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- [00:01]
A
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B
law Everybody talked about it since I first moved to Oregon. The big one, the earthquake that trashed the whole West Coast. Total destruction. Officially calling it the largest natural disaster in American history. I just didn't know what would help me next. So I took it all. Even the gun. It was time cello see why American Afterlife is the number one fiction and drama podcast in America presented by Pair of Thieves. Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Available now. Dan Bernstein Unfiltered Unfiltered on 312 Sports DBU on 312 is brought to you in partnership with my bookie and today by Aura Frames a u r a frames.com promo code DBU for $25 off their best selling Carver Matte Frame so we finished up yesterday and then my phone buzzes and I look down, I see the Bulls have hired a guy. I'm like, okay, well, that's what we expected, that all the reporting was leading everybody to follow the trail of breadcrumbs back to the comfortable and the familiar and the reinstatement of former Chicago Bull employee Matt Lloyd as the new head of the organization. And then record scratch and oh, okay then. All right. Bryson Graham is a is going to be running the Chicago Bulls, the side of the Bulls that we care about. Bryson Graham is going to be running it. He's 39 years old. He came up through the Pelicans and the Hawks and is a former player. He is known for his scouting work. He's known for identifying and developing talent. And this is a major, major leap of faith for Michael Reinsdorf and the Chicago Bulls. And to me, that's the story for all of us who defaulted to the idea of them choosing the path of least resistance. We were all surprised. And that's great. I am so happy to be surprised. I'm so happy to have to begin to get to know Bryson Graham and start making calls about this young man and his vision and how he sees The Bulls organization's place in wherever the NBA is next. What can he see? This is a huge first press conference for whenever they schedule it. This is because we don't always, we've never met this guy before. And if you want to check out the, the first blush organizations win championships that Jason and I did yesterday, just sort of getting the news, making sure that we're coached up enough to get out and talk about him a little bit. We're not even going to really get into the coaching aspect right now because there's so many bigger organizational issues that we, it remains to be seen what kind of power and what kind of resources Bryson Graham is going to have because when you are young and hungry, you, you don't have your pick of jobs. And unfortunately when the Bulls decided at the beginning, when, when they, they kind of half assed this and said, oh well, we're getting rid of everybody except we're keeping the coach. And you got to like working with a coach. And that was something they did wrong. And I think it took Billy Donovan to recognize it and tell him that they did it wrong, but that eventually the right thing ended up happening only because Billy was wise enough to understand that this was untenable. You can't do what Michael Reinsdorf did. But I think they recovered from that initial screw up. I think they recovered from it by deciding on a clean break, by deciding to do something scary for them, for John Paxton to not. You spent a career, you spent a decade molding Matt Lloyd into what could be this viable middle aged head of an organization. And that would be a massive victory personally, for John Paxson to say, we spent all this time developing this kid that we plucked out of the comms department and taught him how to do all this and gave him every opportunity, gave him increased responsibility, let him, let him leave the nest and go to another organization and become general manager of a successful organization. And now to cap that all off, we are bringing him back and they didn't do it. That's something to be celebrated because that tells me a couple of things as I'm understanding the process. Even if the expectation was that Matt Lloyd would end up winning this, he didn't. And it tells me that the fact that they would allow themselves to be that impressed by someone else to be completely objective and fair in their assessment of the candidates, I don't know if the guy's going to succeed or fail. Please, like don't get ahead of yourself and say, well, you like this. Hire you like, I like the ak Higher. I liked it because of the idea behind it. Go, go to the successful organization, go outside the organization. Everything I liked about that. Then they got, they hired two guys out of it and they bring in Mark Eversley. And now that I think about it, I would like to know more about that hire. And that's why as I started thinking and I was sort of disabused of this notion as we were discussing yesterday in owc because I still think they need, they need a high ranking nerd in this organization and I use that term lovingly, but they need a quant guy, they need an economics major, they need somebody who is really well versed in that side of the organization as a trusted lieutenant to a player side guy. And I would want the counterbalance moving conversely as well that if this, if they did have a number side guy, I would definitely want it counterbalanced by a scouting side guy. It's just the way it works in a, in a healthy front office right now. But they're going to let him if he wants, if Bryson Graham recognizes that and wants that, he will make that higher. There isn't going to be anything that is, that is forced down. So I do think that they might have learned the lesson from the misstep on Donovan to say if we're going to, let's. Here you go. You are in charge of Bulls basketball as we mentioned. What do you need? What do you need to make this work? Who and what that means? That entire slate of assistant coaches, your front bench, your back bench could be all gone. Head coach, all those guys, I don't want you hand picking your guys. Who are you're going to have on your coach's bench and you have, well, he works for him and he spies for him and if he's around the weight room, he say that's out, that's done, that's over and no more ownership ambassador guys who are there sticking their nose and stuff like Randy Brown used to do. None of that. You don't. This is your basketball side belongs to Bryson Graham and if he fails, you fire him. But you give him your rubric for success and you give him everything he needs to accomplish his vision. And I'll tell you what gets really frustrating are the number of times when you root for various teams when you keep being told your team is somehow behind the times. And I don't want to globalize this too much, but I know that it happened for years with the Bears and it happened for years with this understanding. Well, you know, they can hire all These people. But they gotta, they really have to do what other teams do when it comes to building up their infrastructure and spending money and having scouts everywhere. They need to have scouts and having enough people doing these jobs. And then you still hear it about the White Sox. Well, I mean anytime they want to actually do the business that other teams or their competitors do, they just, they don't seem to want to. They've got one guy that they call their analytics department and Gary Reinsdorf doesn't really believe in anything but old fashioned scouting and grit and gumption and everybody being David Eckstein and Eddie Stankey. But someday they'll modernize and do things the way other teams do. Just it gets wearying it over time. Then and now you hear that, well, maybe the Bulls will finally staff up. The Bulls will finally approach the business in the same way. And the creature comforts and everything you've got to have to make players happy in your organ. A complete and total overhaul of the medical side. And that is something that Bryson Graham has to talk to, it has to address. And I, and I hope he's asked about it. I would ask him about this at the press conference because if you really want the truth about one of the huge headwinds for the Bulls right now, it's their, it's their reputation medically, which around the league is awful. And I'm not going to point fingers because that doesn't matter. What matters is the perception around the league. Not what I think, not what you think, but what I know players think. Can I trust this organization with managing my health, with getting me back from injury, from understanding and diagnosing what's wrong and working back what's wrong. The Bulls have to fix that and they've got to fix it with, with something. It doesn't necessarily have to be just for splash, but they've got to make it clear to the league that they know their reputation, that they know that the players talk. Players are billion dollar individual corporations. Now this is major business and you can have all this salary cap space, but if you got a bad reputation around the league that needs fumigation, somehow fix that. The other thing I want them to do is reimagine the entire organizational relationship with their developmental mechanism. And that means whatever is going on with the Windy City Bulls, whatever the point was, and Billy Donovan III Ads as of right now is the head coach of the Windy City Bulls. So I don't know if he's staying. Is he going? Because everything should be open. Graham should be able to walk in here and said and be able to say this entire staff is. You'll have to re interview for your jobs. You have to put everybody on the street. But you can say right now that my basketball people coming in are free to do whatever they want in staffing these positions. If we retain scouts, we retain them, and if we don't, we don't. But we got to do this fast because we got a draft coming up and we can use the reports that we have in here that all this work has been done. And that's part of the problem right now, too. Making this change when you did is all of this work for this draft to this point has been done by AK's regime. So you, you can say these. This is a huge year. Yeah, it is. It is huge to have these top picks. We'll know more Sunday about exactly where these picks are and do they jump up? Do they not? But man, that, that. I don't know what you can do retroactively of how you can go through the scouting reports or whether or not you're hiring enough scouts from enough different teams who can then overlay and apply and, and rework your board. But the board's pretty done and it wasn't done by Bryson Graham's people. He doesn't even have a staff yet. His front office doesn't exist yet. So they need. You can't have the ghost of the previous regime having too big a say in this incredibly significant upcoming draft. It's easy for the Bulls to be like, oh yeah, the board's done. By whom is now that you're. You're doing this here, it's May 5th, Cinco de Mayo in Felice. Cinco de Mayo. It is not Mexican Independence Day, by the way. Cinco de Mayo, just so you know. And it's probably already cliche to mention what it is and what it isn't, I'm sure. But have the new people have strong thoughts about who you're drafting and what's going on and who's of value and who's not. Because everything is in play. Everything. Everybody at every level of your organization, everybody that you have beaten the Bushes going to high school games in Slovenia or high school games in China or the Academy games elsewhere in some of these other countries where there's 12 year olds and 13 year olds playing, you have to find out if you're doing it right. And if you're not, you have to start to do it right. And then you can talk about who you want as a coach not to Mention, are you looking at, are you going to hire the coach now who you believe will be leading you, your eventual championship team, or are you hiring a developmental coach now? Is this a point A to point B, where you need a certain kind of coach for where your team is right now because of how you expect to shape this roster? Or do you say, look, we're going to hire this guy and hope he grows into the job, and then we'll find out later if he can manage a team that's ready to go win a title? There used to be a concept of point A to point B, point B to point C, because the Bulls did it. The Bulls did it when they fired Doug Collins in the summer of 1989, that Doug Collins manic energy was what they needed. Now I also think that they fired him just because he was fighting with Michael too much. And there were some other things going on where Doug was a bit of too live a wire maybe at that time in his career. And it was very energetic, and you got the upsides of the energy and you got the downsides of the energy. And they needed somebody who was a little bit calmer. And Phil was that guy. And it allowed Michael to assume more power in how he shaped the team. We didn't talk about it in the same terms that we do now about players, coach and player empowerment, but there was some of that that Phil knew. Phil. Phil is much more comfortable allowing players to take up certain spaces. And he knew where to exist and how to exist in a different way for a team. And it worked. And they won multiple championships and everything was awesome. But it's to. To have that kind of vision now and say, hey, we're going to bring this coach and he's going to be perfect for the first three years, and then we're going to move on to this kind of coach. I think that may be presuming a bit too much that you should just hire the right person and hope that person is ready to grow into the job and. Or look at how you build out a staff, because there are some people who were head coaches that could really contribute on a bench while not necessarily being a head coach. And man, all the names that are out there right now, I can't wait to do these shows. But if you could tell me that you have Steve Kerr as your Phil Jackson, like, executive coach, but you. Who. Who's it, who's over here who never leaves the film room? He's pasty, he's pale. All he does is sit and scream at a Screen as he watches tape. And there's Tom Thibodeau. And Tom Thibodeau emerges with your defensive game plan. And Tom Thibodeau stands over there on the bench and screams at the defense. And he moves his hand in that strange way as if he has a joystick that's controlling where the players are supposed to go. Watch him sometime. Sit behind him at a game and watch that hand. And it looks like he's literally trying to joystick the players around. Is that your. Is that. You know, go ahead. You got all the money. You can spend whatever you want. You bring in five head coaches and give them all different responsibilities and have Stan Van Gundy over here. Apparently. I'm still waiting. Got a listener who said that he sent me a Stan Van Gundy body pillow. Now, I don't know if he's kidding, because supposedly it's here in the building. It just hasn't been sent up yet. We got. Our office manager is trying to track it down. But if we find it, you will see it on this camera. You will. If it's. If it is genuinely here, trust me, you are going to see it.
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C
But, hey, so when you. When you look at Bryson Graham, I know you talked about what you hope to see happen with him coming in the organization. What has he. What has he done from a scouting standpoint? Because that. And what I'm reading about is that he has a great scouting eye. So who is. Who's he drafted?
- [19:38]
B
What organizations has he. Trey Murphy, Nikhil Alexander, Walker, Dyson Daniels, Herbert Jones. But these aren't guys you win championships because of. There's a. This is an enormous leap of faith. You're. You're trusting the arc of this guy's career, moving into the next thing, and finding those guys is great. Your team's got to have not just one or two. You need three of those guys. You need. Those are. Those are guys. All those other names I just said, those are guys you can win championships with, but they're not. Because of. The key is finding the. Because of. Is finding that person, developing that person. And that's when people said, you know, Matt Lloyd's biggest feather in his cap when he worked for the Bulls was being vocal in the identification of Jimmy Butler. That when they picked him 30th and he develops into a borderline hall of Famer. That's what you're talking about, is that ability. Yeah.
- [20:50]
C
Let me ask you this, then. And you said that it was. This was an unexpected hire, kind of under the radar, didn't really see this coming. Thinking outside the box. And you liked all that. You liked the fact that they went in a different direction than what you expected to see happen.
- [21:04]
B
Yes.
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C
But to call it a leap of faith, how does that make you feel as a. As a Bulls fan? I mean, shouldn't this organization bring someone in that has a proven track record of success instead of a leap of faith? This isn't some startup new organization that hasn't had success in the past.
- [21:23]
B
No, it's.
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C
And I'm not trying to be a downer on it. I'm just trying to understand how this is a positive thing, because I didn't expect you to call Bryson Graham and say that this is a leap of faith.
- [21:33]
B
It is, because they need it. It's the first time when your organization confronts what it knows it's not. Is the answer to your question. It's an admission. A hiring this far outside their comfort zone is an admission that our trophies don't matter anymore.
- [21:57]
C
Okay, that's fair. No, that's fair, and I understand that. But this. It feels kind of similar to what the Bears did with Ben Johnson. And when Ben Johnson got here, realizing that this was a much heavier lift. We talked about that a lot.
- [22:11]
B
Rebuild of a rebuild.
- [22:13]
C
That this Bulls organization is a. This is a very, very heavy lift. There is a lot to do here. And is it. Is it. Should Bulls fans feel confident that someone like. Can. Can Bryson Graham do this heavy lift and we don't have it described as
- [22:32]
B
a leap of faith?
- [22:33]
C
Doesn't sound very confident. Inducing.
- [22:39]
B
I don't know anything about Bryson Graham. I can't. I could. I'd be making it up.
- [22:44]
C
Yeah, I know, and I don't want
- [22:45]
B
you to do that.
- [22:46]
C
I just.
- [22:46]
B
I would be making it. But to me, all I can judge this on right now, I'm not judging Bryson Graham yet. I'm judging Michael Reinsdorf. Okay, we're not there yet.
- [22:58]
C
We can't.
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B
We can't.
- [22:59]
C
He's been here.
- [23:00]
B
He's been here 30 seconds, right? He hasn't done anything except, you know, win this process. But what we're judging. The. The only opinions I can have is the fact that Michael Reinsdorf at least had the guts to swallow hard. And I don't know what was said to him. I don't know. It's possible. Bryson Graham sat down and said, mike, you got a lot of work to do, man. I'm the guy to do it, but you need more of this. You need less of this. You need more of this. You got to Forget about this. This guy you think is good, he sucks. This guy who you think sucks is actually good, you're not developing people correctly. You're not scouting people correctly. Like, if to me, the fact that an outsider got this, that an outsider won this process tells me at least that if. I never thought Michael Reinsdorf would do something this scary, this risky. It's really important that I keep saying, I don't know if it's necessarily going to work, but they need. Oh, God, this word disruption. And I feel like I'm on Shark Tank because he's coming in to be a disruptor in the space or whatever you want to say. But it really, it is true in this case. The Bulls were in dire need of disruption, and part of it was the speed of movement, the speed of decision making that came with the previous regime. I was bothered that they needed. How long. How many months did it take to fire Jim Boylan? I knew they eventually would. Yeah, but you don't. You don't need more than five minutes in a room with him before you're not working for my team anymore. Get out of here. Get as far away as possible that I. My. My first like. And I kept saying, all right, be patient. They know. They've. They're already sidelining him. They've got other plans. But be decisive. Don't dither. Be decisive and don't say, well, you know, we wanted to go with all of these developmental prospects, but now we got pressure to get good, and we're going to make some trades and we'll give away some future assets because we want to be competitive. Stop that. You will be competitive on your way to winning a championship. Being competitive is not a goal. Being competitive is a byproduct of a goal. And that was a big mistake the previous regime made. You don't work to be competitive. You work to be dominant. You work to stomp on every other team every year. And if you're doing that right, you will be competitive even as you make mistakes, even as you cast guys aside that don't necessarily fit, even though you thought they might. You don't double down on mistakes. You don't extend Patrick Williams. You don't keep giving all this leash to all of these players that, well, maybe Dale and Terry will get better, maybe Vuch will get faster. Maybe DeMar DeRozan will shoot more threes. Maybe Zach Levine will learn how to play basketball. Maybe Lonzo Ball will come back from having every limb removed like you. You don't say, if this, then this, then we can be competitive. I want Bryson Graham to walk in and say, we are going to win multiple titles. We are going to sustain not competitiveness, we are going to sustain industry leading excellence. And as we do that, being competitive is never something we're going to have to worry about. It is. Being competitive is never a goal. It's nice, it's fun, it's great. We root for it. You come up short in the playoffs, you're still there and you end up making a lot more money. But you, you must remain focused on the highest possible goals. Play to the highest level of your professional abilities all the time and the rest will take care of itself. And, and it's my hope that he is walking in and, and being able to do what Theo Epstein did with the Cubs. Yet another example, modernization. How many Chicago teams need to have people shine a flashlight around and get cobwebs out and ask questions? What does this person do? For how long has this person been doing it? Why? How many people work in this office? Three. Well, we need 12 things like that. What are we spending on?
- [27:57]
C
Like there's two of those teams left in town.
- [28:02]
B
It becomes tight. I don't know why. It's a Chicago thing that we've just kind of settled in to things that are considered normal around here. I don't want what we know of Bulls basketball to be considered normal. Where other teams just magically every year, every time you turn on your television, who's that? Who's that? Who's that? And they got young wing players and rim protectors and big long guys. Where did he come from? Oh, he was a two way guy and then he earned more time and he's starting to develop and now he's really good. I mean the Bulls had, so look at what, you know, guys like Max Stru, they had him, he was here. Guys come through here and they go to other teams and they do better. But the only thing we can really consider now is the fact that the Bulls maybe, just maybe recognized how far away they are. And that's good. It's really good to say we're just not doing this right. We haven't been doing it right. What aren't you doing it right? What aren't you doing right? And why, why aren't you and somebody from a different organization might be able to tell you that's what I hoped would, that would happen. And then it seems like Karnashovas and Eversley just fell into the same malaise of comfort and risk aversion and risk avoidance too Often, or they were just bad at their jobs. Or maybe, maybe taking Patrick Williams at 4 was a risk. Somebody who was raw materials and didn't develop. And you're still paying for the mistake of the Jim Boylan years. You're still paying for it. Paying for all that wasted time with one of the dumbest people I've ever been around in basketball. And they had him in the organization for way too long and it's hard to recover from those things. And it may be the recovery is longer. It's possible that Graham thinks they haven't bottomed out yet. It's possible. I'm not saying it's probable. I'm saying it's possible.
- [30:20]
C
Let them know that they have.
- [30:21]
B
This is an opportunity to reimagine everything. And now if you haven't bottomed out, now is when you got the cap space and some draft picks to try to figure some things out. You just traded away half your team for nothing. That's how this thing ended for, for ak. That's why they eventually became a joke. They went and they went and they went and they went and they got worse and they got worse and they got worse and people left and they trade everything away and they have nothing to show for it. Look how long they, they hung on to Nicola Vucevic. Double doubles. Great. 16 points and, and 10 rebounds in a loss. And then he goes to the Celtics. They can't play him. They can't even put him on the floor until they find a matchup where he can keep up either speed wise or athleticism wise at this point in his career. And that was your, your, your the rock of whatever you want to call the rebuild. He was supposed to be their version of Jokic with everything running through him, and they just, they misidentified it. He played really hard and he was a terrific pro and a good guy and a really good player, but he just wasn't what they thought he could be and wasn't ever going to be what they thought he was. You can't make those mistakes and give up what you gave up in draft capital. And then, and then AK's like, well, I don't like second round picks. I don't value second round picks. Well, you trade seven guys, all you get back your second round picks. Well, what does that say? Why'd you do that? I'm excited about this because I'm a little scared about it, I guess is the answer to your question. Because it represents the unknown. It represents a risk and I think a commitment. I don't think Michael Reinsdorf can do this. And then ever do one of two things. Ever say, well, we didn't really spend a lot of money on that before, or that's not the way we're used to doing it around here. Good, good. You're going to spend money on more things, and there are going to be a lot of ways, ideally that the Bulls do business. That isn't your way of doing business. Someone's got to go through the basketball side of your organization and ask all those hard questions. How long have you been at your job? What have your responsibilities been? Have we been successful at this? And man, you confront the medical issues, talk to people around the league. And this is, this is the other thing I would be asking in the interview process. What do people think of us? What do players, what do agents, what do people think about this organization? How are we not fans, not everybody in other countries who loves the Bulls and buys Bulls gear and, and loves all the branding and everything else? That's not what I'm. I know you're. You're pretty good in that regard. The business side, fine enough to touch that. But how do players talk about the Bulls? How do we travel? Is it top of the line? Is it absolutely top of the line? Do we need access to a new plane? What about our. What can we do to our practice facility and not just like league standard? What can we do next? What else can we do? And whatever report cards that you can read from the union or anybody else. Are we taking care of families? Are we taking care of kids? Are we making players professionally comfortable here? Can we get through a sentence about the team that doesn't mention Michael Jordan? Can we somehow move this organization into a future that isn't about Michael Jordan? Confront that. How long ago was 1998? Now are we going. We're going on 30 years. Is that right? 30 years?
- [34:34]
C
28.
- [34:35]
B
28 years. It's been 28 years since the Bulls won a title. You're going to have an. Ideally, your roster is going to be filled with players who weren't born when the Bulls last won a title. Not born. So let's stop with that. Let's stay 28 years. Move on. The league has changed. The game has changed immensely. You wouldn't recognize a basketball game from 1998 if you put it on right now. I dare you. Watch a whole game. Watch a whole NBA game. Watch. Go pick a Bulls game. I was at all of them. A lot of them sucked. But go watch a game. You're like, oh, My God. This is what it looked like in 1998. It's going to look like it was forever ago. I haven't watched since Jordan Left. That was 28 years ago. Stop saying that. You don't like the. If you don't like basketball, you don't like basketball. That's fine, whatever. I'm not going to make you like. I don't care if you do or you don't. Don't give me that crap. The Bulls have a chance here. They've got a chance to start mattering in a way that isn't. Oh, they've had a good half a year. Oh, they've had a good couple of weeks. Billy Donovan knew how big this lift was. Billy Donovan knew. He understood that if. That if they were going to do this right, that this is. This is a. It's a big deal. It is. Hunting around in your organization for things that have been there for 30 years, 40 years. What are they still doing here? Clean it all out, hose it down, rebuild it. And if this guy can do that, he's. He's gonna. This. This will be a hell of a place to accomplish that. They're a long way from it. But when it comes to Bryson Graham, all I can say right now, we're going to. We're going to cover every detail when it comes to the coaching search, when it comes to the building, the front office and what we have to learn about every one of these guys and everybody who's on the staff and everybody who's going to be staffing up their G League and all these new scouts that I hope they're going to be hiring to do all of that. But all I can say now to Bryson Graham is what David Foster Wallace said in his commencement speech to Kenyon College. I wish you way more than luck. The NBA playoffs are easy money at my bookie if you stop overthinking it. You like crazy parlays. Sure. You like using all your spreadsheets and doing all your props, but you don't need those things. You just need a team that you trust. And that's why playoff basketball hits so well at my book. You got a clean board and you can keep it simple. Right now, the Knicks are rolling. You want to just bet the Knicks and these massive victories that they're amassing, you can do that. If you think that this little setback in Game 1 for Victor Wembanyama, despite his 12 blocks, is enough, that that's going to spur him to a title, then bet on him. Let the Playoffs, do the rest. If you're new to my bookie and you've never made a deposit, there's even less reason to sit this one out because of the code that I'm going to give you right now. DBU, Dan Bernstein, unfiltered. Any bet you choose up to $500 is fully covered. Make your play and then if it doesn't hit, you get it right back. That's the bet back bonus token. That's what you get with the promo code. Dbu. So pick your squad, take the shot. Don't just watch the playoffs. Cash in on them. Only at my bookie.
- [38:43]
C
Hey, Dan, Real quick, too, I just want to update you real fast on the story I shared with you yesterday about the umpire, the crazy umpire that we had.
- [38:49]
B
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Did you see this? Yeah. Somebody. Somebody said that it was. And that man was George McCaskey.
- [38:57]
C
Yo. I didn't. That was not emailed to me, but I got an email from the coach of the team. That was the Sunday morning 8am game where the escalation and issues happened, where the police were called.
- [39:08]
B
Oh, yeah.
- [39:09]
C
Okay. He shared a little, little story of what happened during the game and just. Yeah, so we had gone back and forth a little bit in some emails and seems like a kind of a. A good dude had his. Has his head on straight as far as coaching youth sports, but ran into that issue yesterday with that, with that umpire. So had a little more. A little more to it, but just crazy, crazy stuff. And the things that I had heard, he confirmed that that's what was actually said. So just crazy stuff. Also do want to mention to you if you have it there in front of you, the Chicago Window guys read.
- [39:41]
B
Yes.
- [39:42]
C
Let's add that into our, our collection
- [39:44]
B
here today as well, please. Thank you. I, I do. I. In fact, I keep everything right here. And I'm. I'm happy to do that.
- [39:51]
C
Thank you.
- [39:51]
B
Because I love Russ. I'll do anything, you know, I'll do anything for Russell. I know you have. I do. And I actually, it's funny because I was going to mention I did get permission. I don't know if you saw the email that came in from the guy that just had the experience with Russ.
- [40:07]
C
Oh, I did not.
- [40:08]
B
Yes. And I've got permission to actually mention that right now. I've gone through all. I've gone through all the proper channels, so I'm actually going to do that. So last night in the Cubs game, there was a moment where home plate umpire Manny Gonzalez. It was a Was it a curveball from Ben Brown? Is that. I'm trying to remember exactly what it was. But there was a challenge to a pitch, happens all the time, which now become mundane. And the umpire touched his own head. I'd never seen that before. So it was, it was a strike, called a ball because the pitch was low, but it was probably caught low even though it crossed within, well within the strike zone. And it was appealed, and it was indeed appealed properly. But they noticed it in the broadcast. Both Boog and JD who, by the way, were great to hang out with last night. I love the sound of that particular broadcast right now. It's very comfortable and JD Is finding spots to be very, very dryly funny. He's, he's got a very droll way of little reactions or noises or things. And it's a, it's a, it's a very sort of refined little taste you got, you got to listen to him carefully. But there are reactions in there that are just priceless. And they noticed that the ump's like, yeah, I got that wrong. Please challenge that. And then I thought I overthought, as is my want, that. What does it mean if an umpire publicly there was begging for his own call to be challenged? First of all, the humility. What wonderful humility on the part of a completely fallible human being, like we all are, that so many umpires take this position of this infallibility. I'm right because I'm the umpire. And yet with every bit of evidence we get, we know it's impossible to call balls and strikes correctly. It is not humanly possible against these, these warlocks that are on the mound now doing the magic things with the baseball at a thousand miles an hour and making it drop and dance and move and, you know, hitting it's hard enough. And then figuring out exactly, you know, you don't have to just like make contact with it. You have to determine exactly where it was relative to that square or the cube or however you define the strike zone. And here, open up by like, please, somebody challenge that. I got that wrong. Oh, oh, thank you for challenging that. And then it raised the question of if an umpire knows he got it wrong and feels that way, rather than stewing over it after the game as he's sitting with a, with a glass of scotch. Get it right. And it shouldn't take the humility, it shouldn't take a challenge. It gets back to what I said before, that as the more you play this out, all roads lead to full time abs. Yes, I Think that that's. And you pointed that out during off the Ivy when I, when we first brought this up, and I kind of wanted to expand that. The opportunity to talk about that here is that it really is the answer when it comes to everything that we're going to talk about. And for an ump to be like, oh, geez, I got that wrong. Why can't an ump challenge his own call? Why can't an ump say, hey, hey, hey, in the best interest of fairness and the game, if we're doing this right, I, I gotta say I got this wrong. Yeah.
- [44:12]
C
And I, I understand what you're saying, and I, I think one of the issues is the fact that umpires can hold a grudge against a player or a team and deliberately make bad calls. We've heard him talk about it in the Cubs broadcast that, and we need more data to track this. Have the strike zones expanded after teams lose their challenges? Are umpires remembering things and going back and holding grudges? We also don't want an umpire to be questioning his own calls as he's going through a game. So it really just does lead to just do abs every time. It doesn't. It doesn't. It doesn't say anything more negative about the umpires. Like, I'd rather have whatever insecurity they're going to feel by having a robot judge every call than to have the opportunities for them to be human and inflict their own judgment. Correct teams or player out of. Out of a grudge or vengeance. Because he challenged me twice in this series, and now I'm gonna get, you know, I'm gonna. I'm gonna get this guy back, whatever it might be.
- [45:14]
B
Get it out.
- [45:15]
C
Take that out of it, because.
- [45:16]
B
Get it out. Yep. It's dumb.
- [45:18]
C
Like, take the human element out of balls and strikes. The most basic, necessary, important thing that we need called correctly in a baseball game are balls and strikes.
- [45:27]
B
It's not romantic. There's. There's. There's nothing nostalgic or romantic about it, about being wrong. Like, nobody complain.
- [45:34]
C
Like, when there's a review at first base, there's no fans that complain about it. Oh, my God. I can't believe they're taking time to get the call right. No one complains. Let's just do that. With balls and strikes, it doesn't take a ton of time and figure out, devise a system that it's called, and either there's an earpiece or whatever it might be, however it might is indicated. Just do it that way. For balls and strikes.
- [45:58]
B
I mentioned that I got permission to use this when I'm talking about Russ Armstrong and Chicago Window guys. And by the way, his number is 847-302-9171 and you can find everything you need to know about Russ and the windows that will make your house and your life better@chicagowindowguys.com so I am going to read this and I promise you this is not edited. This was an email that came in at 8:27am on Saturday morning and I replied on at 4:12pm I believe when I got this, I was out all day. So this is Dave and Roselle. Okay. Who just sent me an email that said this. I don't want to say definitely I called Russ to do my windows because of your show, but I'm not saying that I called Russ Armstrong to do my windows because of your show. Anyway, we felt it was time to replace all our windows, our entire home. We called Russ Armstrong and Chicago Window guys. We also called three or four other companies to get quotes. I probably learned more about windows in those three or four weeks than I ever thought I would learn about anything. Russ was the only one who showed up, took a look around, assessed the situation and gave me a quote right off the top of his head without a huge presentation, without wasting two hours of my time, and then parenthetically, or more so with an exclamation point, and was patient enough to wait for me to do my due diligence before I called him back and signed Chicago window guys to do our windows. I'm talking around 14 windows, a sliding patio door, the whole nine yards. Russ's guys were awesome. They installed all the windows in one day. Then they came back for a half day, the day after to finish the outside work, and that was it. They cleaned up. They were nice. They were professional. We love the new windows. Thank you for recommending Russ on your show. I think you definitely should continue to do so. Russ himself was easy to talk to and he seems like a really good dude. Thanks again. A very appreciative Dave in Roselle. And all I did was send back a note. What did I write at 4:12pm I said, great to hear, Dave. Russ is a good dude and I don't need to say much more than that other than his number is 847-302-9171 and he's got five star reviews that you can read. I don't know if they're going to be any better than that one from Dave and Roselle. But there they are. They're just like that. Other people feel the same way when you go to window guys. ChicagoNowInDowGuys.com we mentioned Colson Montgomery yesterday on the pod and this question came to me from a White Sox insider who said, who listened to the show and said, hey, that's good stuff on Montgomery. And I was basically, the point being he's a more important, better player than Munetaka Murakami. As amazing as Murakami is, the Murakami one trick pony is the great trick that you want to have, but it's not as important as a star shortstop. And if Colson Montgomery is a star shortstop, that's a huge deal. And the question was if in fact the White Sox have developed a high high school draft pick hitter. He's the first since when. When is the last time the White Sox organization drafted a hitter out of high school and that player became a successful major league bat? And I had to think about it. When I saw that question, I thought, first of all, there haven't been that many high school hitters that they've drafted and there's been some spectacular failures in there. But the first name that I thought of was Harold Baines. You laugh, but 77. And I thought, well, okay, they drafted Harold Baines number one overall. That was a Bill Veck draft pick. And it can't be right. That can't be right. It can't be 1977. And then it gets debatable. But based on Maddie, what you, you and I just sort of did some back of the envelope stuff here as we were kind of talking about it, between the two of us, there was Ron Karkovice in there who was right out of high school and straight out of Compton. No, not Carco. But that's a career. 81 ops plus. He was a bad hitter. He was a really good defensive player. Star defensive player, special defensive player. He rose to, to the majors, backing up Carlton Fisk because he could throw guys out. That's not a hitter. So then we looked at what about Joe Creedy? Joe Criti was drafted in 96. You know what else? Joe Creedy was bad. He only had two seasons of an above league average WRC plus and his career WRC plus was 90. His best season as a White Sox was 2002. That was his best season when he slashed.285.311.515. So it's an OPS of.826. His next best season was 2006. That's when he had his Best home run season and his WRC plus was 106. Now great defense player to 4 win season that year. So you can make an argument that because of a couple really good years, the answer is Joe Creedy. But career wise, not great. The answer might be Mike Cameron that you're going that far back.
- [52:32]
C
And what. What year was that again?
- [52:34]
B
Mike Cameron was drafted by the White Sox in the 18th round of the 1991amateur draft. So that was. I was graduating from college. That was the year I graduated from college. The White Sox drafted Mike Cameron out of LaGrange High School in LaGrange, Georgia. And then he ended up toiling in their organization until they. Until they. They brought him up at age 22. And he was bad for a couple years in limited action. First full action in 97 and started out well. Had a bad year in 98 and then was traded for Paul Canerco before 1999. And then Mike Cameron got real good. Real good. That guy was. He averaged to being a four win player. He had 46.7 career WAR. Think about that. 46.7 career WAR. And with the White Sox he compiled 5.9 of those wins. That's all.
- [53:56]
C
So is that the last one?
- [53:58]
B
It may be the last really good. The last guy with an above average hitter I believe is the very talented Mike Cameron.
- [54:07]
C
So 1991, then before that 1977. And yeah, I'm sure that we would.
- [54:14]
B
I may have missed somebody. Like I say, I didn't drill down. You didn't either. I'm not claiming that this is definitive research here. So if there's other names, fine, bring them.
- [54:22]
C
But I mean I'm sure that there aren't many as I, you know, did a quick Google search. It said that 17 players have been drafted out of high school that have gone to the hall of Fame. So I'm sure that this is more common. These numbers are very similar to other other. It's not like the White Sox are deficient in this area. I'm sure that's pretty much normal for. I would get. I would assume maybe I'm wrong and maybe.
- [54:44]
B
Well, White Sox are bad at it, but it's just hall of Fame. All I'm.
- [54:48]
C
No, no, no, no, no. I'm just saying 17 total have gone on to. I. That was a number that was even as higher than I thought it would be. But I'm talking about just being an average player. I'm sure that this is an area that. Where the White Sox are deficient or some kind of negative comment about The White Sox. I'm sure that's pretty similar among most
- [55:06]
B
organizations, I would assume. Maybe. But I'm just talking about a 100 WRC plus or a 100 OPS plus.
- [55:12]
C
Yeah. And maybe I'm wrong and the White Sox are bad at it. Maybe other organizations have been better at drafting kids out of high school that it can actually hit at the major league level.
- [55:21]
B
So look, I think if we want to say developing a. A better than average major league hitter is hard enough, if we then say it's even harder to determine somebody who's. That you've got more variance and somebody that much younger, that it's generally not easy to develop a good major league hitter. Of course. Of course it's hard.
- [55:44]
C
It's hard to draft a good college player and get him.
- [55:47]
B
It's hard to draft anybody.
- [55:48]
C
Yes.
- [55:48]
B
Because, you know, baseball's really hard.
- [55:51]
C
There's hundreds of names drafted.
- [55:53]
B
It's. Yes.
- [55:54]
C
Yeah.
- [55:54]
B
And most of the people in most of the minor leagues everywhere don't matter. Yes. And there were. That was another thing that was discussed in the Cub game yesterday that I found really interesting, that Boog was telling a story about Ruben Amaro when he used to laugh every time these organization, the ranking organizations would come out with an organization's top 30 prospects. And Ruben Amara always used to say, there is not an organization that exists ever that has had 30 prospects ever.
- [56:27]
C
I mean, look at. Have three.
- [56:28]
B
Right. Three. And everybody else in the organization exists in all other. All of minor league baseball. The entire system of minor league baseball actually exists to create developmental opportunities for those three in every organization. Yeah. And at any given time, three or five or seven or one or none. The actual number of true major league prospects.
- [57:00]
C
Yeah. And it's, it's interesting because the, the players themselves know, like I was, I was telling you when I talked with Schomburg Boomers coach Jamie Bennett.
- [57:08]
B
Yeah.
- [57:09]
C
He was in the Phillies organization when Ryan Howard and Chase Utley came up. And he was like, the second they get in the locker room, everyone around is like, okay, those two guys are different and they won't be here very long. So even the guys in, like in the, in the, in the grind of it, they know. They know when a guy comes up, it's like, no, all right, well, this guy's not at our level. So.
- [57:31]
B
Maddie, you know how many years I spent in low A. Like, they, you know, then it's really rare to have somebody who takes off in a weird way. Sometimes a pitcher, they'll change an arm angle, they'll Teach a. They'll teach a knuckleball. Somebody will figure something out or you get a weird growth spurt or something like that. But for the most part, you know, the raw materials that people are working with here. Yeah. And that's why draft pedigree has a lot to do with it. But I remember having, I mentioned this before, having a conversation with the Rockford Royals first baseman who was. He played at University of Texas. He was all Big eight. He was like one of the best hitters in University of Texas history. I mean, great, great, great player, left handed. And I remember I was seeing him, he was like on the bus with these textbooks and he was studying like, what, what are you, what are you doing? He's like, yeah, I'm probably going to go to grad school. I said, really? And he goes, he goes, yeah. He goes, I'm a first baseman at a ball. I'm like, yeah, but you're, you're like one of. You're a really good first base because yes, I'm a first baseman in a ball. He said, most of the first basemen that you're going to see in the major leagues were moved there from third base or from right field or from catcher or sometimes from shortstop. Like, this is. Look at Michael Bush, you know, like this is. Because if I'm already a first baseman and I don't know what he ended up doing, but look up Braxton Hickman. See, whatever happened, old Braxton Hickman got it. And I think because I, he. He was one who was just really self aware about. And that was. You're right. They know those, the, the players. Absolutely right. Yeah. And they, and they know the other way too. They know when they, when they see whether it was Johnny Damon or when we played the Appleton Foxes and they had this kid named Alex Rodriguez and like, holy crap. Like, you didn't. You didn't need a third baseman when he was playing shortstop because he was just sucking everything off that was hit to the entire side of the field. And then he hit a ball at Marinelli Field into the Rock river that as soon as it left, it's bad. Everybody was like, oh, my God. You're watching other professional players and some really good ones and some future major leaguers. And then you see that, you're like, oh, no, no, no, no. And I think like two weeks later, he had left the Midwest League, never to be seen or heard from again in the Hinterlands.
- [60:17]
C
Braxton Hickman, he played two seasons, so he had one in Eugene, the Northwest League. And then one in the Midwest League for the Royals both. And then. And then he was done. So done at the age of 23.
- [60:28]
B
Yeah. But good.
- [60:30]
C
Like, like obs of.815, the Northwest League, ops of.636.
- [60:35]
B
Yeah. Like a college play. I want to say it was all like a first team, all conference college player at Texas and the whole thing. And yes, very hard. Yeah, I, I. Gary, I would bet right now, if we asked how many former affiliated minor leaguers are listening to this podcast, it would be a higher number than you think.
- [61:01]
C
Yeah. Which I probably think so. There was. We saw hundreds of kids over the weekend at these different tournaments, and probably
- [61:07]
B
none of them are ever.
- [61:08]
C
None gonna see Major League Baseball, which is.
- [61:10]
B
The answer is none. Yeah.
- [61:12]
C
I just won't let the other parents know that, though.
- [61:14]
B
The answer is not. And you know why? Because you're playing in Chicago. If you were playing in Florida or California or Arizona or Texas, it might be different. Nevada, but you're not. The odds of somebody coming out of this city. We've got like two months out of every year where we could play baseball outside. Yeah, it still matters.
- [61:43]
C
It's definitely stacked against you here in the Midwest.
- [61:46]
B
It sure is. It still matters. You know, and there. When you think about the money that these people make building their massive baseball instructional centers and the people like, oh, I run the All Star, 5 Star, 15 Star Leagues and your kid can come play for me. Well, all the sponsors, we'll just start another team. Well, this, we got the gold and the green and the blue and the silver and the bronze and all this. But no, you're part of this organization. Come on. That is. Why do you think private equity is getting involved in that? Why do you think. Why? Why do you think private equity is getting involved in youth sports? I'm no genius, but I think they've found a way where they have found people with disposable income that then belongs more to the private equity than it does to the people. But again, I'm not an economic genius here. I just think that the moment I see the vampire squids are coming over and looking for things, I have a piece of this. This seems to have a lot of money coming through it. Does it really. Does it have high cost? No. Really? Nothing at all? Not all that much. You get uniforms, you put the kid's name on it, and you get them a backpack with their number on it. Okay. What do you charge for that? Oh, $18,000. That's a hell of a business. We should do more of that it's also good business for you and it's really, really good work on your part to take care of your mom on Mother's Day and make sure that your kids take care of their mom on Mother's Day with something that isn't going to fade and flowers die. I don't like getting flowers because I like them and they're good for two days and then they remind you of death and you're like, oh great, we're all mortal. And you don't want to get something that reminds you of death. You want to get something that makes you excited for life. So get mom an Aura digital frame because when you go to auraframes.com, auraframes.com use the promo code DBU and that's going to get you $25 off the best selling Carver matte frame. And this is the industry standard number one, named by Wirecutter the number one app in the App Store Christmas Day 2025. Because everybody wants one of these Aura frames. Free unlimited storage. You can preload photos before it ships. Everything can be personalized and it comes in a gift box. Even with all that stuff done, a premium gift box box with no price tag on it. Then you can download the free Aura app. You can text photos straight to your frame if you want to do that, however you want to do it. Then mom can have something tangible and permanent that is right there and makes her smile. Instead of her saying, oh, I guess these flowers went bad and I'm going to pack up and throw them out, she can continue to enjoy her aura frame. So for a limited time, you, because you're listening, can get 25 off the best selling Carver Mat frame with the code DBU. That's a U R a frames.com promo code DBU. Support the show by mentioning us at checkout as well. Terms and conditions apply. Before we go, I want to say congratulations to the Chicago Tribune and it dovetails nicely with what I've been saying about private equity, but this is a huge deal. The Chicago Tribune's coverage of the incursion here by US Border Patrol and ICE what was called Operation Midway Blitz run by the since ousted Greg Bovino, their coverage has won a Pulitzer Prize. The Tribune has won the Pulitzer for local reporting for its coverage of Operation Midway Blitz. This is just the lead in the actual Tribune story, referring to it as the Trump administration's immigration enforcement mission in the Chicago area last fall. This is the country's top journalism honor and it recognizes exceptional coverage of significant issues of local or statewide concern the judges. It's awarded by Columbia University. The judges cited the newsroom's comprehensive coverage of the blitz, including a story examining the federal government's raid on a South Shore apartment complex, the shooting of a US Citizen in Brighton park, and an investigation into how criminal charges against protesters have not withstood the harsh light of the federal court system. The Tribune's capstone piece 64 days in Chicago, the story of Operation Midway Blitz, also was included in the winning entry. The Pulitzer judges honored the coverage further by naming it a finalist for the Public Service Medal. The Pulitzer Prize board honored the Tribune for what they called its powerful coverage of the Trump administration's militarized immigration sweep of the city. They've described in vivid, muscular prose how the siege, like incursion of ICE agents, unified Chicagoans in resistance. Congratulations to the Chicago Tribune, especially because of what has happened to their newsroom, because of what's happened to the newspaper model, because of what's happened to the very idea of chopping down trees and pulping them into paper and using ink to print words on them and then using fuel and trucks and gasoline to take all of this pulped up wood various places and set it in front of various homes. It's not a great business model, doesn't make a whole lot of sense. But for those of us who've stuck around and who have sometimes quibbled, maybe too often quibbled, with the op ed side, with the editorial voice of the Chicago Tribune after they were taken over by private equity, after all of the buyouts and the firings and the downsizing, that enough people stuck around and enough people kept coming through this shell of what it was, this relative handful of people that were actually doing all of this work and taking all of these risks, this is now a tiny newsroom compared to what it was. And to do this, to win this award for some of the most important coverage, a time in my life I'm never going to forget when I was having to learn how to, how to use the whistle that I had in my mouth to help local grade schools, to help my neighbors make sure that they could get their pick up their kids safely from school at 3:15 on a weekday when we were part of these groups that would come out and stand watch and make sure that dismissal could be handled, with kids getting to their parents and them getting home safely without some secret police picking them up. For those of us who were involved, for my wife who was helping out with the whistle pack parties, of putting together laminated cards with know your rights and then going door to door to hand them out. In our neighborhood, the number of people involved, the number of selfless people involved and journalists had one of the most important ROLES in those 64 days of protecting our neighbors, of doing what we need to do to keep our neighbors safe. And it was. I'm, I'm so happy for the Tribune. I don't think I'm allowed to be proud, but this is, it is in for every day that there are so many times you feel beaten down and you feel like there's no point, that the, the, the endless march of ugly, awful forces is inexorable. It's not. And it takes shoe leather and sunlight and the fact that the Tribune is still there, whatever's left of it, whatever's left of it is still there to provide this kind of indispensable, irreplaceable. The lifeblood of this kind of sunlight is something to be celebrated. If you're looking for some other opportunities outside of basketball, baseball, and everything else that's going on. 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That's today's DBU and we've been brought to you by Chicago Window guys, by Aura Frames, and in partnership with my bookie, Dan Bernstein. Unfiltered Unfiltered on 312Sports.