Chicago Sports

GLENDALE, Ariz. — A little ankle soreness isn’t going to fell Jake Burger.

It will take a lot more than that for one who has been through a ruptured Achilles, a second rupture that occurred while he was in his back yard, a bruised heel and the almost overwhelming battles with anxiety and depression that came in the aftermath.

Burger can handle pretty much anything thrown his way now.

“I’ve figured out ways to manage it, but I’ll still have days to where you revert back to where you were in your worst moments,” Burger said. “But it’s not as severe or frequent.”

In March of 2020, Burger, sidelined by the injuries and dealing with things weighing heavy on his mind, opened up on social media about his mental health struggles.

Support poured in from everywhere.

“The coolest thing is realizing you’re not alone,” Burger said. “When I posted that during my injury, and when I [announced] this initiative I started this offseason, the outpouring of support, of people saying ‘Hey I’m dealing with the same thing,’ you realize there are so many out there battling. Not everyone understands that. It’s been cool people reaching out.”

“Burger B.O.M.B.S” is the initiative Burger speaks of. It includes a website he created that is building a community for open discussions about mental health. It will be up and running next week.

Besides hiking and meditation, Burger’s mental health plan includes meditation, outdoor activities like hiking, mapping out his daily routines in writing to stay grounded, reading and talking to others.

A Sox first-round draft pick in 2017, Burger blew out his Achilles in a Cactus League game in February 2018, starting his downward spiral. He missed two seasons with injuries, and then a third (2020) because of COVID. He regrouped, lost 40 pounds last offseason, and now his career path is trending upward again. It reached a significant checkpoint when he played in 15 games for the Sox last season, batting .263/.333/.474 with a home run.

“When I was healthy, baseball was kind of monotonous and I didn’t appreciate it that much,” he said. “When you get hurt, it’s ‘screw this, I don’t want to play baseball anymore.’ You get on the field again and there is a new passion for it and appreciation. It’s a weird cycle, going from being a first-round pick to not knowing if you’ll play again to what I did last year.”

To talk to Burger is to wonder where the depression or anxiety might have ever existed. He’s upbeat, well spoken and gets “what a nice guy” reactions from anyone who meets him. That doesn’t mean he’s out of the woods. He might never be completely out.

“It takes a long time to fully get over,” he said. “Being able to manage it definitely helps, for sure.”

Burger’s spring has been marked by a little bit of everything, including 5-for-18 hitting (.278) with a homer and two doubles, leaving a game Sunday with a sore ankle — a lingering aftereffect of the Achilles issue — and appearing in People magazine after he tweeted a picture of an odd sunburn on his shaved head, caused by trucker mesh in his spring training hat.

“I’ve got a bone to pick with those spring training hats,” Burger tweeted.

“That was crazy, People magazine,” he said. “Last time I checked it had like 6 million impressions, so 6 million people know what the back of my head looks like.”

With third baseman Yoan Moncada in front of him, Burger knows the challenge of making the Opening Day roster. He played first base for the first time last week and has taken grounders to expand his versatility.

“I always say wherever they need me I’ll play,” he said.

And in a better frame of mind.

“My mindset for the rest of my career will be, ‘I’m fortunate,’ ” he said, “and blessed to be able to play.”

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PALM BEACH, Fla. — As Bears general manager Ryan Poles and Matt Eberflus sorted out which players fit their long-term plans and which needed to be cleared out to gain draft picks and financial flexibility, safety Eddie Jackson’s massive contract presented a tough call.

Two years ago, it made perfect sense for the Bears to make Jackson the NFL’s highest-paid safety with a massive contract extension. But the player who earned that deal has gone missing.

There has been less ball-hawking and more business decisions. Tackling has been a major issue. He’s been unreliable.

But rather than trade Jackson or cut him to save some salary-cap space, Poles and Eberflus saw an opportunity. At 28, Jackson is still in his prime. He hasn’t lost the athleticism that made him an all-pro with six interceptions and two touchdowns in 2018. He has the capacity to be great.

The Bears bringing in a new administration that has no attachment to him and no particular self-interest in making his contract look smart might be just what Jackson needed.

“We had a good conversation about this [being] a fresh slate for him, and to just go out there and work and show us what you can do,” Eberflus said at the NFL’s annual meeting. “Sure, you’ve got to run basic plays, but we’ve got to be able to see, for example at that position, can you cover tight ends? Can you cover [running] backs?

“Are you efficient playing half or quarters or playing in the middle of the field? He’s done all those things, but we want to see his skill set now. What is his skill set right now at this time? And we’re excited to do that.”

So it’s not about 2018. And it’s not about 2021. Jackson’s Bears career comes down to whether he can get on board and be a fearsome threat at the back end of the defense.

But Eberflus looked at both of those seasons while analyzing Jackson and he’s more interested in his all-pro tape. If he gets that version of Jackson, he can work with him.

“He’s got really good instincts,” Eberflus said. “You look at the positive — what he can do — and he’s taking the ball away. He’s really proficient at blitzing. I think he times it up well, does a good job there, does a nice job in coverage. So we’ll see where it is.”

The Bears appear to be finished cleansing their roster, and if so, the heart of their defense will be inside linebacker Roquan Smith, pass rusher Robert Quinn and — ideally — Jackson.

Smith is the surest of sure things, and Poles knows it. He didn’t bother playing coy about whether he’ll try to get a contract extension done before the season.

“If he’s the guy that I think he is, that’s something we have to address,” Poles said. “In this defense… there’s a good chance he’s going to have a really good year.”

Quinn could have a big season as well and presumably will benefit from moving back to his preferred position at defensive end in Eberflus’ 4-3 defense. Signing with the Bears in 2020 was an odd move for both sides considering their 3-4 would slot him at outside linebacker, and he has said throughout his career that’s not the best place for him to play.

At almost 32 and in line to make $52.6 million over the next three seasons, Quinn certainly was a candidate to trade. The return probably would’ve been good, too, after setting the franchise record with 18.5 sacks last season.

“That hasn’t come up,” Poles said.

Quinn ($17.1 million) and Jackson ($15.1 million) currently carry the Bears’ biggest cap numbers for this season. They’ll be worth it if they’re stars.

Those two, Smith and cornerback Jaylon Johnson are the only certainties. Eberflus needs to know he can count on them. Figuring out the rest is on him.

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If you’re like me, you’re unable, maybe even unwilling, to follow all the sports going on at any one time, even locally, with earnestness. It’s just too much to juggle. There are too many profoundly important things happening that have nothing to do with sports, such as war in Europe, the deepening divide within our own nation and Wordle.

Generally speaking, I go all-in on one or two sports at a time and fake it on the rest. It’s just the truth. Do me a favor and don’t tell my bosses.

Some of us might be accustomed to spinning out of college basketball season and straight into baseball. Or, recently in Chicago, perhaps, throwing in the towel on the Bulls and/or the Blackhawks and turning to baseball. I always appreciate baseball for being there — ready and waiting — not only with spring-training games and storylines as soothing background noise throughout March Madness, but also with the first days of the regular season nestled into that sweet spot between the Elite Eight and the Final Four.

Make that almost always. The lockout has pushed Opening Day back a little over a week, not a huge deal but still disappointing and rather unromantic.

And speaking of unromantic: Hello again, Cubs.

These days, the Cubs are as lovable as an extended cold front and as promising as a blown-out shoe. They don’t tickle our fancy as much as they test it. Do they really have to come back from Arizona? Why bother? Wouldn’t it be more fan-friendly of them to just stay out there until they’re ready to behave like a major-market contender again?

You can’t spell “Schwindel” without the W-I-N, but still it’s awfully hard to get fired up about this Cubs roster. They signed Japanese outfielder Seiya Suzuki, which would be a more exciting development if the writing weren’t on the wall that All-Star catcher Willson Contreras could soon be headed in the general direction of Kris Bryant, Javy Baez, Anthony Rizzo and Kyle Schwarber, which is to say somewhere — anywhere — else. They signed starting pitcher Marcus Stroman, which is not the same, at least on the surface, as bringing in a Jon Lester or a Yu Darvish.

Outfielders Ian Happ and Jason Heyward are stilI around, but is that a good thing? The new rotation features a Miley, a Smyly and possibly a Wiley, though that final name might be a figment of my imagination.

It doesn’t seem to add up to a whole heck of a lot beyond one of the richest franchises in American sports attempting to have its cake and eat it, too, as it turns its home ballpark and environs into a gigantic piggy bank while inhabiting the same payroll neighborhood as the Rockies, Brewers and Tigers, just to name a few.

And then there’s the whole Chelsea thing.

Goodness gracious, talk about appalling.

It’s difficult to conceive of a set of optics worse than kicking all your star players to the curb and tanking the 2021 season — after laying off scores of paycheck-to-paycheck employees — only to then make an offer on a Premier League club reportedly worth between $3 billion and $4 billion, same as the Cubs.

How are the Ricketts family to explain this one? They can’t. But we can do our friends in London a favor and offer a little explanation — translation, more like — of what a Ricketts ownership would mean for Chelsea supporters.

For example, when a Ricketts says, “I deeply regret and apologize for some of the exchanges,” it’s almost certainly not a reference to salary-dumping trades of fans’ championship heroes. It might simply be about some horribly awkward leaked emails.

When a Ricketts cites “biblical losses,” it’s not about being bested on the pitch by age-old rivals Arsenal and Tottenham Hotspur. It’s merely your cue to kindly forget about being anywhere near the top of the table for a while.

“We’re focusing on building our next great team” essentially means, “What do you think we can fetch for that bag of gently used soccer balls?”

How about, “Take a deep breath”? That’s what Tom Ricketts encouraged fans to do after being booed at the 2020 Cubs Convention. Londoners, this is a diversionary tactic along the lines of, “Hey, look, your shoes are untied!” Or as one footballer might put it together, “Hey, look, your boots are untied!” Either way, you’re going to want to keep your eyes on the prize.

And this, just the other day: “Our family rejects any form of hate in the strongest terms possible.” It’s more than a statement to ease Chelsea players’ and rooters’ concerns about the bigoted ramblings of patriarch Joe Ricketts. It also means: We’re here for gold, not goals, and we don’t care how much you can’t stand it.

No, it’s not very romantic at all. It’s just how it is.

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Well before last season began, plenty of people insisted that 2021 would be a failure for the White Sox if they didn’t win the World Series. Great talent carried great expectations, right? So when the Sox lost early in the playoffs, there was some discussion that they were a complete disappointment and that they might want to think about sheltering in place until it was safe to go outside. Which would be never.

But strangely — strange for hard-bitten Chicago — the discussion shifted fairly quickly. There had been injuries to key players, there had been COVID-19 challenges and there was always 2022. Forgiveness seemed like the thing to do.

But now? Now we really mean it! It’s World Series or bust for these White Sox. Don’t even bother coming back to town if you don’t win it this year, fellas.

OK, I’ve got that out of my system.

But it’s true. At some point, the Sox have to live up to the hype and have to stick their heads through the championship window before it starts closing. Now would be wonderful. There are too many gifted players on the roster, and there’s never enough time in professional sports. So, yes, this would be a perfect occasion for the Sox to make good on the tacit promises that came with the rebuild they foisted upon their fan base several years ago.

Back-to-back postseason appearances are nice, but nice was never the goal. October was. November, if necessary.

About that load of talent: It’s still there. Anderson and Abreu and Robert, oh my! The concern is that the Sox didn’t add much in the offseason. The Astros scored 31 runs in their four-game American League Division Series beatdown of the South Siders last year. If you had your hands over your eyes during that debacle, you might have been under the impression that general manager Rick Hahn needed to add pitching for 2022. But the series showed that if the Sox wanted to keep up with the big boys, they needed to hit like them.

It was a very quiet offseason, with the only signings of note being reliever Joe Kelly and infielder Josh Harrison, who hit .279 with eight home runs last season with the Nationals and Athletics.

It would be a mistake to think that the Sox don’t have enough offensively, though. They finished in the top 10 in the majors in all meaningful categories last season, including first in BABIP (sorry, I gave up explaining what that is for Lent). But they finished tied for 19th in home runs, and if we know anything about today’s baseball, it’s that you’re a weak, puny, possibly un-American team if you’re not hitting homers.

There’s no reason to think that Yoan Moncada can’t reprise his 2019 season (25 home runs, 79 runs batted it, .315 average) and forget last season (14,61, .263). Any big ideas the Sox have of a postseason run are based on their prayers that Luis Robert and Eloy Jimenez will stay healthy. Injuries reduced Robert to 68 games last season and Jimenez to 55. It’s why Robert had only 13 homers and Jimenez 10.

Put them with Tim Anderson, Jose Abreu and Yasmani Grandal, pray like hell (again) for good health and you have the backbone of a monster lineup. The pitching should be good enough.

Should the Sox have done more in the offseason? Yes. Maybe they weren’t aware, but you can have complete faith in your team and add talent. Still, they rank seventh in payroll ($184.7 million). It’s hard to criticize them when they’re acting much more like a major-market team than the purportedly major-market club across town. The Cubs rank 15th at $130.1 million.

PECOTA, Baseball Prospectus’ computer model, has the Sox winning 91 games in 2022, two fewer than they won last season, but winning the AL Central by five games over the Twins. Last season, PECOTA had the Sox winning 83 games and finishing third in the division. PECOTA probably should be drug tested now and then.

At some point, Sox fans have to rely on faith. This is the time to believe that some or all of the young players on the roster will figure it out and realize all that potential the franchise saw in them. Why not this season? It’s time to expect them to be what they’re supposed to be.

If they don’t, then all of it, especially the painful rebuild, will be a flop. The whole idea is another World Series title, the first since way back in 2005.

So this is the year, right? This is the year the Sox have to win it all, the year they turn all the talent into a beautiful thing? It is. It’s time.

Or else.

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GLENDALE, Ariz. — White Sox outfielder Andrew Vaughn’s hip feels much better than it did when he left a game on a cart Sunday.

“It’s tenfold better,” Vaughn said Wednesday morning after taking some swings in the batting cage at Camelback Ranch. “I was kind of shocked how quick I started to feel better. I thought I’d be on crutches for a week to two weeks. Second day I came in i threw the crutches in the training room and said ‘I’m good.’ ”

Playing right field Sunday, Vaughn dived and caught a ball in the right-center field alley and was taken off on a cart. He and the team feared the worst, but he suffered only a right hip pointer. Not that it was nothing.

“It’s kind of like the worst charley horse you’ve ever had,” Vaughn said. “It kind of sticks around, it’s kind of lingering but it’s going away.

“It was pretty scary. Dove and landed on my hip, thought it was fine, wiggled it around a little bit and took that first step and kind of gave out. My mind went to the worst thoughts but best case of the worst, a hip pointer and I’m up walking around. Feel pretty good now.”

The Sox said Vaughn might return to game action in one to two weeks. Opening Day is next Friday in Detroit. It might be a reach, but Vaughn wouldn’t speculate.

“I’m just looking forward to tomorrow, seeing how I feel the next day,” he said. “[Opening Day] is the hope but you can’t rush things.”

Vaughn stretched with the team on the field Wednesday morning and will continue receiving treatment.

“It’s just a nasty bruise and you have to get rid of the pressure,” he said. “It’s all on feel and I’m feeling really good right now.”

Adam Engel was in the starting lineup for Wednesday’s Cactus League game against the Rangers.

Vaughn converted from first base to left field last season and is expected to see a sizable amount of reps in right field this season.

Here is the Sox lineup Wednesday:

Tim Anderson SS

Luis Robert CF

Jose Abreu 1B

Yasmani Grandal C

Eloy Jimenez LF

Yoan Moncada 3B

Leury Garcia DH

Josh Harrison 2B

Adam Engel RF

Dylan Cease P

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Well before last season began, plenty of people insisted that 2021 would be a failure for the White Sox if they didn’t win the World Series. Great talent carried great expectations, right? So when the Sox lost early in the playoffs, there was some discussion that they were a complete disappointment and that they might want to think about sheltering in place until it was safe to go outside. Which would be never.

But strangely – strange for hard-bitten Chicago – the discussion shifted fairly quickly. There had been injuries to key players, there had been COVID-19 challenges and there was always 2022. Forgiveness seemed like the thing to do.

But now? Now we really mean it! It’s World Series or bust for these White Sox. Don’t even bother coming back to town if you don’t win it this year, fellas.

OK, I’ve got that out of my system.

But it’s true. At some point, the Sox have to live up to the hype and have to stick their heads through the championship window before it starts closing. Now would be wonderful. There are too many gifted players on the roster, and there’s never enough time in professional sports. So, yes, this would be a perfect occasion for the Sox to make good on the tacit promises that came with the rebuild they foisted upon their fan base several years ago.

Back-to-back postseason appearances are nice, but nice was never the goal. October was. November, if necessary.

About that load of talent: It’s still there. Anderson and Abreu and Robert, oh my! The concern is that the Sox didn’t add much in the offseason. The Astros scored 31 runs in their four-game American League Division Series beat-down of the South Siders last year. If you had your hands over your eyes during that debacle, you might have been under the impression that general manager Rick Hahn needed to add pitching for 2022. But the series showed that if the Sox wanted to keep up with the big boys, they needed to hit like them.

It was a very quiet offseason, with the only signings of note being reliever Joe Kelly and infielder Josh Harrison, who hit .279 with eight home runs last season with the Nationals and Athletics.

It would be a mistake to think that the Sox don’t have enough offensively, though. They finished in the top 10 in the majors in all meaningful categories last season, including first in BABIP (Sorry, I gave up explaining what that is for Lent). But they finished tied for 19th in home runs, and if we know anything about today’s baseball, it’s that you’re a weak, puny, possibly un-American team if you’re not hitting homers.

There’s no reason to think that Yoan Moncada can’t reprise his 2019 season (25 home runs, 79 runs batted it, .315 average) and forget last season (14, 61, .263). Any big ideas the Sox have of a postseason run are based on their prayers that Luis Robert and Eloy Jimenez will stay healthy. Injuries reduced Robert to 68 games last season and Jimenez to 55. It’s why Robert had only 13 homers and Jimenez 10.

Put them with Tim Anderson, Jose Abreu and Yasmani Grandal, pray like hell (again) for good health and you have the backbone of a monster lineup. The pitching should be good enough.

Should the Sox have done more in the offseason? Yes. Maybe they weren’t aware, but you can have complete faith in your team and add talent. Still, they rank seventh in payroll ($184.7 million). It’s hard to criticize them when they’re acting much more like a major-market team than the purportedly major-market club across town. The Cubs rank 15th at $130.1 million.

PECOTA, Baseball Prospectus’ computer model, has the Sox winning 91 games in 2022, two fewer than they won last season, but winning the AL Central by five games over the Twins. Last season, PECOTA had the Sox winning 83 games and finishing third in the division. PECOTA probably should be drug tested now and then.

At some point, Sox fans have to rely on faith. This is the time to believe that some or all of the young players on the roster will figure it out and realize all that potential the franchise saw in them. Why not this season? It’s time to expect them to be what they’re supposed to be.

If they don’t, then all of it, especially the painful rebuild, will be a flop. The whole idea is another World Series title, the first since way back in 2005.

So this is the year, right? This is the year the Sox have to win it all, the year they turn all the talent into a beautiful thing? It is. It’s time.

Or else.

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Award-winning blues singer, songwriter and bass player Bob Stroger has been performing the blues for as long as he’s lived in Chicago.

Having lived and performed through some of the most turbulent, transformative eras Black musicians have endured, the 91-year-old musician says the COVID-19 pandemic “was a trip” unlike anything he’s ever experienced.

“It’s been really hard on me,” says Stroger, who came out with a new album “That’s My Name” (Delmark Records) in February and is gearing up to perform at festivals this summer. “I’ve been so used to playing all these years, and running into something like this, it really took the life out of me.”

When the pandemic began in early 2020, Stroger found himself “stranded” in Switzerland while there for a show at a time airports and businesses were locking down.

He remained there for nearly three months, living with a friend and performing until flights began again.

As he returned home to Chicago, where he has lived since moving at 16 from his Missouri birthplace, there wasn’t much waiting for him in terms of music gigs since he, like other musicians, didn’t have a place to perform with clubs closed for pandemic-mandated shutdowns. .

“I came back and couldn’t play,” he says. “Sitting in the house with nothing to do but think. It’s been kind of hard on me.”

As he quarantined at home by himself, all he could think about was returning to the stage to play his music and being around people again.

With mask mandates lifted and business now picking up for him, Stroger is still highly cautious when it comes to COVID due to his age.

“When you go in to a job, you’re worried about it because people want to take pictures, they want an autograph,” he says. “You can’t do the things that you want. Then, when you do get a job, you wonder if you did anything wrong [in terms of precautions], and me being of this age, I definitely didn’t want to catch the virus.”

Stroger says that other than talking with friends around the world via Facebook and FaceTime and playing on his computer, music was one of the main things that kept his spirits high. And he poured that into making “That’s My Name” with longtime collaborators The Headcutters over two days during a visit to South America.

“That’s My Name” finds Stroger and The Headcutters delivering funky, bass-heavy blues, music that grabs you by the collar and drags you in to the loudest juke joint or blues club in the neighborhood. It’s classic Chicago blues that fills that yearning void for those who haven’t been to a blues club since pre-pandemic times.

“Music is really therapy,” he says “When my father passed, it was the same way. When my wife passed, I knew she would have wanted me to play. And so I just kept doing it. If I hadn’t, I probably would have cracked up. But music kept me going.”

Stroger breaks into a deep, soulful laugh at the notion that his story reflects the blues music he has been singing all his life

“You’re living the blues, that’s right,” he says. “You talk about the blues, but now you’re living it. Music is therapy, the best therapy that I know of. It got me through lots of hard times, and music is the only thing that keeps me going here now.”

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At 6-foot-10, 260 pounds, Nikola Vucevic should be very hard to miss.

Should be.

Even when he’s working next to the other frontcourt players on the Bulls roster in practices and shootarounds, Vucevic carries a different appearance. More mass, more presence. The type of body that screams, “Dang right I shop at the Big & Tall Store!”

It’s about time his teammates started noticing that.

“We’re just trying to do a better job playing through Vooch,” veteran DeMar DeRozan said after the team’s latest win. “Especially with me and Zach [LaVine] getting pressured so much. Once [Vucevic] gets going, it makes everybody else’s job easier.”

Kind of the point Vucevic has been insisting all season long.

Even in scoring 27 points against the Wizards on Tuesday, there were at least five instances where Vucevic either got cross-matched with a smaller defender or had a defender sealed, and was ignored.

He could have easily finished that game with close to 40.

But this has been an ongoing storyline throughout most of the season, and especially since the Memphis loss in late February, where veteran Tristan Thompson pointed out as the game in which the Grizzlies had success with a defensive blueprint to beat the Bulls, and sent the video out to the rest of the league.

True? Conspiracy theory? Who knows?

At times it’s Tristan’s world and everybody else is just visiting.

“I don’t need to take shots, but I think I can make everyone’s life easier if I get touches,” Vucevic told the Sun-Times last week.

He’s not wrong.

The Bulls will enter Thursday’s game with the Los Angeles Clippers with a .579 winning percentage on the season. In the 30 games in which Vucevic took 17 or more shots the Bulls were 20-10 (.666). In the 28 games in which the 31-year-old handed out four assists or more the record was 19-9 (.678).

Coincidence?

Maybe.

In the last six games against teams with a winning percentage of .600 or higher, however, only once did Vucevic get 17 or more shot attempts — the Memphis loss — and the Bulls lost all six.

“You have to make a decision on how you are going to guard us,” DeRozan said. “Vooch is capable of making plays, shots, shooting threes, mid-range; teams have to make a decision. It’s a tough cover.”

That’s why come playoff time, there might not be a player more important than Vucevic, especially with the way DeRozan and LaVine will be guarded in the postseason. Now, if only the rest of the team would start realizing it.

No matter who the Bulls draw in the first-round of the playoffs, whether it’s Boston, Miami, Philadelphia or Milwaukee, they all have defensive-minded wings to throw at LaVine and DeRozan to try and make life difficult on the two All-Stars.

They also have bigs that will try and play Vucevic with some physicality. Even with Boston losing Robert Williams III with a knee injury, they still have Al Horford and Daniel Theis. But what makes Vucevic different is his ability to hit threes, and oh by the way, he’s done at a 50% clip the last six games (11-for-22).

“I know when I play one-on-one I’m usually able to score against a lot of guys,” Vucevic said. “And if they start double-teaming me, it opens up a lot for us playing inside-out, which is important. You have to play inside-out in this league. You can’t just hang on the perimeter. That’s sometimes something we struggle with and our offense gets stagnant.

“I was able to attack [against the Wizards] and most important we got the win.”

Hopefully, a game-plan Vucevic’s teammates don’t forget.

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At 6-foot-10, 260 pounds, Nikola Vucevic should be very hard to miss.

Should be.

Even when he’s working next to the other frontcourt players on the Bulls roster in practices and shootarounds, Vucevic carries a different appearance. More mass, more presence. The type of body that screams, “Dang right I shop at the Big & Tall Store!”

It’s about time his teammates started noticing that.

“We’re just trying to do a better job playing through Vooch,” veteran DeMar DeRozan said after the team’s latest win. “Especially with me and Zach [LaVine] getting pressured so much. Once [Vucevic] gets going, it makes everybody else’s job easier.”

Kind of the point Vucevic has been insisting all season long.

Even in scoring 27 points against the Wizards on Tuesday, there were at least five instances where Vucevic either got cross-matched with a smaller defender or had a defender sealed, and was ignored.

He could have easily finished that game with close to 40.

But this has been an on-going storyline throughout most of the season, and especially since the Memphis loss in late February, where veteran Tristan Thompson pointed out as the game in which the Grizzlies had success with a defensive blueprint to beat the Bulls, and sent the video out to the rest of the league.

True? Conspiracy theory? Who knows?

At times it’s Tristan’s world and everybody else is just visiting.

“I don’t need to take shots, but I think I can make everyone’s life easier if I get touches,” Vucevic told the Sun-Times last week.

He’s not wrong.

The Bulls will enter Thursday’s game with the Los Angeles Clippers with a .579 winning percentage on the season. In the 30 games in which Vucevic took 17 or more shots the Bulls were 20-10 (.666). In the 28 games in which the 31-year-old handed out four assists or more the record was 19-9 (.678).

Coincidence?

Maybe.

In the last six games against teams with a winning percentage of .600 or higher, however, only once did Vucevic get 17 or more shot attempts – the Memphis loss – and the Bulls lost all six.

“You have to make a decision on how you are going to guard us,” DeRozan said. “Vooch is capable of making plays, shots, shooting threes, mid-range; teams have to make a decision. It’s a tough cover.”

That’s why come playoff time, there might not be a player more important than Vucevic, especially with the way DeRozan and LaVine will be guarded in the postseason. Now, if only the rest of the team would start realizing it.

No matter who the Bulls draw in the first-round of the playoffs, whether it’s Boston, Miami, Philadelphia or Milwaukee, they all have defensive-minded wings to throw at LaVine and DeRozan to try and make life difficult on the two All-Stars.

They also have bigs that will try and play Vucevic with some physicality. Even with Boston losing Robert Williams III with a knee injury, they still have Al Horford and Daniel Theis. But what makes Vucevic different is his ability to hit threes, and oh by the way, he’s done at a 50% clip the last six games (11-for-22).

“I know when I play one-on-one I’m usually able to score against a lot of guys,” Vucevic said. “And if they start double-teaming me, it opens up a lot for us playing inside-out, which is important. You have to play inside-out in this league. You can’t just hang on the perimeter. That’s sometimes something we struggle with and our offense gets stagnant.

“I was able to attack [against the Wizards] and most important we got the win.”

Hopefully, a game-plan Vucevic’s teammates don’t forget.

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A man was seriously wounded by gunfire Tuesday afternoon that also struck a South Side grade school, police said.

Several gunshots rang out around 2:20 p.m. in the 4300 block of South Princeton Avenue, striking Thomas A. Hendricks Community Academy, police said.

A bullet struck a window and entered a classroom, police said. No one inside was injured.

A half hour later, a 24-year-old showed up at Saint Bernard Hospital with a gunshot wound to his chest, police said. He was listed in serious condition.

Police reported no arrests.

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