Chicago Sports

One person died and several other people were injured when a wind-whipped fire climbed nine floors of a high-rise apartment building near Lake Shore Drive in the Kenwood neighborhood Wednesday morning, according to fire officials.

The fire broke out just after 10 a.m. on the 15th floor and quickly spread upward along the outside walls and windows to at least eight other floors of the building in the 4800 block of South Lake Park Avenue.

The fire was raised to a 4-11 alarm as more than 300 firefighters and emergency responders were dispatched to the scene, according to Fire Commissioner Annette Nance-Holt. By noon, flames were no longer visible.

A person was found dead in an apartment, fire officials said. Eight other people were injured, including a 70-year-old woman initially listed in critical condition, according to fire officials.

A firefighter was hospitalized in good to serious condition with a minor orthopedic injury, Nance-Holt told reporters.

The wind fanned the flames and quickly spread the fire to the upper floors, according to Deputy Fire Commissioner Marc Ferman. “It was a fast-moving fire,” he said. “And it was tough just staying ahead of it.”

Ald. Sophia King (4th) said many of the building’s residents are older people.

“I will tell you when I first walked up, I was aghast and my heart sunk,” she said. “But after talking to leadership, first responders, they have the situation under control.”

Barbara Joiner, a 69-year-old resident, stood outside the building with other neighbors as snow continued to fall. Joiner said she acts as a caretaker for another woman who lives in the portion of the building affected by the fire and was anxiously trying to reach her.

“Oh my God,” she said, remembering her reaction to seeing the flames once she got outside. “These flames are still rising.”

The building, at 4850 S. Lake Park Ave., has failed seven inspections since Oct. 27, 2021, according to city records.

The last inspection, on Dec. 1, 2022, cited management for failing to provide an annual fire alarm test for the building, according to records from the city’s Department of Buildings.

Contributing: Ashlee Rezin; Elvia Malagon; Associated Press

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The Chicago Bears have the top pick

The Chicago Bears sit at the top of a quarterback-heavy draft class. There will be plenty of teams in need of a franchise signal caller who can run and throw the football efficiently. However, general manager Ryan Poles hasn’t shown expertise in negotiations during his first season with the Bears. He’s failed to sign talented free agents and has traded away All-Pro athletes he couldn’t come to financial terms with.

While Poles hasn’t shown the finesse as an erudite social negotiator with his peers and subordinates, he has demonstrated a special skill set for demolishing a franchise for a rebuild. Poles inherited a team with enough aging stars that it would have been on the bottom rung for a Wild Card spot and traded them away or failed to re-sign players so the Bears could lose enough to stake a claim for the first pick in the 2023 draft.

Mel Kiper thinks the Bears keep the number-one pick

ESPN’s Mel Kiper recently released his mock draft. Kiper is skeptical of Poles’ ability to negotiate a deal with another team. Kiper predicts the Bears will take the “best player” of the draft, defensive tackle Jalen Carter:

I thought long and hard about a trade here, with the Colts, Raiders and Panthers as the top candidates to move up for a quarterback. And if I’m Chicago general manager Ryan Poles and I can move down a few spots, add premium picks and still get my choice of the best defensive prospects, I’d make a deal. It takes two teams to make a trade, however, and that’s never a guarantee. For now, let’s stick with the Bears keeping this pick.

Chicago’s roster needs help from top to bottom, but its defense was particularly dreadful in 2022, ranking last in the league in sacks (20) and points allowed per game (27.2). It has to be D all the way for wherever the Bears make their selection. Carter, an explosive interior pass-rusher and run-stuffer, gets the nod over Alabama edge rusher Will Anderson Jr. on my Big Board. He’s the best player in this draft, a Day 1 starter in the middle of this defense.

There are way too many desperate teams who want a quarterback in this draft for Poles not to be able to make a deal. The Bears could trade with the Houston Texans or Indianapolis Colts and still draft Carter while getting extra draft capital.

The Chicago Bears have a unique possibility

The Chicago Bears have not picked number one in the NFL Draft since 1947–when there were ten teams. Poles deserves to be fired on draft weekend if he can’t find a trade partner and blows franchise-changing leverage on Carter, a talented player with serious questions in his draft profile.

(Both Carter and edge rusher Will Anderson Jr. had their struggles this season and might only represent a weak draft class for elite players.) Poles can’t be satisfied with cashing in one of the worst seasons in Bears history for Carter or Anderson. He needs to grab extra players to rebuild his neatly excavated roster.

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You wake up and read the sports news like you always do. You wait for what you know is coming, because it always does. It doesn’t take long to learn that four male athletes have been accused of domestic violence in separate incidents.

This was Tuesday, but it could have been any day of the week ending in “day.”

There’s something about male athletes and power and control. I’ve spent the better part of a career pondering what makes them so violent toward wives and girlfriends. All I have is thoughts and theories and disgust.

Major League Baseball is investigating White Sox pitcher Mike Clevinger after a woman accused him of physically and emotionally abusing her and their 10-month-old daughter. The woman says Clevinger choked her and threw used chewing tobacco on the child.

UFC star Conor McGregor is being investigated for allegedly assaulting a woman in Spain. She claims he punched her in the face and threatened to drown her.

San Jose police arrested 49ers defensive lineman Charles Omenihu on suspicion of misdemeanor domestic violence after his girlfriend called 911 to report that he had pushed her to the ground during an argument.

University of Georgia wide receiver Rodarius Thomas was arrested on charges of felony false imprisonment and misdemeanor battery-family violence after he allegedly blocked a woman from leaving her dorm room. Police said the woman had bruises on her biceps and abrasions on her shins.

The four men have been accused of, not found guilty of, domestic violence. Perhaps none of them did what the women said they did. But these things happen so regularly that one can be forgiven for thinking the worst. In sports, the worst is our constant companion.

The percentage of male athletes who abuse women in this country reportedly is lower than the percentage of men in the general population who abuse women. One thing is certain: More attention is given to celebrity domestic-violence incidents. That attention should lead to a significant decrease in numbers. It hasn’t.

High-income groups have a much lower rate of domestic violence in the U.S. than a high-income group like professional athletes does. Money doesn’t necessarily mean peace for athletes or their significant others.

The assumption is that because star athletes have it all they should be above striking women. But having it all might be the very thing that triggers that behavior. They’re so used to having their way, so used to their physical talents creating favorable outcomes in competition, that perhaps a woman is meant to be controlled just like everything else is. Resistance brings on rage and insecurity in the men. Is that what it boils down to?

What I do know is that athletes never seem to learn. You’d think after decades of ugly news about fists hitting women’s faces that high-profile men would realize, at a minimum, that nothing good comes of this. Never mind the obvious moral scandal of hitting a smaller, more vulnerable person. The damage to an athlete’s reputation and finances would seem to be a detriment, right?

Not enough of one, obviously. If sports leagues truly cared about cutting down the number of domestic-violence incidents, they’d install a zero-tolerance policy. MLB has made progress from its days of suspending Aroldis Chapman for just 30 days after he choked his girlfriend and shot a gun in anger eight times. In the last two years, four players have been suspended at least 80 games each for violating the league’s domestic violence policy. Still, not enough.

You haven’t seen true forgiveness until you’ve witnessed a professional sports team acquire a player who has gotten into trouble. Remember how the Cubs tripped over themselves to praise Chapman after trading for him in 2016? He was rehabilitating himself, they said. It probably helped that he regularly threw a baseball 100 m.p.h. And when the Cubs won the World Series that season, the voices that had screamed about the franchise’s lack of morals were reduced to whispers.

That’s how it is. The leagues know it. The teams know it. The players know it, too. It’s the only explanation for athletes’ continued abuse of women. A zero-tolerance policy would put power in the hands of women, and wouldn’t that be ironic? The thing that domestic abusers most want — control — would be taken away and given to the abused.

Some experts have argued that it would make women less likely to call authorities if they knew their abusive husbands/boyfriends could lose their livelihoods. All I know is that very little has changed.

In the NFL, a player can get a lifetime ban for a second incident. But it didn’t help Ray Rice’s girlfriend when he punched her in the face in 2014, an incident that shocked the country.

You know what you call four more stories about athletes accused of domestic violence?

Just another day in the sports world.

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The Bulls remain a contradiction.

A frustrating, hard to figure out from game-to-game, inconsistent contradiction.

Beat the likes of Boston, Milwaukee, and Miami multiple times this season, only to lose to Houston, Orlando, and spit up a 21-point lead to Indiana.

Hear Zach LaVine say that he’s currently playing with a “messed-up” finger on his right hand, but in the same sentence have the two-time All-Star insist that if he’s “out there, I’m healthy.”

Need a player like veteran forward Jae Crowder to be acquired by the Feb. 9 trade deadline, but in all likelihood will stay the path while franchises like the Bucks and Heat push to land the hard-nosed veteran.

All fixable by the time a possible playoff run starts?

Not really, especially when there are a number of layers to the issues surrounding this roster.

“It’s not one player or one thing,” coach Billy Donovan said after the loss to the Pacers on Tuesday. “It’s a multitude of things where we look overwhelmed when the intensity level goes this way. And we have to respond better to that.

“We have a high-character group. They’re good guys, relationships are good. But we have to be able to fight to overcome some of this stuff.”

If this was still 25 games into the season, Donovan’s point would resonate. But the air continues leaking out of the balloon, evident by Game No. 47 against Indiana.

This is the portion of the regular season where you are what you are and the resume is what it is. Unfortunately for the Bulls, that resume has some questionable moments that will inevitably come back to haunt them.

Whether it forces them to have to go the play-in route come April or are at least a road team in the opening playoff series, this roster has made their bed and may be headed for some uncomfortable nights of sleep.

Here’s the five-worst losses of the season for the Bulls:

5. At San Antonio – Oct. 28 – Lost in DeMar DeRozan reaching the 20,000-point milestone, the start of defensive issues both early in games and late was on full display against the Spurs. Keldon Johnson scored 33 points – still his second-highest mark of the season – but allowing a 36-point first quarter and then a 35-point fourth against a team that now has just 14 wins was a sign of things to come.

4. Houston – Dec. 26 – It wasn’t just losing at home to the tanking Rockets, but the timing of it. The Bulls had just come off of a road trip in which they beat Miami, Atlanta, and New York, seemingly fixing the issues that hampered the team. The locker room was supposedly closer after the incident in Minnesota, and the players said they were all on the same page as far as urgency. They obviously weren’t.

3. Oklahoma City – Jan. 13 – Losing to the Thunder in OKC earlier was one thing. After all, the Thunder are athletic and play hard from tip to final horn, which isn’t always a great mix for the Bulls to have to deal with. But with DeRozan sidelined, this was the opportunity for LaVine to show why he received a max contract. He did go 14-of-15 from the free throw line, but was 1-of-8 from three, and 5-of-19 from the field in posting a minus-18 in plus/minus.

2. At Washington – Jan. 11 – With the Wizards missing Bradley Beal, Daniel Gafford and Kristaps Porzingis, LaVine again had a chance to play hero without DeRozan. All the Bulls did was build a 16-point lead, only to squander it late, losing to the undermanned Wizards by three.

1. At Indiana – Jan. 24 – The Pacers were without Tyrese Haliburton and riding a seven-game losing streak. It was headed for eight, with the Bulls building a 21-point lead and seemingly in complete control. That’s not how it finished, however, as Indiana put up 70 points in the second half.

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One person died and several other people were injured when a wind-whipped fire climbed nine floors of a high-rise apartment building near Lake Shore Drive in the Kenwood neighborhood Wednesday morning, according to fire officials.

The fire broke out just after 10 a.m. on the 15th floor and quickly spread upward along the outside walls and windows to at least eight other floors of the building in the 4800 block of South Lake Park Avenue.

The fire was raised to a 4-11 alarm as more than 300 firefighters and emergency responders were dispatched to the scene, according to Fire Commissioner Annette Nance-Holt. By noon, flames were no longer visible.

A person was found dead in an apartment, fire officials said. Eight other people were injured, including a 70-year-old woman initially listed in critical condition, according to fire officials.

A firefighter was hospitalized in good to serious condition with a minor orthopedic injury, Nance-Holt told reporters.

The wind fanned the flames and quickly spread the fire to the upper floors, according to Deputy Fire Commissioner Marc Ferman. “It was a fast-moving fire,” he said. “And it was tough just staying ahead of it.”

Ald. Sophia King (4th) said many of the building’s residents are older people.

“I will tell you when I first walked up, I was aghast and my heart sunk,” she said. “But after talking to leadership, first responders, they have the situation under control.”

Barbara Joiner, a 69-year-old resident, stood outside the building with other neighbors as snow continued to fall. Joiner said she acts as a caretaker for another woman who lives in the portion of the building affected by the fire and was anxiously trying to reach her.

“Oh my God,” she said, remembering her reaction to seeing the flames once she got outside. “These flames are still rising.”

The building, at 4850 S. Lake Park Ave., has failed seven inspections since Oct. 27, 2021, according to city records.

The last inspection, on Dec. 1, 2022, cited management for failing to provide an annual fire alarm test for the building, according to records from the city’s Department of Buildings.

Contributing: Ashlee Rezin; Elvia Malagon; Associated Press

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At least one person was seriously injured in a high-rise building near Lake Shore Drive in the Kenwood neighborhood Wednesday morning.

The fire broke out just after 10 a.m. on the upper floors of a building in the 4800 block of South Lake Park Avenue. The blaze spread to the 15th, 16th and 17th floors, Chicago fire officials said.

As of 11 a.m., one person had been transported to a hospital in serious to critical condition, officials said.

This is a developing story. Check back for details.

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At least one person was seriously injured in a high-rise building near Lake Shore Drive in the Kenwood neighborhood Wednesday morning.

The fire broke out just after 10 a.m. on the upper floors of a building in the 4800 block of South Lake Park Avenue. The blaze spread to the 15th, 16th and 17th floors, Chicago fire officials said.

As of 11 a.m., one person had been transported to a hospital in serious to critical condition, officials said.

This is a developing story. Check back for details.

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This NFL offseason, the Chicago Bears hold a lot of power.

The Bears have the number one overall pick in the 2023 NFL Draft, plus hold the most cap space of any team. Some might say, the offseason runs through Chicago, and they would be right.

No matter what, the Bears have to upgrade a few key positions with their assets. Between offensive line, defensive line and wide receiver, Chicago has three spots that are hurting in a big way.

Focusing specifically on wide receiver, though, the Bears might have to go the route of the draft rather than free agency. There aren’t many big names available, although one could be popping up here soon.

New Orleans Saints veteran wide receiver Michael Thomas could end up hitting the market soon, according to a recent report.

New Orleans Saints reporter Nick Underhill shares an interesting wrinkle in Thomas’ contract, showing that the team could owe him a total of $61 million if they keep him on the books. Otherwise, the only way he sticks around is if the team reworks his deal.

Is Michael Thomas an option for the Chicago Bears?

A couple of years ago, Thomas would have been a phenomenal option for the Bears. Unfortunately, injuries have totally thrown off the trajectory of his career. The unfortunate part of his injuries is that they all center around one specific area: his feet.

Whether it’s his ankle, foot or toes, Thomas has endured some lengthy injuries and recovery times over the past three years.

He was once on the way to becoming an all-time great, putting up seasons with 104, 125 and then 149 receptions in three straight seasons, breaking records at the same time.

But, injuries have become a huge issue, and if the Saints cut him, the Bears should stay away.

Last year, Thomas played in just three games before getting hurt again. He missed all of the 2021 season after playing in just seven games in 2020.

If the Bears are going to go the veteran route, they should do so via trade, not free agency. Chicago needs a true alpha, but one that isn’t constantly hurt. Therefore, if Thomas becomes available, he should not be considered.

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Shots were fired at Chicago police early Wednesday in Jefferson Park on the Northwest Side.

Officers had identified a black Audi SUV from an earlier incident about 3:40 a.m. in the 5600 block of West Sunnyside Avenue, police said. As officers approached, they heard gunshots and the SUV continued west.

Officers did not return fire and no one was injured, police said.

No one was in custody.

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