It was a great game, until it wasn’t. The Chicago Bears carried a lead over the Green Bay Packers into the fourth and final quarter, but couldn’t keep it.

Stop me if you have heard this story before.

Aaron Rodgers and the Packers came back and beat the Bears. The longtime Packers quarterback has only lost to the Bears five times in his storied career, making these losses seem routine and rather ho-hum in his mind.

After the game on Sunday afternoon, Rodgers was interviewed by Fox Sports‘ Kristina Pink and had some snarky words for Bears fans, to no one’s surprise.

Of course, last year, fans will remember Rodgers beating the Bears at Soldier Field and his infamous “I still own you” moment. While some fans just let that quote be, others definitely felt the pain and resentment.

Regardless, Rodgers has spent years demoralizing Bears fans and he knows it. But, after this most recent defeat, Bears fans got to hear it from more than just Rodgers.

Aaron Rodgers wasn’t the only Packers player to take a shot at the Chicago Bears or their players.

Former Packers wide receiver Equanimeous St. Brown made headlines in this one, for more than one reason. The first was a positive, as St. Brown made a nice catch on a 56-yard bomb from Justin Fields early in the game.

Covering St. Brown on the play was his former teammate and stud cornerback Jaire Alexander.

After the game, Alexander was asked about the play St. Brown made over him and this is what he had to say about his former teammate:

“Nothing. Man, he a scrub. I can’t believe I let him catch that on me.”

Now, late in the game, St. Brown did run the wrong route on a pass that was picked off. Fields said after the game that it was supposed to be a dig route, and St. Brown didn’t run it correctly.

While that’s fair, what isn’t exactly fair is for Alexander to come out and light up his former teammate like that.

I understand these guys are competitors and likely let each other have it verbally throughout the game. But, to come out and call a former teammate a “scrub” comes across classless and distasteful.

In the end, Bears fans can say and feel whatever and however they want about words like Rodgers’ and Alexanders’. But, until the Bears start beating the Packers, it won’t matter. It’s seemed like a lifetime of Rodgers beating up on the Bears and us fans simply having to deal with it, almost knowing no better.

For now, we can take solace in the fact that the future does indeed look bright behind Fields and what he’s been able to prove this year in his second season.

Read More

After the Chicago Bulls lost their third-straight Sunday night in a 110-101 defeat to Sacramento, they dropped to 9-14 on the season and have dropped seven of their last 10 games. Now sitting at the 12 spot in the Eastern Conference, the season looks all but lost.

The Bulls have been consistently mediocre this year, to put it lightly. It took until their 23rd game of the season for Zach LaVine to finally break out, but it was in a wasted effort as the rest of the team failed to step up to his aid.

Things aren’t going well in Chicago, and the fact of the matter is, the Bulls may be stuck with this type of play for a while. It was recently reported that the team extended head coach Billy Donovan before this season, and with the LaVine contract looking to far outweigh any positive dividends, the Bulls aren’t in great shape, at least for now.

With those thoughts in mind, it’s not too early to start thinking about the trade deadline coming up in February. And, it’s not crazy to think that the Bulls might actually decide to blow it up — at least, as much as they’re willing to.

The Chicago Bulls have reportedly deemed two of their players as untouchable assets, but that’s it.

Long-time NBA analyst and insider Rich Bucher, of Fox Sports gave a bit of insight, recently, as to the Bulls’ plans for this year’s trade deadline:

The Heat and Bulls are in a similar predicament, laden with expensive rosters and high expectations and currently on course to miss the postseason. But with stars that league sources say they’ve deemed untouchable — Jimmy Butler and Bam Adebayo for the Heat, Zach LaVine and DeMar DeRozan for the Bulls — and role players with outsized contracts — Duncan Robinson and Tyler Herro for the Heat, Lonzo Ball and Nikola Vucevic for the Bulls — their flexibility to make a meaningful addition appears limited.

First of all, it would be hard to find another team willing to trade for that LaVine contract (5-year, $215 million deal with a 15 percent trade kicker). Based on how LaVine has played so far this year, outside of Sunday night, there’s not a team in the league that would be close to trading for his contract.

Secondly, and on a more positive note, it’s good to know that the Bulls are planning to keep DeMar DeRozan. Hopefully, that means they can lock him up on another deal for additional years to come.

The question now becomes, though, if the Bulls are keeping LaVine and DeRozan, who will they end up trading before this year’s deadline, if anyone? And, looking to the future, will the Bulls be able to field a title contender while paying those two? It’s going to take either some highly-favorable luck in an upcoming draft or for the Bulls to hit on a free agent to pair with their star duo.

If LaVine and DeRozan are untouchable, that means the Bulls very likely could try finding a home for the expiring contract of Nikola Vucevic — which would be a huge win to get rid of his deal for anything in return.

If anyone is going to be traded, with what we know now in mind, it’s going to be Vucevic. The Bulls have also tried trading Coby White in the past, but his play hadn’t lived up to any possible trade value. This season, he’s played pretty well, so there’s potential for a deal there as well.

Patrick Williams likely won’t be dealt unless the Bulls can get a first-round pick, which might not be entirely possible just yet — although there is hope the breakout fully continues and that he blossoms the rest of the year.

For now, Bulls fans will have to live with knowing that their two star wings are untouchable and that, hopefully, the team can figure out how to put together a contender in the coming season or two.

Read More

The 2022 MLB Winter Meetings are officially underway, and one of the top priorities this offseason for the Chicago Cubs is to find help at shortstop.

Over the last few weeks, the Cubs have been in plenty of rumors and reports, linked to multiple names on the shortstop front. A couple of those names include recent Los Angeles Dodgers shortstop Trea Turner and recent Atlanta Braves shortstop Dansby Swanson.

But, just Sunday evening, two other names which have been tossed around with the Cubs were yet again mentioned. This time, it’s Bob Nightengale of USA Today reporting that the Cubs are going to make Boston Red Sox shortstop Xander Bogaerts their “top priority.”

Nightengale also mentioned recent Minnesota Twins shortstop Carlos Correa, saying that the Cubs are exploring his market as well. Either one of these talented players would make Cubs fans happy, to say the least.

Xander Bogaerts or Carlos Correa in Chicago Cubs blue? Fans would be thrilled to see such a sight.

Three out of the last four seasons, Bogaerts has been an All Star, and has four total bids since entering the Majors in 2013. Last season for Boston, Bogaerts slashed .307/.377/.456. He added 15 home runs, 38 extra-base hits (all doubles) and 73 RBI.

Offensively, his numbers weren’t as good as his best year by any means, but he was still productive. Back in 2019, Bogaerts hit a career-high 33 home runs and enjoyed another career-best, with 117 RBI.

At just 30 years old, this could be a long-term solution for the Cubs at their shortstop position. Bogaerts has spent his entire career with Boston, and now it looks like he could be finding a new home for the first time as a pro.

Speaking of a future solution, Correa is even younger at 28 years old. His lone season spent in Minnesota, last year, came after he started his career with seven-straight seasons with the Houston Astros.

The 2-time All Star is going to be one of the biggest free agent prizes of the offseason, with plenty of teams vying for his services. Even the Twins have entertained bringing him back, although it appears they could be a long shot at this point.

Correa is a great two-way player who has topped the 20 home run mark six times in his career, and last year slashed .291/.366/.467.

Read More

There’s conflict, grief, helplessness, loss, and also joy, camaraderie, and loyalty that inhabit artist Roman Villarreal’s south-side neighborhood and, consequently, the work he’s made there. All of this is on display in his first retrospective, “South Chicago Legacies,” at Intuit: The Center for Intuitive and Outsider Art.  

Villarreal grew up in the Bush neighborhood on the southeast side, among steelworkers, of which he was one, and gang members, of which he was also one. He started his art practice in the army during the Vietnam War by making drawings and selling them to fellow soldiers. Villarreal served his term without getting deployed to Vietnam, a fate that few men in his community shared. In fact, his parish, Our Lady of Guadalupe, is believed to have suffered the highest per capita death rate of men sent to war during that era. This was the first of two devastations that would mark his community worse off; the second was the closure of the steel mills.

In the years following the war, Villarreal started sculpting what he saw on the streets out of material he salvaged. In the late 1970s, he constructed The Rainbow Lounge, the oldest piece on display at Intuit. It’s a three-dimensional wooden panel painted in bright acrylics that depicts a band performing at the eponymous hangout. The women’s lips flash bright red lipstick, the men’s carry heavy handlebar mustaches. It’s warm and jovial. As Villarreal told me, “You have to show the good and the bad.”

The decade that followed The Rainbow Lounge brought national tragedy, and many of Villareal’s 1980s works chosen for display deal straight-forwardly with drug abuse, addiction, and a community in mourning. Side-by-side paintings They Die On The Throne and Habits show a man with a needle in his hand and a woman with a bottle to her lips, respectively. Though to reduce these paintings to drug awareness PSAs would be a huge disservice. They imbue the space with its most glaring displays of color—colors were associated with gangs and were very important to the community, Villarreal told me—and showcase his skill with acrylics.

“The way I see it, we were this middle-class neighborhood while the steel mills were open,” he says. “Then came the closures and the downfall. So now we have this whole generation that grew up during a time when all they saw was a middle-class neighborhood falling through the cracks—it hasn’t been the same since.” Villarreal bore witness to it all: “Vietnam, death, fatherhood, closures, and the street art movement…” he says, skimming through a half-century’s worth of history in a few seconds. He consolidates it all as naturally as he might give his address. He knows the stories well because he’s spent his life telling them. 

Roman Villarreal (American, b. 1950). The Parade, early 2000s. Acrylic on foam, 12 x 6 x 35 in. Courtesy of the Villarreal Family. Credit: Joseph “Fugie” Almanza

“I tell people I’m an urban anthropologist,” he says. “All I’m doing, really, is showing you my experiences from the 80s, 90s, [and so on]. I have to make sure there’s an even balance. I don’t only want to show bad, because it’s not only bad.” A painting from the 1990s, Porch, shows his signature blocky figures—friends, kids, pets—gathered on the front steps of a house, drinking beer, listening to music, and enjoying the weather. He adds: “They’re all wearing gang sweaters.” Villarreal lived on a block called “the beehive” where a lot of Latin Kings, the gang he belonged to, also lived. All summer they got together on porches before “the bloody 90s,” as he puts it. “Then we all moved to the backyards.” The painting itself holds all of these aspects: the love, the warmth, the moment, as well as the loss, the violence, the change. 

Porch wasn’t, in fact, meant to be viewed. It was a sketch for a clay piece. Of course, things don’t always work out as planned. An alabaster sculpture called Dogs (2019) started out as a lion and her cubs. He hadn’t even finished it when Intuit’s exhibition curator Alison Amick decided they wanted it in the show. “You never know what people are going to see in your work,” he says and seems genuinely interested in the various ways that the show could have played out. 

Intuit is dedicated to outsider art, but the museum has the hardwood floors and white walls of any West Town gallery. When the exhibition opened in June of this year, Villarreal says he was “really, really surprised to see it all together in that space.” Villarreal was used to seeing his work in group shows or outdoors (his two most well-known sculptures, a mysterious mermaid at 41st street beach and a steelworker and his family at Steelworkers Park, live in public spaces). 

Villarreal left the steel mills in the late 1980s and has been making art full-time ever since. He proudly identifies as an outsider artist; his auto-didacticism granted him a freedom that he doubts he’d have found by studying art in an institution. He attempts to describe the freedom that he feels when he’s working, fumbling around with the words before settling on: “There’s nothing as beautiful as a blank canvas.” He works almost every day, sketching and painting when it’s cold, sculpting when it’s warm. Between his three studios, he has 900 works. 

There are drawbacks to his outsider position, though. Namely, what happens to the art after the show closes or, ultimately, once the artist dies. There aren’t established places for preservation in the outsider art world, let alone continued sales. “We don’t have a traditional outlet, there’s a lot to learn from trial and error. Technique, how to promote work, how to network. But we’ll learn to survive,” he says. And isn’t that the truth. 

“Roman Villarreal: South Chicago Legacies” Through 1/8/23: Thu-Sun 11 AM-6 PM, Intuit: The Center for Intuitive and Outsider Art, 756 N. Milwaukee, (312) 624-9487, art.org

Read More

There’s conflict, grief, helplessness, loss, and also joy, camaraderie, and loyalty that inhabit artist Roman Villarreal’s south-side neighborhood and, consequently, the work he’s made there. All of this is on display in his first retrospective, “South Chicago Legacies,” at Intuit: The Center for Intuitive and Outsider Art.  

Villarreal grew up in the Bush neighborhood on the southeast side, among steelworkers, of which he was one, and gang members, of which he was also one. He started his art practice in the army during the Vietnam War by making drawings and selling them to fellow soldiers. Villarreal served his term without getting deployed to Vietnam, a fate that few men in his community shared. In fact, his parish, Our Lady of Guadalupe, is believed to have suffered the highest per capita death rate of men sent to war during that era. This was the first of two devastations that would mark his community worse off; the second was the closure of the steel mills.

In the years following the war, Villarreal started sculpting what he saw on the streets out of material he salvaged. In the late 1970s, he constructed The Rainbow Lounge, the oldest piece on display at Intuit. It’s a three-dimensional wooden panel painted in bright acrylics that depicts a band performing at the eponymous hangout. The women’s lips flash bright red lipstick, the men’s carry heavy handlebar mustaches. It’s warm and jovial. As Villarreal told me, “You have to show the good and the bad.”

The decade that followed The Rainbow Lounge brought national tragedy, and many of Villareal’s 1980s works chosen for display deal straight-forwardly with drug abuse, addiction, and a community in mourning. Side-by-side paintings They Die On The Throne and Habits show a man with a needle in his hand and a woman with a bottle to her lips, respectively. Though to reduce these paintings to drug awareness PSAs would be a huge disservice. They imbue the space with its most glaring displays of color—colors were associated with gangs and were very important to the community, Villarreal told me—and showcase his skill with acrylics.

“The way I see it, we were this middle-class neighborhood while the steel mills were open,” he says. “Then came the closures and the downfall. So now we have this whole generation that grew up during a time when all they saw was a middle-class neighborhood falling through the cracks—it hasn’t been the same since.” Villarreal bore witness to it all: “Vietnam, death, fatherhood, closures, and the street art movement…” he says, skimming through a half-century’s worth of history in a few seconds. He consolidates it all as naturally as he might give his address. He knows the stories well because he’s spent his life telling them. 

Roman Villarreal (American, b. 1950). The Parade, early 2000s. Acrylic on foam, 12 x 6 x 35 in. Courtesy of the Villarreal Family. Credit: Joseph “Fugie” Almanza

“I tell people I’m an urban anthropologist,” he says. “All I’m doing, really, is showing you my experiences from the 80s, 90s, [and so on]. I have to make sure there’s an even balance. I don’t only want to show bad, because it’s not only bad.” A painting from the 1990s, Porch, shows his signature blocky figures—friends, kids, pets—gathered on the front steps of a house, drinking beer, listening to music, and enjoying the weather. He adds: “They’re all wearing gang sweaters.” Villarreal lived on a block called “the beehive” where a lot of Latin Kings, the gang he belonged to, also lived. All summer they got together on porches before “the bloody 90s,” as he puts it. “Then we all moved to the backyards.” The painting itself holds all of these aspects: the love, the warmth, the moment, as well as the loss, the violence, the change. 

Porch wasn’t, in fact, meant to be viewed. It was a sketch for a clay piece. Of course, things don’t always work out as planned. An alabaster sculpture called Dogs (2019) started out as a lion and her cubs. He hadn’t even finished it when Intuit’s exhibition curator Alison Amick decided they wanted it in the show. “You never know what people are going to see in your work,” he says and seems genuinely interested in the various ways that the show could have played out. 

Intuit is dedicated to outsider art, but the museum has the hardwood floors and white walls of any West Town gallery. When the exhibition opened in June of this year, Villarreal says he was “really, really surprised to see it all together in that space.” Villarreal was used to seeing his work in group shows or outdoors (his two most well-known sculptures, a mysterious mermaid at 41st street beach and a steelworker and his family at Steelworkers Park, live in public spaces). 

Villarreal left the steel mills in the late 1980s and has been making art full-time ever since. He proudly identifies as an outsider artist; his auto-didacticism granted him a freedom that he doubts he’d have found by studying art in an institution. He attempts to describe the freedom that he feels when he’s working, fumbling around with the words before settling on: “There’s nothing as beautiful as a blank canvas.” He works almost every day, sketching and painting when it’s cold, sculpting when it’s warm. Between his three studios, he has 900 works. 

There are drawbacks to his outsider position, though. Namely, what happens to the art after the show closes or, ultimately, once the artist dies. There aren’t established places for preservation in the outsider art world, let alone continued sales. “We don’t have a traditional outlet, there’s a lot to learn from trial and error. Technique, how to promote work, how to network. But we’ll learn to survive,” he says. And isn’t that the truth. 

“Roman Villarreal: South Chicago Legacies” Through 1/8/23: Thu-Sun 11 AM-6 PM, Intuit: The Center for Intuitive and Outsider Art, 756 N. Milwaukee, (312) 624-9487, art.org

Read More

NEW YORK — Before the New York Knicks hosted the Dallas Mavericks on Saturday afternoon, Knicks coach Tom Thibodeau was asked about the NBA’s emphasis on enforcing traveling this season.

“I’m all for it,” Thibodeau said.

Over the ensuing 36 hours, the Knicks were hit with six violations in a blowout loss to the Mavericks before committing another eight — the most called on any team in a single game since 2010, according to Elias Sports Bureau research — during Sunday’s 91-82 victory against the Cleveland Cavaliers.

But it was a traveling call Thibodeau believed wasn’t called on Cavs guard Darius Garland that landed the coach a technical foul late in the fourth quarter.

“Obviously there’s an emphasis on it by the league,” Thibodeau said postgame. “I think [the enforcement] is good, for the most part. But I think you have to be consistent in the way in which you call it.

“If it’s tight for one team, it’s got to be tight for the other team.”

2 Related

Neither side was happy with the way Sunday’s game was called. Cleveland coach J.B. Bickerstaff echoed his New York counterpart after the Cavs were called for five travels.

“To be honest with you, every game could be called like this,” Bickerstaff said after holding back a smile. “But it’s not. So when it is, it makes it difficult to figure out what exactly we’re doing and how we’re going to do it.”

Knicks forward Julius Randle, meanwhile, said he had never experienced such a game throughout his nine-year NBA career.

“I’m not saying they’re wrong,” Randle said. “I’m not saying they’re the wrong calls. It’s just, I’ve never seen it.”

While Sunday’s game might have been an extreme example — New York and Cleveland’s 13 combined travels is the most for an NBA game this season and the most since March 2007, according to ESPN Stats & Information research — the league has seen a dramatic increase in both traveling and carrying violations in recent weeks.

October saw 1.7 travels called per game, according to analysis by ESPN’s Kevin Pelton. That number doubled in November. (During the 2021-22 season, there were 1.26 travels called per game, the lowest frequency dating back to 1996-97, the first year that play-by-play data is available).

What has been even more dramatic is the increase in carrying and palming calls. In October, not a single carry was called. In November, there were 44 — 43 were called across the entire 2021-22 season. Six palming violations in October were followed by 57 being called in November — 67 such calls were made across all of last season.

The violations have played a part in the leaguewide offensive rating going from 112 points per 100 possessions in October to 111.3 in November, as opposed to offense typically increasing over the course of the season.

And calls have been immune to situation, score and stardom. Shortly after Thibodeau received the technical Sunday, Cavaliers guard Donovan Mitchell was called for a travel a few feet away from the Knicks bench. Golden State Warriors star Stephen Curry was called for a travel on a potential winning 3-point attempt in the final seconds against Dallas on Tuesday.

The Chicago Bears are no longer the winningest franchise in the NFL. The Green Bay Packers victory over the Bears at Soldier Field allowed the Pack to move into the top spot.

The Packers have not lost to the Bears since 2018. Aaron Rodgers continued his unofficial ownership of the Chicago Bears. It is unknown if this was his last game played in the rivalry.

He now has 24 victories against the Bears while Chicago has only defeated the Packers five times during the Rodgers era.

It is never fun to lose to the Packers. The Bears have been doing a lot of it to Green Bay since 1992. Unlike so many of those losses, Chicago has two silver linings coming out of this defeat.

Justin Fields was outstanding against the Packers.

Fields returned after missing last week’s game with a shoulder injury against the New York Jets. Fields showed the injury did not bother him.

He made his presence felt early in the game when he raced 55 yards for a touchdown with three minutes left in the first quarter.

The knock on Justin Fields this year is he has not been a great passer. Well, he proved his doubters wrong.

He turned in his best passing game of the season as he completed 20 of 25 passes for 254 yards. Fields threw some nice deep-ball completions.

He hooked up with Equanimeous St. Brown for a 56-yard completion midway through the second quarter. That set up a touchdown by David Montgomery.

Justin Fields found N’Keal Harry for an amazing 49-yard reception early in the fourth quarter.

Fields did throw two interceptions in the fourth quarter that helped seal the Packers’ victory. The first interception happened because St. Brown ran a poor route. The second interception happened when Fields was trying to make something happen late in the game and forced a pass into good coverage.

Outside of those two picks, Fields made good decisions with the ball. He read the field well and the offensive line gave him time to throw. Fields was not sacked for the first time all season.

Fields continues to show he is worth the Chicago Bears building around him. That brings us to our next silver lining.

The Chicago Bears are still in a position for a prime draft pick.

The Bears are still in line to get the second overall pick in the 2023 NFL Draft. Had the Bears won, they could have fallen as far as the ninth pick in the first round.

That is the ideal draft pick for a rebuilding team to have. It holds even more value since the Chicago Bears do not need a quarterback. A lot can change between today and draft day but right now Alabama quarterback Bryce Young and Ohio State quarterback C.J. Stroud will be the most sought after signal callers in the draft.

The Houston Texans will most likely take a quarterback after Davis Mills flamed out. That will leave a team in desperate need of a franchise quarterback looking to possibly trade up to get whoever the Texans do not select.

That means the Chicago Bears could be in line to get the same trade package the Miami Dolphins got from the San Francisco 49ers in 2020. The 49ers moved up from the 12th pick to the third pick to select Trey Lance and gave up three first-round picks.

Imagine the type of offseason general manager Ryan Poles can have with all the salary cap space he has and additional draft capital.

Poles could also stay at the second pick and take Georgia defensive tackle Jalen Carter or Alabama pass rusher Will Anderson. Both are game wreckers the defense needs to get better.

The Chicago Bears still need the Los Angeles Rams and the Denver Broncos to win a few games down the stretch. While they both traded their first-round picks away, their record will still determine the draft slot the Seattle Seahawks (they own the rights to the Broncos pick) and Detroit Lions (they own the rights to the Rams pick) will have.

The Chicago Bears have the highest strength of schedule between the three teams. That means the Bears do not have the tiebreaker in their favor. Therefore, if all three end the season with the same record, the Bears could drop a few slots.

If they are still in the top 5, Chicago would still be in a good spot for an impact player. Although, it means sitting through four more games of losing to land the highest pick possible.

If Fields continues to play well, it will be worth watching. It will mean a premium pick and a thriving quarterback will put the Chicago Bears in a good spot for a better 2023 season.

Read More

Read More