Apr 13, 2014; New York, NY, USA; Chicago Bulls head coach Tom Thibodeau reacts during the first half against the New York Knicks at Madison Square Garden. Mandatory Credit: Jim O
Let me ask you, what Chicago Bulls website comes at you with their own mailbag?
Sure plenty of them do. But they don’t tell you the ins and outs about the Chicago Bulls like we do.
Well Pippen Peoples, Pippen Ain’t Easy now has it’s own modernized post office. We like to call it the Chicago Bulls Mailbag!
Headed up by your own Chicago Bulls mailman Chris Brent!
So I wanted to start this new series, where I polled fans weekly and got their questions and then wrote about it. However, with it being the offseason a lot of fans have been disinterested and i’m simply not getting the quality of questions that I would like in order to start up this series. Rather until we get back into basketball season, I will be doing these periodically. If you have questions that you want featured in this column, send them to me on Twitter or email me: chrisbrent93@gmail.com; I’ll hold them until I do these articles.
On to the mailbag:
1.) 2015 NBA Draft Question: Who should be the number one pick right now? How would you rank the top-5? Everyone seems to have Jahlil Oakfor as the number one, just needed some feedback.
Chris Brent: This is always a difficult question to answer because we have no idea who is staying in college or even who is going to be picking number one. So I’ll do it like a big board. I’d take Jahlil Oakfor number one, no matter who is picking there. I live in Illinois so I was actually at the high school state tournament and got to watch Oakfor for the first time live. What I saw was unspeakable. He has dominant post moves, can hit the midrange, dunks everything (I mean ever thing), he can shoot free throws, and he has very active hands at the rim. I’ve seen the top-3 players, I haven’t gotten around to watching the top-5. I’ve seen highlights, but I haven’t watched them like i’ve seen Jahlil Oakfor, Myles Turner, and Cliff Alexander.
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Of the other two, I’d rather have Cliff Alexander than Myles Turner, but to be fair to Turner he was in Illinois at the beginning of last season. I’ve heard that he’s added a jump-shot to his game, and if that’s true I might switch it. Turner is a dominant shot blocker, who needs to make strides offensively, while Alexander is a physical freak of nature.
2.) Chris, did you see what Glen Taylor had to say about Kevin Love earlier this week?
Chris Brent: I did and it was quite embarrassing. I cannot stand the owners who get mad when their star player wants to go somewhere else because you couldn’t do your job of getting talent around him. The fans are rough and if you don’t win you hear about it. Kevin Love was beginning to hear about it, wanted to contend for a title, had an opportunity to go play with the best player in the world and jumped on it. I don’t know why Taylor was even ranting about Kevin Love, did you see what they got for Kevin Love?
Sure Kevin Love was a stat machine but you need team chemistry and Andrew Wiggins is a team player on his way to superstardom. Get excited Minnesota, you got a great talent, your future is bright. Relax. Wiggins won’t leave you for any place other than Toronto and honestly it’s close enough he might not even do that.
3.) With the Chicago Bulls additions this season, are we going to compete for the title this year?
Chris Brent: I’ll say yes, for the purpose of this article, however, it really depends what you define as “competing”. If you consider competing getting to the Eastern Conference Finals, then sure. If you think getting to the NBA Finals is competing, then once again, sure. But winning it all? I’m out on picking the Bulls to win it all because I don’t think they can compete with the Western Conference’s scoring ability. Even if Rose is healthy, i’d give us a 0% chance of winning it all, this season. I’m going to get ripped for that, but I think the only Eastern Conference team that can win is Cleveland and I wouldn’t give them a huge shot at it either. Any team with LeBron James will have a chance to win a championship.
4.) Chris, will we see any surprise teams this season? Who is every one down on that will make a run like Phoenix did last year?
Chris Brent: My surprise teams are the Brooklyn Nets and the Charlotte Hornets. I think everyone is sleeping on the Nets. You talk to people and the majority of people I’ve talked to told me, that they have Brooklyn out of the playoffs. What, why? They lost Paul Pierce and Jason Kidd, i’ll sleep. Paul Pierce was a clear shell of himself last season and he won’t be missed in Brooklyn at all. The way I see it, they got a better coach in Lionel Hollins and they will be getting back their star center Brook Lopez. Nobody can take the Hornets seriously this year but, I can. Steve Clifford is a rising star head coach in this league and with the addition of Lance Stephenson, this team is going to compete for at least a top-5 seed in the East. They probably win a first round game this year too, maybe could surprise Chicago and get to he Eastern Conference Finals. Crazy, I know!
My pick to be the Phoenix Suns this year, are the Los Angeles Lakers. Everyone has them outside of the playoffs (so do I) but, this team has some real players on their team. Can we ever really count out Kobe Bryant? I don’t have the Lakers picked to be a playoff team but if everyone is healthy this team could make a playoff run.
That’s all for this mailbag! Tell me what you think about this series! I need your feedback!