Andre Drummond had no clue what the Bulls roster would look like by Thursday’s NBA trade deadline.

That included the veteran big man talking about himself.

All the reserve center knew was he had packed for the three-city road trip, unsure who exactly would finish it out.

“I’ve preached the same message even when I was in Detroit,” Drummond said of the looming deadline and rumors surrounding it. “It’s the part of the season I can’t control. See what happens, play the game of basketball, the thing I can control, and let the cards fall where they may.”

Where they fell on Monday was directly on the heads of the struggling Spurs, as the Bulls (26-27) overcame a sluggish second and third quarter, to pull away in the fourth and turn it into a 128-104 laugher.

The team’s third-straight win, as well as their fourth over the last five games.

A loud enough statement for the front office to be buyers instead of sellers? Maybe, but as the Sun-Times has been reporting, all indications over the last few weeks were the Bulls were not looking to be aggressive sellers, even with all the inconsistencies this season.

Executive vice president of basketball operations Arturas Karnisovas likes to play things close to the vest, and as of Monday, making some smaller tweaks to the Bulls roster was the possibility that had picked up the most steam around the league.

One of those tweaks could involve sending out Drummond, even with the big man playing one of his better games of the year against the Spurs, scoring 21 points and grabbing 15 rebounds.

Even with Karnisovas and coach Billy Donovan publicly insisting they had an open-door policy for any players with those kinds of questions, Drummond didn’t sound interested in knocking.

“I don’t think that’s my job to do,” Drummond said. “If anything it’s the agent’s job. As a player, I don’t think I should be asking those kinds of questions.”

Not that the Bulls made the entire night easy on themselves, but against lesser competition they seldom do.

Building a 12-point first-half lead, the slippage actually started late in the second quarter, when they let the Spurs gain some momentum and actually outscore them by eight points in the stanza.

That inconsistent play carried on through the third, with San Antonio (14-40) actually grabbing the lead with 4:31 left thanks to two Zach Collins free throws.

Then DeMar DeRozan said enough was enough, as the veteran hit a jumper with 1:33 left in the third to reclaim the lead, followed by the hoop and harm a minute later, and a 16-footer with eight seconds left in the third.

When the smoke cleared around DeRozan, the Bulls entered the fourth back on top 90-85.

Less than three minutes into the fourth, the Spurs’ youth and inexperience was completely exposed, and the Bulls built the lead back to 12, taking advantage of turnovers and empty possessions.

“I thought we were much more active defensively,” Donovan said of the turnaround. “We had a hard time for maybe two-and-a-half quarters when they were just coming downhill. I just thought are defensive intensity changed, our presence at the basket changed, and took away opportunities for them to pass.”

According to Spurs Hall-of-Fame coach Gregg Popovich, the current issues with his team goes much deeper than turnovers.

“These guys think they’re all stars in their own right, and the first thing before they’re even coached, they have to learn it’s not about them,” Popovich said of the growing pains he’s been going through with his roster. “They’ve got to get over themselves, they’re not that great. I don’t see Kobe or LeBron out there, so we’ve got to do it together. All those things.”

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It isn’t often that Billy Donovan was talking about one of his players still unable to run or cut in the rehab process, and it had nothing to do with point guard Lonzo Ball.

But there the Bulls coach was on Monday, talking about a possible timetable for Javonte Green to return from his right knee procedure, and not offering up a whole lot of great news.

While there have been no setbacks with the energetic wing player, there’s also no clarity on when Green would return back to the rotation.

“He’s not running right now,” Donovan said. “He’s biking. They really haven’t done anything dynamically with him. Lateral, straight-ahead running, any of that stuff. He continues to progress. Obviously the All-Star Break coming up will be another important period for him that week.”

In the 28 games he did play so far this season – including one start – Green was averaging 5.9 points and 2.9 rebounds, but was tied for second on the team in plus/minus with a plus-55.

The Bulls announced Green’s surgery back in early January, and the All-Star Break was a checkpoint for him to have a more detailed timetable for a return. Donovan was still holding onto that.

“No, I just think there’s kind of a build-up that they normally do,” Donovan said, when asked if Green had any setbacks. “He is doing some things, some mobility stuff in the weight room. I haven’t heard of any setbacks.”

Green wasn’t the only defensive-minded player on the roster sidelined, either, as Alex Caruso missed his second consecutive game with a foot sprain.

It was the eighth game Caruso had missed this season with an assortment of different injuries.

Clown show

Spurs coach Gregg Popovich has never hid his growing frustration with the league turning to three-point centric, and again expressed that before the game with the Bulls.

“We should have a four-point shot and a five-point shot so you can make it a total circus,” Popovich said. “Just make it a carnival for the fans so they can scream when someone hits a five-pointer. It’s very boring.”

He was then asked if he felt the league would ever feel pressure to change the distance or at least eliminate the corner three pointer.

“It can’t change because analytically it’s true,” Popovich said. “We play some teams that are obviously more talented, but we’ll have more assists, more free throws, more points in the paint, more fast-break points, and maybe we make seven threes, and they make 14 … game over.

“The other stuff is minimized because the emphasis the three-pointer has on the game.”

Players’ league

The Kyrie Irving trade to Dallas was just the latest example of the power the stars have in the Association, and there wasn’t a Bulls that wouldn’t acknowledge that.

“It’s a player-driven league, and I think players probably look at it from the perspective of, ‘Listen, I can be traded at any point, and if I don’t feel like this is a great fit for me and I want to see something different,’ there’s an avenue or an opportunity for them to go in there and speak,” Donovan said.

Veteran center Andre Drummond had a similar take.

“It’s the NBA for you,” Drummond said. “In a matter of a tweet it can change the whole dynamic of the season. I think him going to Dallas is a huge thing, it’s huge news right now. Hopefully it works out for him.”

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PHOENIX — The Bears’ single-season sacks leader stood on the floor of the Footprint Center, his trademark knit hat now midnight green and black instead of navy and orange.

Robert Quinn never wanted to leave Chicago. It still bothers him that the Bears traded him to the Eagles on Oct. 26. But the end result — a Super Bowl appearance in his 12th season, after never winning as much as a single playoff game until this season — was enough to coax a crooked smile out of the corner of his mouth.

“It was an unexpected journey that I went on,” Quinn said Monday, “but it seemed to work out well in the end.”

Quinn didn’t want to uproot his family in the middle of the season. When general manager Ryan Poles dealt him for a fourth-round pick, he was furious.

“Honestly, I was mad,” he said. “Highly upset — just how it went down. You pull into the building and they say you’re getting traded, especially in the middle of the year. It isn’t really a good feeling.

“Especially after breaking the record. I thought that would help me.”

Exactly 400 days ago Monday, Quinn set the Bears’ single-season sacks record when he tackled Giants quarterback Mike Glennon in the fourth quarter at Soldier Field. He added a half-sack in the Bears’ season finale to extend the record to 18 1/2 . He was the most decorated edge rusher on the single NFL franchise best-known for defense.

So much has changed since.

“They had different plans for the organization and the team,” he said, “and I just wasn’t a part of it.”

That hurt, even as it seemed like the obvious endgame all along. When new Bears general manager Ryan Poles set about rebuilding the team, he traded fellow edge rusher Khalil Mack to the Chargers and let defensive tackle Akiem Hicks leave via free agency. Quinn was left on the roster, though, even though it was clear his timeline didn’t match the Bears’ window to be competitive.

Quinn skipped mandatory minicamp, paying a $95,877 fine and saying he was more comfortable taking care of his body on his own. The absence wasn’t publicly contentious; When the Bears honored him with the Brian Piccolo Award, Quinn showed up.

He arrived at training camp on time. Even as Quinn struggled on a popgun Bears pass rush in 2022 — he had only one sack before the trade — he claimed he didn’t want to be anywhere else. On Oct. 20, he told the Sun-Times he was “happy as I can be” at Halas Hall. Six days later, the Bears traded him, paying $7.1 million of Quinn’s salary to facilitate the move.

In return, agreed to void the final two non-guaranteed years of his contract, making him a free agent this offseason. What’s next? Retirement?

“We’ll see where life takes it,” he said. “I’m a free agent. You never know what can happen.”

Quinn struggled upon arriving in Philadelphia, recording two quarterback hits and no sacks in five games before being put on injured reserve with a knee injury. He returned from IR after arthroscopic surgery Jan. 7 and appeared in the regular season finale and the team’s two playoff games.

He played 40 snaps over those three games — and only six in the NFC title game win against the 49ers. He’s still yet to record a sack with the Eagles.

Adjusting to a smaller role was a challenge for Quinn, even if his peers– first-round pick Jordan Davis and veterans Brandon Graham, Fletcher Cox, Javon Hargrave, Josh Sweat, Haason Reddick, Ndamukong Suh and Linval Joseph — formed the deepest defensive line in the sport.

“At first it was a little weird, but you start winning, it’s, ‘Whatever, I can fulfill my role as long as we win,'” Quinn said. “After a while, the adjustment came pretty easy for me. Winning makes it a lot easier.”

The Bears defense plummeted after the trades of Quinn and, a week later, linebacker Roquan Smith. With the two on their roster, the Bears allowed more than 20 points twice in six games. Once both Quinn and Smith were gone, the Bears gave up 25 or more points in every game the rest of the season.

The loss of their two defensive leaders sucked out whatever life the Bears defense had left. One day after the season came to a merciful conclusion, defensive lineman Justin Jones — who inherited a captaincy when the veterans were dealt — was clear about the psychological effect of the trades.

“It was a pretty big loss,” he said. “I’m not gonna lie.”

The Eagles marched on. They allowed a league-low 4.8 yards per play and finished the season with 70 sacks. The next-closest team, the Chiefs, had 55.

Quinn, who turns 33 in May, had spent his entire career — 12 seasons, 169 regular season games and 3,781 defensive snaps — without winning a playoff game. In the last month, he’s won as many playoff games — two — as he’d ever appeared in during his career. He lost first-round playoff games with the 2017 Rams and the 2020 Bears.

Sunday, he can win the Super Bowl.

“Surreal,” he said. “Thinking back, my rookie year we went 2-14,” he said. “Now to make the Super Bowl, it’s two different ends of the spectrum. In Year 12, I’m trying to enjoy the moment and appreciate everything. …

“I’m sure walking into the stadium, it’ll finally start hitting me.”

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Almost no athlete gets everything he wants from his career, including — maybe even principally — final glory.

Think of Ted Williams never winning a World Series or Eric Lindros never winning a Stanley Cup. Recall the way 39-year-old Muhammad Ali lost to young Trevor Berbick at the end, hair dye dripping down his temples.

Or remember Michael Jordan playing for the inept 2002-03 Wizards, his epic last shot for the Bulls against the Jazz for the 1998 NBA title all but forgotten.

Yet those men at least got the chance to play for everything on the biggest stage during their careers, some many times over, win or lose.

Think of those who never stepped from the wings into the bright lights. Think of Dick Butkus.

One of the two greatest middle linebackers ever — Ray Lewis is the other — Butkus is likely the greatest defensive player never to play in a Super Bowl. Defensive end Deacon Jones is in the mix, but at least Jones’ Rams teams won their division several times during his career. Butkus’ Bears teams went 48-74-4 during his nine-year career and won nothing.

With the Super Bowl coming up Sunday, you have to wonder how much the lack of a crowning achievement means to the now-80-year-old Butkus, to his sense of accomplishment.

”You know, I never thought much about it,” he says on the phone, pondering this from his longtime California home overlooking the Pacific. ”I mean, to do something like that, you have to have the other 50 guys all in, too.”

Clearly, the rest of the Bears, including coaches and management during Butkus’ career, weren’t along for any Super Bowl drive. The great Gale Sayers was also on those anemic teams, and, as good as he was, he never reached championship status, either.

Butkus has factored all that in and basically made it irrelevant.

”Maybe this is a little bit selfish, but I felt winning the MVP award in 1969, when we won one game [1-13], was important,” he says. ”We weren’t worth a [bleep], but it didn’t mean I didn’t play as hard as I could. You always play as hard as you can.”

The MVP trophy Butkus is speaking of was the prestigious Newspaper Enterprise Association NFL Defensive Player of the Year Award, which was voted on by players. Remarkably, Butkus won it again in 1970, when the Bears were 6-8 and once more finished last in the then-NFC Central.

The thing about Butkus was that he played in a white-hot fury. People who don’t know this can go online and watch some of his hits afield. Back then, with all the great winners in the league, a panel of NFL coaches nevertheless named Butkus as the one player they would want to build around if starting a team from the ground up.

Yet Butkus never played in a single postseason game. Some things, a man can’t control. Learning to accept that is what star players with bad luck or weird rolls of the dice must do, a kind of zen/life agreement. If they don’t, the hurt might never leave.

It’s not as though Butkus doesn’t have real pain from his career. Shoulder, back, hips, knees, ankles, feet — they’re messed up from the game he loved. He used to think there was something wrong with him for needing football so much.

”I talked to a shrink not that long ago, and he said, ‘Did you ever think you were ADHD?’ ” Butkus says. ”I said: ‘You know what? I do! When I was a kid, I didn’t give a [bleep] about school; all I could think about was football and recess.

”So I took some tests, and the doctor said, ‘Well, you’re not.’ ”

Butkus is just what he is.

He’s diminished, for sure, hobbled a bit, falling frequently from toe neuropathy, traveling now with his trusty, sit-down, collapsible scooter, spending hours in his home hyperbaric chamber to (hopefully) aid in any CTE that might settle in from years of annihilating stupid running backs and idiot blockers.

But he’s also cheerful. He does a lot of charity work, and he gives out the Butkus Award each year to the best college linebacker.

He’s in a special group with Jones, Barry Sanders, Earl Campbell, Dan Fouts and other greats who never played in a Super Bowl. But he and his deceased pal Sayers are by far the greatest never to have played a single postseason game.

Wouldn’t you know they both would be Bears.

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A massive fire heavily damaged a furniture factory and warehouse in Chicago Heights early Monday morning, a year after the company announced a major expansion at the site.

Fire crews responded to the Morgan Li facility in the 1100 block of South Washington Avenue around 6:30 a.m. Aerial footage showed the fire burning in several spots with heavy smoke. No injuries were reported.

Morgan Li said furniture and fabrics were made and stored at the site.

“We do not know the cause of the fire and are working with authorities and cooperating fully with their investigation,” the company said in a statement.

It said the facility was one of five manufacturing factories that it operates. “We will do everything we can to rebuild what was lost and continue to support our people and the entire Chicago Heights community, it said in a statement.

A year ago, the company announced it was building a 230,000-square-foot facility at the site.

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Days after a fire tore through the church her family started, a pastor is vowing to rebuild “in the exact same spot” in West Englewood.

Firefighters responded to the blaze at Universal Temple of Christ and Training School near 55th Street and Damen Avenue about 7:15 a.m. Saturday, according to the Chicago Fire Department.

Pastor Edrena Bell said she was sleeping when she got a phone call that the church, started by her father-in-law, had caught fire.

“Someone called me and told me the building was on fire and I had to get there right away,” Bell said.

The blaze was so intense a firefighter was injured when flames poured from the building, fire officials said. He suffered minor injuries and was treated at a hospital and released.

The building sustained extensive damage. Bell said her focus will be on raising money to rebuild the church, but she will need to rely on donations because the wasn’t insured.

The cause of the fire remains under investigation, fire officials said.

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While conventional classical ballet extols beauty, grace and ethereality, Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo delights in pratfalls, missteps and general ungainliness — all in the pursuit of laughs. It’s a formula that has proven wildly successful for nearly 50 years.

The Trocks, as they are known, are an all-male company. The highly skilled and extensively trained dancers take turns in the traditionally female roles, wedging themselves into frilly tutus and oversized pointe shoes — an inherently funny sight in the world of traditional ballet.

“It’s a fun show,” said artistic director Tory Dobrin.

“It’s as simple as that. You leave the theater feeling good, and, so, we tend to sell a lot of tickets, and when you sell a lot of tickets, the theaters want to have you back.”

The 15-member company, which is based in New York and not Monte Carlo, as its grandiose name suggests, will perform Feb. 11 at the Auditorium Theatre. Although it has been seen in recent years in such surrounding towns as Glen Ellyn, Joliet and Skokie, this visit will be the Trocks’ first appearance in Chicago since 2010.

The company was founded in 1974 and got a boost right away when noted dance critic Arlene Croce extolled it in a New Yorker feature. Two years later, an appearance at the University of California at Berkeley led to bookings at other major college performing arts series across the country. It now presents 80-120 performances a year.

With the Trocks, virtually anything is fodder for a joke. That’s obvious even with the longtime fictional personas that the dancers step into when they join the troupe — names like Nadia Doumiafeyva, William Vanilla and Eugenia Repelskii.

While the Trocks honor the technique and essence of ballet, the company loves to spoof everything about it, from its European origins to its formality and prissiness. One of the works on its Chicago program, for example, is “Go for Barocco,” a take-off on famed choreographer George Balanchine and his revered 1941 neoclassical ballet, “Concerto Barocco.”

“Ballet is very silly,” said Duane Gosa, a dancer with the company since 2013, “and a lot of these stories are silly. So, it’s really fun to over-exaggerate it a little bit and bring some comedy to it.”‘

And, of course, there is no shortage of slapstick and vaudeville-style humor. Both of which are richly in evidence in the company’s now-famous or, perhaps more accurately, infamous take on the Act 2 of “Swan Lake,” probably the most beloved of all the great classical ballets.

In this version, which will also be presented in Chicago, almost everything that can go wrong does. The Prince drops Odette during their duet. A dancer in the ensemble finds herself in the wrong line and has to dash back into place. Von Rothbart, an evil wizard, grows tired and has to stop and catch his breath.

There are occasional mishaps that occur during rehearsals and even in performances, and the Trocks just go with it.

“We get a lot of the comedy that way,” Drolin said. One time during a rehearsal for “Paquita,” another work on the Chicago program, one of the “ballerinas” was dropped during a lift but without injury, and “she” ordered the offender to drop and do push-ups as a jokey punishment. “So, the guy started doing push-ups, and we were all laughing, and we left it in, and now it’s in the ballet,” Drolin said.

It was exactly the opportunity to take part in such antics that drew Gosa, a native of Chicago’s South Side, to ballet. “I don’t think there is any other way I would ever want to do ballet,” he said. “It’s more fun this way.”

He and all the other dancers in Trockadero have received the same intensive training that any other ballet dancer goes through, but in some ways what they do is more challenging.

“They are in pointe shoes,” Drolin said. “They’re in tutus and a wig. They have to dance these hard steps, and they really have to pay attention to what the audience is doing, and then you have to be sure that the jokes are coming off.”

The performers are encouraged to bring their own personalities to the characters they embody, and Gosa has reveled in this freedom. He appears under the monikers of Vladimir Legupski and Helen Highwaters, and the Black dancer describes his take on the latter as a mix of Lucille Ball and Regina King.

“I try to stay Black with my humor but also [add] some old comedy with big facial expressions and things like that,” he said. “That’s the fun part, getting to play around with that.”

Although performing in drag or en travesti, as cross-dressing in opera or ballet is sometimes known, goes back centuries, it has been gaining more mainstream visibility in recent years with reality television shows like “RuPaul’s Drag Race.”

Drolin believes this broader acceptance has allowed the Trocks to add some venues where it might have been shunned several decades ago. .

“There has always been an audience for what we do,” he said, “regardless of what the culture wars are doing.”

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An extra-alarm fire heavily damaged an industrial building in Austin on the West Side Monday afternoon.

The fire started around 2:15 p.m. in the 4700 block of West Lake Street, according to the Chicago Fire Department. The fire was raised to a 2-11 alarm to help get more water on the flames, officials said.

Part of the building was used for vehicle repairs and another part for making artwork from metal, they said.

One man was taken to Stroger Hospital after being bitten by a dog that was inside a cage in the building.

The cause of the fire was under investigation.

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Patrick Kane hasn’t yet decided whether he’ll request or accept a trade away from the Blackhawks. He still plans to wait closer to the NHL’s March 3 trade deadline before making a firm decision.

But he is aware a few teams have reached out to his agent, Pat Brisson, to express interest. And he’s clearly not opposed to them doing so.

“We’ll figure out what team could be the best fit, but…it’s tough to decide if we’re getting to that point yet,” Kane said Monday. “There are definitely opportunities out there that are intriguing and could be exciting. We’ll see.”

One potential obstacle is Kane’s lingering lower-body injury. Various reports around the league have suggested some contenders are leery about it slowing him down. But Kane doesn’t share those concerns.

“When I get on the ice, it’s not like you’re thinking about anything else other than playing as well as you can,” he said. “That’s not something for me to worry about. [I’ll] just go about it the best I can.”

Kane has talked to Duncan Keith, who spent his final season with the Oilers after 16 with the Hawks, to get his perspective on the situation. Keith told Kane he’s “happy he got to experience being in a different organization” before he retired.

Kane has not yet talked to Hawks general manager Kyle Davidson, however, although he’s sure they’ll “at some point catch up.”

They most certainly will. On the other side of the aisle — within the front office — Davidson and everyone else are having “constant conversations” to plan for “every potential scenario, large to small,” CEO Danny Wirtz said.

Calls about possible trades spiked briefly after the Islanders and Canucks’ Bo Horvat blockbuster last week, coach Luke Richardson said, but have since quieted again.

The Hawks are nonetheless anticipating eventually moving some veterans out — whether or not Kane and Jonathan Toews are included in that exodus — to make room for their ready-to-graduate prospects in Rockford.

(Toews’ situation is no less confusing, after all. On Tuesday against the Ducks, he’ll miss a game due to illness for the third time in two months and second time in two weeks.)

“Everybody knows our plan moving forward is we have lots of young guys coming but they’re not here or maybe not ready yet,” Richardson said. “If there’s good hockey deals to be had that are going to help us to the next stage…they have a good plan.”

In the Hawks’ business and marketing branches, meanwhile, the outcome of the two trade sagas will also have major repercussions.

Tuesday marks the fifth-to-last home game before the deadline, with nine scheduled after it. They’ll host the Stars the last day before the deadline (March 2) and the Predators the first day after.

“How [Kane and Toews are] treated throughout the process, that’s going to be important to us,” business president Jaime Faulkner said. “They’re still on our team today; they’re still contributing in big ways. How do we continue to honor that with our fanbase?

“If they make decisions to leave, if things happen down the road, how do we make sure our fans get to say thank you, get to say goodbye? [How do we] celebrate if they stay? We need to be prepared for that. We’re trying to be as gracious as possible. They are the Blackhawks’ identity right now.”

If trades happen, the Hawks would need to “communicate very quickly” with fans to explain the decisions, Faulkner said.

They might need to hastily organize welcome-back ceremonies if the trades are with teams scheduled to visit the United Center before season’s end. And conversely, they might also need to make ticket-price adjustments to maintain steady attendance without their two biggest stars.

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A fire at a controversial Pilsen scrap metal yard over the weekend is raising more concerns about the operation as it seeks a new city operating permit, Ald. Byron Sigcho-Lopez (25th) said Monday.

Chicago firefighters were called to Sims Metal Management on Saturday afternoon after a fire started in a pile of scrap. It took more than an hour to put out the fire, and there were no reported injuries, a department spokesman said.

But Sigcho-Lopez is wary about a pattern of problems at Sims, which was sued by Illinois Atty. Gen. Kwame Raoul for alleged environmental violations in 2021. He’s seeking more information about the fire as well as air pollution monitoring.

“We’re really concerned about the safety of this operation,” Sigcho-Lopez said.

His office fielded complaints Saturday from neighbors who reported “strong chemical smells that are causing headaches and nausea.”

“My nostrils and my eyes watered immediately,” resident Roberto Monta?o told the Sun-Times.

Monta?o noticed the smell and the smoke as he was driving by the site, he said.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency ordered Sims to install air monitors around its operation at 2500 S. Paulina last year. EPA gets monthly air data from Sims but asked that the company expedite its report for air quality readings for Saturday through Monday.

In 2021, Sims settled 15 city tickets for 30 violations issued the prior year, paying $18,000 and admitting no wrongdoing, records show. Among the accusations dropped were multiple citations for air pollution.

The Pilsen business is seeking what’s called a large recycling facility permit, similar to one denied for the relocated General Iron last year.

For decades, both General Iron and Sims shredded cars, large appliances and other scrap metal for reuse.

In a statement, Sims said it called the fire department “out of an abundance of caution” and apologized “for any concern this incident may have caused our community neighbors.”

City inspectors visited the site Monday.

“It’s very disturbing,” said Theresa McNamara, chairwoman of the Southwest Environmental Alliance.

Her coalition opposes Sims continuing to operate in Pilsen.

Brett Chase’s reporting on the environment and public health is made possible by a grant from The Chicago Community Trust.

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