<div class="quote_poster">Quote:</div><div class="quote_post">When I'm looking for inspiration, for just the right reference, it has to be Jerry Seinfeld. So to paraphrase his television mom, "How can you not like them?" The Bulls, that is. There are so many wonderful stories in the first round of these NBA playoffs that it is becoming May Madness. Anyone seen George Mason's glass slipper? In Sacramento? Los Angeles? Chicago? By the end of this week, six of the top eight seeds in the NBA playoffs, perhaps all but Detroit and Dallas, could be out of the playoffs. And talk about your walkoffs, from Los Angeles Laker Kobe Bryant on Sunday against Phoenix--twice--to Cleveland's LeBron James against Washington to Sacramento's Kevin Martin against San Antonio to San Antonio's Brent Barry against Sacramento. "Cats living with dogs . . . mass hysteria," Barry said in offering eloquence from "Ghostbusters." The Bulls are one of the big stars of the playoffs with a wonderful, unselfish, determined, industrious and energetic style of play that is pleasing to watch in comparison to, say, oh, the Miami Heat's. The Eastern Conference's No. 2 seed, which most preseason forecasters predicted would win the Eastern Conference, has been a churlish, selfish, angry, aggravating, ineffective bunch that is being outplayed considerably in almost every statistical category. The Bulls are averaging more points, shooting better--especially on three-pointers--giving out more assists and getting almost as many blocks. For its part, the Heat is far ahead in suspensions, technicals, on-court fights, cheap shots, fines and exasperation. "I know I have a very competitive team, and I know how they are," Heat coach Pat Riley told reporters in Miami after practice Monday. "This bunch compared to what I coached in New York, they're choirboys. I mean that sincerely. This isn't who they are. Udonis [Haslem] throws his mouth guard, and the league overreacts [with a suspension]. Excuse me, can I take that back? Pose (James Posey), I agreed it (his hit on Kirk Hinrich) probably should have been an ejection, but that was probably enough (he was suspended). Our guys really want to win, and every now and then it gets a little bit out of hand."</div> <div align="center"> Source</div>
<div class="quote_poster">Quote:</div><div class="quote_post"> Out of the dust of a downbeat and complicated spring -- there's a war on, not to mention immigration and deficits and gas prices and Iranian nukes -- pokes a tender green shoot that was totally unanticipated: the Bulls. They're doing something amazing, these daring young men with their long straight legs and their busy arms, these guys who exhibit both the prancing finesse of dancers and the meaty stomp of jocks: They're trying. They're trying really, really hard. They're earnest. Focused. And because of all that, they're a whale of a lot of fun to watch, even for me, a serious and committed non-fan of professional basketball for a good long while now. The 2006 Chicago Bulls actually appear to have some genuine emotional stake in the outcome of their games, a circumstance that, in today's professional athletic world of big-as-all-outdoors paychecks and free-range egos, is a weird anomaly, like a lunar eclipse on your birthday. In a leap year. Will they prevail in Thursday's sixth game against the Miami Heat, as this first-round series in the NBA playoffs returns to the United Center? No idea. Win or lose, though, the Bulls have already restored to me something I thought was lost forever: my love of professional basketball. These Bulls -- especially Kirk Hinrich, who in his white-and-red home uniform resembles a barber pole in sneakers, and Chris Duhon, whose smooth and dapper calm makes you wonder if he's got a tux stashed under his uniform -- look like they care. They look like they mean it. They look like coach Scott Skiles might have organized his own version of One Book, One Chicago -- perhaps One Book, One Herd? -- and the first pick was "Rabbit, Run," the classic John Updike novel about an aging jock, and they absorbed the lesson of Harry Angstrom's pathetic fall: Run while you can, man. "He feels the wind on his ears," Updike writes, "but with an effortless gathering out of a kind of sweet panic growing lighter and quicker and quieter, he runs. Ah: runs. Runs." And they might have memorized the book's opening sequence, too, the part where Angstrom bumps into a bunch of guys shooting hoops in an alley: "He stands there thinking, the kids keep coming, they keep crowding you up." </div> <div align="center"> Source</div>
I learned after this series that, whenever I need a good laugh, I can just turn to the Chicago media.
<div class="quote_poster">Quoting Heat4Life:</div><div class="quote_post">I learned after this series that, whenever I need a good laugh, I can just turn to the Chicago media.</div> Why? Do they keep replaying the Miami players bitching about the Referees? Or the reflection out of Wade's head when he goes down for another attention seeking injury?
