Lollapalooza officially returns to Grant Park this week for four days of music and good times despite concerns about how bringing together over 100,000 people each day will affect the ongoing pandemic.

The festival, which opens Thursday with vaccination or proof of a negative COVID-19 test required for entry, represents the largest public event to date held in Chicago since the emergence of the coronavirus last March. Despite worries over the virus’ Delta variant and rising caseloads nationally, the show will go on this weekend.

Huge acts will be in town luring giant crowds to the park, including Miley Cyrus, Foo Fighters, Post Malone and Tyler, The Creator. Many surrounding streets will be closed through Sunday night.

The Sun-Times will be there all four days covering the big shows and big crowds. Keep this page bookmarked for updates throughout the festival.

Photo highlights

DAY 1: Sights and sounds from Thursday

Tyler LaRiviere/Sun-Times

Check out more sights and sounds captured by our photographers on the first day of Lolla here.

Lolla signs warn attendees they assume risk for COVID-19

The thousands of people entering Lollapalooza on Thursday are being greeted by signs explaining something that’s not included on their public health and safety website: By attending the festival, “you voluntarily assume all risks related to exposure to COVID-19,” which they mention “can lead to severe illness and death.”

Read the full story here.

Must-see acts to check out

Some of the names on the Lolla lineup are a lot bigger than others. Selena Fragassi parses through the dozens of bands and artists to break down 10 must-see acts that attendees won’t want to miss this weekend. Here’s what Fragassi says about one of the festival’s earliest performers, Orville Peck:

No one exactly knows who this incognito Canadian country singer is (his trademark look is a long, fringed mask and cowboy hat) but the boudoir-looking John Wayne has heaped tons of due praise in his few years on the scene. Both for crafting a highly contagious psychedelic outlaw sound that refreshes the genre and for being an LGBTQ iconoclast whose work with Trixie Mattel and Gaga will soon put him in a new league.

Check out all of our recommended shows here.

How to watch performances live online

Unlike past years, Hulu is the exclusive live streaming partner for Lollapalooza 2021. All Hulu subscribers will be able to watch live performances for free as part of their subscriptions. Complete streaming schedules for all four days are already up on Hulu’s website, although they warn that set times are subject to change.

How will COVID-19 affect the festival?

With coronavirus case figures rising across the country amid lagging vaccination rates and the emergence of the Delta variant, Lollapalooza put in place security measures to help make the festival safer.

For those attending the festival, a vaccination card or proof of negative COVID-19 test will be required for entry. Get more information on how that’ll work here.

Chicago’s top health official, Dr. Alison Arwady, said Tuesday that the city’s virus situation is in “good control” ahead of the festival. However, Mayor Lori Lightfoot said recently that she would not hesitate to impose measures in Chicago such as face covering requirements if the city’s daily caseload keeps rising — and Arwady said she expects “some cases” of COVID-19 to result from the festival being held.

Lineup and schedule

Complete daily schedules for Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday can be found here.

The after-show lineup includes Modest Mouse, Journey, Jimmy Eat World and Freddie Gibbs. Check out the complete list of official Lolla after-shows here.

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McDonald’s founder Ray Kroc (childhood home), Oak Park

Andy Fine: Can we get some outdoor seating? Where am I supposed to eat my Egg White Delight and Fruit ’N Yogurt Parfait?

Jeremy Owens: This house is in desperate need of special sauce.

Andy: The perimeter looks like a four-piece McNugget in a 20-piece box.

Fox 32 reporter Natalie Bomke and season 5 Bachelorette Winner Ed Swiderski, Riverside

Andy: That’s a lot of brown.

Jeremy: I haven’t been this bored since season 5 of The Bachelorette.

Andy: The entrance is terrible. Where’s the limo supposed to pull up?

Jeremy: Jillian, girl, congrats — you dodged a bullet.

Former Bulls forward Jabari Parker, Near South Side

Jeremy: I hope Jabari has good insurance; those stair railings look rickety.

Andy: What do you call this style? Mary Poppins chic?

Jeremy: Any player who leaves the Bulls deserves to spend eternity in a haunted mansion. Mazel tov!

Former Blackhawks forward Patrick Sharp, Lake View

Andy: Is this the newest branch of the Chicago Public Library?

Jeremy: Wait, are we sure that’s not a prison?

Andy: This house is as cold as ice … hockey.

Jeremy: The Stanley Cup money couldn’t buy a yard?

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A list of new and recently released books from Chicago authors or publishers, plus some books you might have missed when they first came out.

MEMOIR

The Flowering: The Autobiography of Judy Chicago by Judy Chicago with a foreword by Gloria Steinem (July 2021, Thames & Hudson)

The creator of the groundbreaking 1970s art installation The Dinner Party was born in Chicago in 1939, and writes about her life and career in this new memoir.

Her Word is Bond: Navigating Hip-Hop and Relationships in a Culture of Misogyny by Cristalle “Psalm One” Bowen (August 2021, Haymarket Books)

The acclaimed rapper with roots in Englewood tells the story of her fight to be heard.

FICTION

Incense and Sensibility by Sonali Dev (July 2021, William Morrow & Company)

The author of the Chicago Reader Book Club’s November 2020 pick Recipe for Persuasion offers the third in her series of love stories focused around the Raje family.

NONFICTION

Stories Are What Save Us: A Survivor’s Guide to Writing About Trauma by David Chrisinger (July 2021, Johns Hopkins University Press)

The leader of the Harris Writing Program at the University of Chicago offers this collection of writing exercises and lessons that he’s learned from his years of teaching writing to military veterans and other survivors of trauma.

Nobody Knows the Trouble I’ve Seen: The Emotional Lives of Black Women by Dr. Inger Burnett-Zeigler (June 2021, Amistad)

Burnett-Zeigler, a licensed clinical psychologist and associate professor at Northwestern, explores the connections between strength and adversity as they relate to Black women’s inner lives.

CHILDREN/YOUNG ADULT

Maya and the Robot by Eve L. Ewing (July 2021, Kokila)

This illustrated novel for tween readers by Chicago writer and sociologist Eve L. Ewing concerns fifth grade scientist Maya and a homemade robot that comes to life.

Darling by K. Ancrum (June 2021, Imprint)

Ancrum recasts Peter Pan as a Chicago underground impresario in this thriller written for young adult audiences (the Chicago Reader Book Club’s July 2021 read).

ICYMI (some titles you may have missed on their initial release)

Bullets for Dead Hoods: An Encyclopedia of Chicago Mobsters, c. 1933 by John Corbett (October 2020, Soberscove Press)

Music writer, art gallery owner, and past Reader contributor Corbett found this unusual document in a Chicago junk shop in the early 2000s: a typewritten overview of the Chicago mob of the 1930s (published here along with a pull-out map of Chicago notated with locations referenced in the original manuscript).

Sweeter Voices Still: An LGBTQ Anthology from Middle America edited by Ryan Schuessler and Kevin Whiteneir, Jr. (January 2021, Belt Publishing)

An anthology of nonfiction by and about queer life in the midwest, including writing from Chicago authors Owen Keehnen and Elizabeth Harper.

How Did We Get Here? by Sterling Bartlett (February 2021, First to Knock)

The first comic book by Bartlett, a Los Angeles-based painter who has designed merchandise and illustrations for music clients like the band MC5 and singer Chris Stapleton. Published by First to Knock, an independent book publisher and record label based in Michigan City, Indiana.

the other option is to slow down by Amanda Williams (March 2021, Candor Arts and Smith College Museum of Art)

A unique, hand-constructed monograph detailing Amanda Williams’s experience as the inaugural artist-in-residence at Smith College Museum of Art. Williams is a visual artist based in Chicago who participated in the 2018 Venice Architecture Biennale, and had a solo exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art in 2017.

The Quarantine Times edited by Jeremiah Chiu, Edward Marszewski, and Nicholas Wylie (paperback edition March 2021, Public Media Institute and special handmade hardcover edition by Public Media Institute and Candor Arts)

A collection of writing and art responding to the challenges of 2020 and first published online as part of the Quarantine Times website created by Bridgeport’s Public Media Institute.

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The Bears drafted David Montgomery thinking he’d be a dynamic rushing and receiving threat out of the backfield, and that hasn’t fully materialized. That’s partly on Montgomery, who is still developing as he goes into his third season, but he also hasn’t gotten a great opportunity yet.

Throughout his two seasons, the Bears have been wildly inconsistent on the offensive line and at quarterback, and there have been ample questions about coach Matt Nagy’s inclination to run the ball. Montgomery would never raise those issues publicly, but there’s no doubt those would be challenging circumstances for any running back.

The Bears hope it’ll be a more favorable scenario this season. They believe they’ve solidified at least the three spots in the middle of the offensive line and brought in a more stable quarterback in Andy Dalton. Nagy is also talking about getting Montgomery 20 carries per game, but he’s talked about running more before.

“It’s very doable,” Nagy said. “And when you look at where David has been the last couple of years, getting him the football is a good thing. He can make a lot of people miss.

“When you’re able to get in that fourth quarter and you have the lead and you can hand the ball off to David Montgomery, that’s a good thing. Unfortunately, we haven’t been in that situation enough in the past two years, so it’s limited him a little bit with carries.”

Whether the Bears truly have answers on the line and at quarterback and whether they ever have a fourth-quarter lead are beyond Montgomery’s control. For his part, he looks at his 1,070 yards and eight touchdowns last season and knows he can exceed it.

“Of course, because I know myself and how good I can be,” he said.

While that production was very good by recent Bears standards — they hadn’t had a 1,000-yard rusher since 2017, and wide receiver Allen Robinson was the only other player to put up 700-plus yards from scrimmage — his 4.3 yards per carry ranked 29th in the NFL.

He was better, though, as a receiver and jumped from 25 catches, 185 yards and a touchdown as a rookie to 54, 438 and two last season. He was fourth in yards receiving among running backs.

“I proved that I can catch the ball, but I have so much more that I can improve on,” he said. “But it’s like beating a dead horse telling you what I can do. I’m just going to go out there and show it.”

The bar is high. Matt Forte had 477 yards receiving as a rookie and averaged 61 catches for 516 yards over his eight seasons with the Bears.

Montgomery is doing everything he can to get to that level and already feels “a lot looser, a lot shiftier” than he did in training camp last year because of putting in extra time in the offseason to perfect his running mechanics.

He also has made good use of Dalton’s experience. Mitch Trubisky was still a fledgling player himself, whereas Dalton has 142 starts and more career snaps than Trubisky, Nick Foles and Chase Daniel combined.

“He’s definitely big on making sure that everybody’s on the same page, and if you need something, ask him,” Montgomery said. “I’ve asked Andy so many questions you would think I’m the cops or something. I’m just trying to sharpen my game and… I’ve never seen somebody come in and be so vocal and work as much as him.”

And Dalton’s cool with being pestered all the time?

“He ain’t told me to shut up yet, so I’m good,” Montgomery said.

That’s probably because Dalton knows how much he’s going to need Montgomery. With so much uncertainty going into this season, a dangerous running back would make a huge difference.

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NEW YORK — Blues guitar legend Buddy Guy has influenced some of the greatest rock guitarists of all time, including Eric Clapton, Jimmy Page and Gary Clarke Jr. But the factors that led to his inspiration may not have happened if Guy hadn’t taken a stand — literally.

“When I came to Chicago, most blues musicians, including Muddy Waters, they all was sitting in a chair playing. And I said, ‘I can’t play like them, but I think I can outdo them. I can stand up and jump off the stage and get some attention,'” Guy recently told The Associated Press.

Jumping around on stage, playing the guitar behind his back, and picking with his teeth brought him lots of attention, especially from an experimental guitarist from Seattle who was recently discharged from the Army named Jimi Hendrix. The future virtuoso not only reinvented the sound of the electric guitar, but he also drew on the showmanship Guy displayed.

“I’m blessed with that because I didn’t know that many people would look at me and feel that way,” the multi-Grammy winning Guy said.

Now the 84-year-old blues great becomes the subject of the latest installment of the PBS biography series “American Masters.” The episode, now airing on PBS stations, “Buddy Guy: The Blues Chase the Blues Away,” dives into his lengthy career.

Honored and humble about being recognized, Guy says he saw his contemporaries as better guitarists, so he had to find his own style. That came from being inspired by different types of music, ranging from gospel to country — a mix he equates to a Louisiana culinary specialty.

“You can call my guitar playing gumbo, because if you cook a gumbo in Louisiana, you throw every kind of meat you can. And that makes it more delicious than what it was if you just put one meat in it,” he says.

Yet, all of the styles he put into his playing required extreme perseverance. Growing up in the Jim Crow era South and raised in a sharecropping family, Guy became fascinated the first time he saw someone play guitar. But actually having one to put in his hands and play created an obstacle he needed to overcome.

He would try and make his own, including using rubber bands as strings, before increasing his ingenuity to the wire strands from the window screens in the family home. But the ever-dwindling screens came to the attention of his mother. “My mom noticed mosquitoes in the house because something was wrong with the windows.”

He recalls getting his hands on a real guitar during a Christmas celebration when its player took a break to get drunk, providing Guy with some time to figure out how to play what he had seen. His dad eventually bought him a guitar for “a couple of dollars” and he never looked back.

But mastering the instrument was one thing, finding an audience was another. By the time Guy came on the scene, the blues were a struggling art form. There was nothing lucrative about playing music in those days because there wasn’t a crossover to a mainstream audience.

At the time, he says white audiences didn’t have an appetite for the blues, with a few turning up at shows every “once in a while.”

“Nobody was making a decent living off of playing the blues,” he says. “It was going from town to town.” Sometimes he said he just made enough money to make it to the next town.

AP

It was the love of music that kept him and his counterparts playing. But that would soon change in the 1960s with the arrival of a new sound on the airwaves.

“The British,” Guy said succinctly.

More appropriately, he credits the Rolling Stones, whose guitarist Keith Richards and singer Mick Jagger especially admired Guy’s playing and the blues in general.

When the TV variety show “Shindig!” wanted the Stones to appear, Jagger had one condition. “Jagger said I’ll come on the show if you let me bring Muddy Waters. And they say, ‘Who in the hell is that?’ And he said, ‘You mean to tell me you don’t know who Muddy Waters is? We named ourselves after his famous record, ‘Rolling Stone.'”

After that, Guy says the blues exploded.

Riding the wave of Waters, BB King, Otis Rush and other players, Guy found his own style and became one of the most recognizable blues artists of the Chicago blues sound. In 2005, Clapton and King inducted Guy into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

While Guy saw the blues rise from a personal passion to main influence of the biggest rock bands in history, he said his passion has not changed. “I’m playing my guitar for the life that I’m living in this point and time,” he said.

Nowadays, he’s a man on a mission to keep the blues alive because he said there’s just not enough places for people to hear it. “The blues is not being played or heard on your big radio stations anymore,” Guy said.

Guy says even his son was unaware of his significance as a blues player until he was old enough to go a blues club. “He said, ‘Dad, I didn’t know you could do that.’ And he’s been a blues player ever since,” Guy said.

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SAITAMA, Japan — There was plenty of time to talk about it, had they wanted to.

Devin Booker, Jrue Holiday and Khris Middleton were together on a plane to Tokyo, just days after they had played in the hard-fought NBA Finals.

They had roughly nine hours in the air to relive details of that series, to revisit some of their memorable moments.

Booker and Middleton both had 40-point games in the series. Holiday provided a highlight that will be replayed in Milwaukee for years to come.

So, with all that time to kill on the way to the Olympics, how much talk was about the NBA Finals?

“There was actually none,” Middleton said. “We all respect each other.

“It was all about moving on and figuring out a way to get this job done here. To sit there and talk about the finals was not something that was on anybody’s mind.”

The series ended last Tuesday, when the Bucks won Game 6 to close out Booker’s Phoenix Suns. Middleton and Holiday took part in Milwaukee’s championship parade on Thursday, then flew the next day to Seattle, where they met up with Booker.

It was a whirlwind few days after a draining two-week series. And with the U.S. Olympic opener tipping off less than 24 hours after they landed in Japan, the flight was about the only rest the trio was going to get.

“I feel like me, Book and K-Midd just slept,” Holiday said.

Booker couldn’t be blamed if he didn’t want to talk to two guys who had been responsible for ruining his NBA championship dreams. But he reiterated that he could work with them, just as he could have had the Suns won.

“I said it during the series when we had this question. I have a lot of respect for those guys and when you’re competing at the highest level, it doesn’t always go your way,” Booker said. “But I’m a forward thinker and move onto the next thing and be able to take my ‘L’ and move on.”

That’s not always easy when players have to quickly go from foes to friends.

When Kevin Durant made his Olympic debut in 2012, he acknowledged the difficulty in seeing LeBron James every day so soon after Miami beat Oklahoma City in those NBA Finals. Kobe Bryant said then he didn’t know if he could’ve handled that, figuring if he was Durant he’d have needed to go at James in practice to help get over it.

Booker hasn’t forgotten his disappointment, but he’s not holding it against his new teammates — even after Holiday stole the ball from him and threw an alley-oop pass to Giannis Antetokounmpo in the final moments of Game 5 to swing the series Milwaukee’s way.

“We lost and that’s it, and I’m man enough to accept that and move on,” Booker said. “So, there’s no hate towards Jrue or K-Midd.”

Besides, there were much bigger concerns.

There’s some anxiety for anyone coming to an Olympics, wondering how things are going to work. That’s raised even more this year, with heightened protocols because of the coronavirus pandemic.

The three Americans had to worry about that while knowing they were going to have to play in a game without getting to practice with their team, or even shoot around much with the international basketball that is much different than the leather one used in the NBA.

“If we had a couple weeks to prepare a little bit I think we’d be more used to it, but feeling it for the first time on game day was definitely an adjustment,” Booker said.

It wasn’t a problem for Holiday, who led the Americans with 18 points in their 83-76 loss to France. Booker shot 1 for 6 and Middleton missed both his attempts.

But with a couple days of rest and practice, U.S. coach Gregg Popovich moved Holiday and Booker into the starting lineup Wednesday. Booker had 16 points, Middleton scored 10 and Holiday delivered another strong game in a 120-66 rout of Iran.

The opening loss could make things more difficult for the Americans, but Middleton and Holiday know about digging out of tough spots. The Bucks overcame 2-0 holes in the second round and then again in the NBA Finals.

The Americans, who never had their full team together until the eve of their first game, knew all along the road to gold wouldn’t be easy.

“So a lot of adversity and I feel like this is just something that we do a lot,” Holiday said. “And we’ll accomplish this too, just like we’ve accomplished everything before.”

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Lollapalooza officially returns to Grant Park this week for four days of music and good times despite concerns about how bringing together over 100,000 people each day will affect the ongoing pandemic.

The festival, which opens Thursday with vaccination or proof of a negative COVID-19 test required for entry, represents the largest public event to date held in Chicago since the emergence of the coronavirus last March. Despite worries over the virus’ Delta variant and rising caseloads nationally, the show will go on this weekend.

Huge acts will be in town luring giant crowds to the park, including Miley Cyrus, Foo Fighters, Post Malone and Tyler, The Creator. Many surrounding streets will be closed through Sunday night.

The Sun-Times will be there all four days covering the big shows and big crowds. Keep this page bookmarked for updates throughout the festival.

Lolla signs warn attendees they assume risk for COVID-19

The thousands of people entering Lollapalooza on Thursday are being greeted by signs explaining something that’s not included on their public health and safety website: By attending the festival, “you voluntarily assume all risks related to exposure to COVID-19,” which they mention “can lead to severe illness and death.”

Read the full story here.

Must-see acts to check out

Some of the names on the Lolla lineup are a lot bigger than others. Selena Fragassi parses through the dozens of bands and artists to break down 10 must-see acts that attendees won’t want to miss this weekend. Here’s what Fragassi says about one of the festival’s earliest performers, Orville Peck:

No one exactly knows who this incognito Canadian country singer is (his trademark look is a long, fringed mask and cowboy hat) but the boudoir-looking John Wayne has heaped tons of due praise in his few years on the scene. Both for crafting a highly contagious psychedelic outlaw sound that refreshes the genre and for being an LGBTQ iconoclast whose work with Trixie Mattel and Gaga will soon put him in a new league.

Check out all of our recommended shows here.

How to watch performances live online

Unlike past years, Hulu is the exclusive live streaming partner for Lollapalooza 2021. All Hulu subscribers will be able to watch live performances for free as part of their subscriptions. Complete streaming schedules for all four days are already up on Hulu’s website, although they warn that set times are subject to change.

How will COVID-19 affect the festival?

With coronavirus case figures rising across the country amid lagging vaccination rates and the emergence of the Delta variant, Lollapalooza put in place security measures to help make the festival safer.

For those attending the festival, a vaccination card or proof of negative COVID-19 test will be required for entry. Get more information on how that’ll work here.

Chicago’s top health official, Dr. Alison Arwady, said Tuesday that the city’s virus situation is in “good control” ahead of the festival. However, Mayor Lori Lightfoot said recently that she would not hesitate to impose measures in Chicago such as face covering requirements if the city’s daily caseload keeps rising — and Arwady said she expects “some cases” of COVID-19 to result from the festival being held.

Lineup and schedule

Complete daily schedules for Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday can be found here.

The after-show lineup includes Modest Mouse, Journey, Jimmy Eat World and Freddie Gibbs. Check out the complete list of official Lolla after-shows here.

Read More

Bob Costas doesn’t have outlandish goals for his new talk show. He’s at a point in his career where he isn’t concerned about the size of his audience or how often he appears on TV.

He just wants it to be good.

“What I hope to achieve is something pretty simple,” Costas said. “Somebody walks away from it, or goes to bed thinking, ‘That was interesting, it was in its own way entertaining and it was done well.’ That’s all.”

For Costas, that’s eminently attainable, and given his abilities, easily exceedable.

The 29-time Emmy winner returns to HBO with “Back on the Record with Bob Costas,” which debuts at 10 p.m. Friday. The hourlong show, which also will be available to stream on HBO Max, will air monthly through October. Beginning next year, it will air four episodes quarterly.

Costas, 69, worked with HBO from 2001 to ’09, when he hosted “On the Record with Bob Costas,” which morphed into “Costas Now” in 2005. His new iteration includes two lengthy interviews with guests, a panel discussion and a concluding commentary from Costas. His guests Friday are basketball Hall of Famer Charles Barkley and Olympic gold-medal gymnast Aly Raisman.

ESPN’s Bomani Jones will add commentary and contribute to the panel discussion. For the first roundtable, he’ll be joined by former pitcher David Cone and former WNBA player Renee Montgomery. The show’s executive producers are longtime HBO producer Jonathan Crystal, former HBO Sports president Ross Greenburg and author and ESPN senior writer Howard Bryant.

They’ll cover big issues across the sports landscape that transcend sports. But Costas said his guests won’t always be sports figures.

“The first time around on HBO, just going off the top of my head, we had Chris Rock, Jerry Seinfeld, Jon Stewart, Billy Crystal, Tina Fey,” Costas said. “I particularly like comedians who are interested in sports because it adds some balance to the program. Bill Burr is gonna be on. If you said to him, ‘Just do an hour only about sports,’ he could easily do that because he’s got so much sports material.”

The same holds true for Jones, who hosts the ESPN podcast “The Right Time with Bomani Jones” and regularly appears on ESPN TV and radio. Costas didn’t know him personally before but had been impressed with his work.

“He can go in any direction and comment on almost anything that comes up,” Costas said. “He’s a very good and very self-assured television performer with a strong point of view. If I pick 10 sports subjects at random, he would have a knowledgeable take on all of them. And it doesn’t matter whether I agree with all of them. I don’t want an echo chamber. I want a good discussion.”

Costas continues to have a significant role at MLB Network and contributes on occasion at CNN. But he’ll be remembered most for his career at NBC, where he covered practically every major sporting event. To Chicago sports fans, he’s likely best-known for calling the Saturday MLB “Game of the Week” in the 1980s, following the Bulls’ NBA title runs in the 1990s and hosting 12 Olympics.

With the Summer Games going on in Tokyo, you might think Costas feels out of place being home.

“It’s not strange for me at all,” he said. “I had decided many years before the Rio Olympics that 2016 would be my last Olympics. I just didn’t announce it publicly. So there isn’t much to get used to. I did a dozen. I felt like that was enough.

“I’m very, very glad I did it. I’m glad that it’s an important part of my career and that people still seem to appreciate it. But not even for one second have I ever felt, Oh, if I was there, I would have said this or I would have done that. It’s completely behind me, as it should be.”

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Sky player Stefanie Dolson is checking in periodically from the Olympics. She was part of the U.S. 3-on-3 team that won a gold medal in the inaugural competition in that event at the Tokyo Games.

I woke up this morning and looked over to the table and saw my gold medal and I just smiled. As a young girl I watched and dreamed of being in the Olympics and winning a gold medal, but this is far beyond what I ever imagined.

Starting with how much heavier the medal is than I thought it would be. It actually hurts my neck to wear it, but that said, I definitely will be wearing it all day today.

It was an unbelievable feeling to know we just won a gold medal. And to be the pioneers of 3-on-3 and make history is something that I will always remember.

People asked me to compare it to winning a national championship and they are both really special. The celebration part of it is the same. The feeling of knowing you’re the best and how hard you worked to get there.

We worked for this and coach Kara (Lawson) had said that it would be harder than you could ever imagine to win. There’s also expectations with USA Basketball that it’s gold or bust. Well, we took the gold!

I have to give a shoutout to Tokyo, they did an incredible job making it feel special. The whole atmosphere leading up to the gold medal game was great starting with the giant drum they were banging during introductions. Tokyo did an amazing job of creating an environment in the middle of the coronavirus outbreak that made it feel huge.

The energy in the building was awesome. I can only imagine what Olympic 3-on-3 will be like when there are fans there.

The games themselves were nerve-wracking. We beat France in a tough one in the semifinals to advance and then won a hard-fought game with Russia. Going into the finals, we knew how physical Russia would be and we were ready for it. We played amazing defense and then when the final buzzer sounded it was like, holy cow we won.

Because of COVID protocols, they had us put the medals around our own teammates necks. Being the tallest of the group, I was chosen for that honor.

After the ceremony I had the pleasure of meeting Yao Ming, who was there cheering on the Chinese team that won the bronze. He asked me who I played for and I told him he had an incredible career. He couldn’t have been nicer and more gracious to take a photo with me.

I must say, he is tall, I’ve never felt that short before!

While we were waiting for the press conference I had a chance to call my family and share this with them since they’ve been such a big part of my basketball experience. It was so cool. My niece was there and obviously my mom was especially excited — one could say embarrassingly excited. I had so many texts from former coaches, teammates and even high school teachers I hadn’t talked to in 10 years.

We got back to the hotel late, around 2 a.m., and wow did USA Basketball make us feel special. Many of the 5-on-5 players were up and waiting for us to celebrate and have some champagne!

Now I’m headed back stateside soon with my medal and a lifetime of memories.

Thanks for following along on my journey.

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Bears radio voice Jeff Joniak can empathize with the baseball announcers who are frustrated being tethered to their home broadcast booths, calling road games off monitors because of issues related to the coronavirus pandemic.

Joniak and analyst Tom Thayer faced the same challenge last season, when they called one road game on site (they drove to the season opener in Detroit) and called the others from the culinary studio at WBBM Newsradio 780. As great as their setup was, it couldn’t replicate being at the stadium.

“Everybody wants to be there. That’s why we do it,” Joniak said. “We know we’re open for criticism because everybody analyses everything these days. But we had to do it.”

This season figures to be less challenging. Most important, Joniak and Thayer will return to the road. WBBM cleared them to travel, though the traveling party will be leaner. Also, sideline reporter Mark Grote will return to the field for home games.

“Things are returning to some semblance of normal,” director of news and programming Ron Gleason said, “but we continue to take many precautions to ensure everyone’s safety.”

That’s also true at training camp, which opened to a limited number of fans Thursday after being closed to the public last year. What won’t change is Joniak and Thayer’s camp coverage, which remained extensive last year despite interviews being moved to Zoom rooms.

“It’s a long list,” Joniak said. “You almost invest the most time of the season in training camp.”

The pair will post videos on the Bears’ platforms in which they break down each position. For WBBM, they’ll shoot daily videos about practice for the website. Their show “Bears All Access” airs at 6 p.m. Thursdays on The Score, barring a Cubs game, and Joniak will host the “Bears Coaches Show” on Monday nights on WBBM.

This season marks Joniak and Thayer’s 25^th together on Bears broadcasts and Joniak’s 21^st as play-by-play voice (he previously hosted the pre- and postgame shows). Joniak is looking forward to a more normal season, and it started with fans back at training camp.

“Training camp is a lot more fun when fans are there,” he said. “And I think it is that way for the players, as well. I think it does ratchet up their competitiveness. It’s gonna feel normal again.”

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