It’s the Bulls Podcast #57 hosted by Marcus Couch. We’ve got full Bulls vs Pelicans Pre-Season Reaction, our State of the #Bulls – New Season Edition, Patrick Williams gets a contract extension, and Game predictions for the coming week.
Welcome to the Bulls Podcast, coming to you from BullsPodcast.com. This is where we bring you the latest news, reviews, rants, rumors and opinions on the players, coaches and front office of the Chicago Bulls. My name is Marcus Couch, and with me once again is my friend on the other end, pulling it off the shelf, he’s the definition of “Bull Lifer” himself, Mr. Wyse Black.
We’ve got several topics for you this episode. Including:
- More of why “We’re Back!” and our new pivot
- Bulls vs Pelicans Preseason Reaction
- Patrick Williams 4th year option picked up by the Bulls
- Injury Bug hits Bulls Early, We’ll talk about the Coby White injury and Lonzo Ball
- Our State of the #Bulls – New Season Edition
- Game predictions for the coming week
THE RETURN
So there are a lot of loyal listeners out there still with us after the sudden 2 year break that we took from the show. While I don’t want to take a lot of time with it, I do want to thank everyone for sticking with us and those that are absolutely brand new to what Wyse and I started way back in August of 2018.
As we are kind of in our own pre-season and training camp with the return, this is probably going to be the very last audio only version of the show. We will be doing things in video from next week on, and I hope you can join us there live as we do the show.
It’s not like your typical 2 camera Youtube/Streamyard reaction show. I’ve put a whole summer into getting the graphic elements ready and we are very excited to be bringing out our very best for the fellow Bulls Fans and Bull Lifers out there.
Bulls vs Pelicans Post-Game
After a seemingly endless summer without Bulls basketball, the Bulls are finally back into our lives once again. The first Preseason game vs the New Orleans Pelicans featured the return of slim fast spokesman Zion Williamson, much to the hype of just about every NBA announcer and presenter. After 20 minutes of Zion jock-sniffing, the national TV stooges remembered “Oh, that Bulls logo is the team that Zion is playing tonight” What a joke!
The Bulls went through Vooch early on, and he responded with 15 points, 11 rebounds and 4 blocks in just 23 minutes of play. I feel like All-Star Vooch is coming back.
Rookie Dalen Terry showed that he had some heart and hustle, making an impressive debut with 11 points, 7 rebounds and 2 steals. But preseason or not, the rookie displayed solid ball handling, including initiating offense with the third unit, and solid passing on top of his defensive energy. The UC crowd definitely took notice as Terry spearheaded the second-half run that helped the Bulls erase a 19-point deficit to make the mostly meaningless game competitive.
Dragic and Drummond were fun to watch in a Bulls uniform. Dragic showed some veteran moves that is a great preview of things to come.
In the end, the Bulls fell 129-125, but the score and the outcome were irrelevant. We just want to see the guys get some competitive tick and work out the lineup.
The Injury Bug hits Bulls early
Coby White has precautionary MRI for left knee injury
Bulls fourth-year guard Coby White underwent a precautionary MRI after leaving Tuesday’s preseason opener with a left knee contusion, Billy Donovan told reporters after the team’s Wednesday afternoon practice
“They (the Bulls’ medical staff) just told me that they wanted to take him, just to kind of standard procedure when a guy has something like that, to take him there and just make sure everything’s OK,” Donovan said.
“He (White) felt like he could have gone back and played last night. But they worry about those situations where muscles aren’t firing correctly and plants the wrong way and something else happens. I think we just took him in there today just to check him out.”
White played 2 minutes, 50 seconds in the first quarter of Tuesday’s 129-125 loss to the Pelicans before receiving what at first appeared a quick hook.
The team announced the injury at halftime and listed White as questionable to return. He came out onto the court during the break with a sleeve on his left leg and went through some warm-ups. But as Donovan said postgame, the risk was too great given the low stakes of the game.
“Coby wanted to go back in,” Donovan said. “With a preseason game it didn’t make any sense to even have him go back in there.”
White is slated to be one of four players — along with Goran Dragić, Alex Caruso and Ayo Dosunmu — to slide in and out of the Bulls’ point guard rotation during the preseason as the team seeks a formula to replace the indefinitely sidelined Lonzo Ball.
It’s unclear if this injury will cause White to miss any time. He underwent the MRI, Donovan said, at 12:30 p.m. CT on Wednesday, so the team did not have any results to report. Hopefully he will be fine.
LONZO BALL SURGERY
After a full 8 months of rehab since his knee injury, Lonzo Ball once again went under the knife to repair his ongoing knee issues. This leaves a potential player and rotational gap at the point guard position. Thankfully AK and Marc brought in Goran Dragic to help offset the load, and the fact that Ayo is more than capable of growing into the role of starter until Lonzo gets back into playing condition.
My question is, why didn’t the Bulls pull the trigger much sooner in the summer to make sure that Lonzo was ready for the season opener? Is this the first crack in the wisdom of AK/ME? To me this feels like the Derrick Rose situation all over again. Poorly handled, barely communicated and it leaves our whole “rebuild” in complete jeopardy.
Bulls Extend Patrick Williams Contract to 4th Year
The Chicago Bulls say that they have picked up their 2023/2024 team option on forward Patrick Williams, which means the 4th year of his deal is now guaranteed at $9,835,881.
In the Preseason opener, Williams played 17 minutes, tallied 5 points (2-for-7 shooting) and 5 rebounds, and was at times over-matched at the defensive end by Zion Williamson, who scored 13 points on 4-for-6 shooting.
Williams has got to be the most favored and coddled Chicago Bulls player I’ve ever seen in my 40+ years of being a Bulls fan. Even in the pre-season opener, Williams looked much the same. Timid, afraid and unable to live up to the potential that Bulls fans have relied on to take us to the next level.
This is a #4 pick who seems to be the invisible man most of the time he’s on the floor. He’s now in year 3, and we’re still talking about “potential”. We covet P.Will like he’s Kawhi Leonard. I just keep wondering when that version of him is going to appear.
State of the Bulls – New Season Edition
As we embark on a brand new Bulls season in 2022, Bulls Fans have high expectations for the upcoming season. The Bulls injury bug hit hard last season, resulting in a quick first-round playoff defeat. But realistically speaking, without DeMar DeRozan winning 6 games for the Bulls in the last seconds of the games, the Bulls probably would not have even made the play-in. COVID hit almost everyone on the team. Zach and Lonzo had knee issues and surgery, and while we recovered over the summer, other teams in the Eastern conference executed blockbuster trades and upgrades up and down their roster. The Bulls got Drummond and Dragic and drafted Dalen Terry.
My question is this: Do we have enough to compete? Do we even have enough to make the playoffs again?
Let’s predict our next few games for the coming week
Friday Oct 7
Bulls vs Orlando Magic
Marcus: W
Wyse: W
Sunday Oct 9
Bulls @ Raptors
Marcus: W
Wyse: L
Tuesday Oct 11
Bulls vs Bucks
Marcus: L
Wyse: W
Bulls Podcast Housekeeping
Before we close things out, we are looking for some folks to contribute if you want to be a part of the show, like a chat moderator when we do live streams, or artists, video editors, or anything like that, we want you to be able to show off your talent and if you want to get involved in our production, including official credits on IMDB, reach out to us in social with a DM. I’m happy to get everyone involved. Next week I should have a form on the website ready to go.
I will be reaching out to a lot of people with podcasts and YouTube channels to get them on as guests throughout the season, so we look forward to welcoming old friends and new faces to the show.
Also if fans are interested in participating in our Discord server, we’ll be talking about that next week. I am happy to put it out to the fans if you think you would all participate on a regular basis in our private community. We also plan on hosting some post-game call in shows and even VIDEO call in shows so you can be on the show yourself! We are pivoting and scaling the show about 10 fold, so please let all the other Bulls fans know that we are back and that we’re here to have fun with the fans again! We’ve been away for a while, so the help is certainly needed from our listeners and starting next week, viewers.
Wyse Social Links:
Marcus Social Links
Everything show related you can find @bullspodcast. Please make sure you are connected with us everywhere we are. Starting NEXT WEEK we will be doing the show on VIDEO and we’ll most likely be doing it LIVE from here on out, so make sure you check the social feeds to see when we are going live and SUBSCRIBE to the show at YouTube.com/BullsPodcast. We are going to make a lot of fun ways to interact with the fans that other podcasts and shows just aren’t doing, so we hope you continue to choose The Bulls Podcast as one of your regular watched programs throughout this Bulls season and beyond.
Until next time, Thank you for listening everyone, Go Bulls!
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