shurna is a nice swing guy, but Mirkovic and Rowley are pretty awkward and Shurna isn't bulky enough to pick up the slack. I'm actually a bit more worried about that on the offensive side, they need one of those guys to chip in a few buckets inside to reduce the droughts a bit.

QUOTE (fathom @ Dec 30, 2009 -> 10:14 PM) Northwestern make a 3 in the last 10 minutes of game time? If they can't play interior defense, they're not making the tournament. They've played much better interior D. Harangody went 7-19 against them and did a lot of his damage when the game was already over and they held Brackins to 6-16 as well, both in wins. Tisdale is just a bad matchup, he can just shoot those jump hooks over their post men all day and Davis is too athletic for them.

QUOTE (whitesoxfan99 @ Dec 30, 2009 -> 10:16 PM) NU is better than I expected and Illinois just didn't play defense in the first half, bad combination. NW really needed to not go to Mirkovic (Sp?) he was horrid. He was one of the major culprits of stupid shots, yes. I don't know why he ever takes anything but uncontested shots. Nash had a bunch of ridiculous 3-point attempts as well and he's not a terribly good shooter. Shurna and Thompson need to be the ones taking tough shots.