Get to Know the Bulls Future: Nikola Mirotic

The Chicago Bulls have a player named Nikola Mirotic stashed away overseas and their waiting until the right time to bring him to the NBA. Their giving him more time to develop his game while an spot opens up on the current Chicago Bulls roster. Not too many people know much about Nikola Mirotic, including myself so I thought now would be a good time to learn more about him. The guy who should be the number two man for Derrick Rose in a few years.

Nikola Mirotic was drafted by the Houston Rockets with the 23rd overall pick in the 2011 NBA Draft. His rights were then traded to the Minnesota Timberwolves and then his rights were traded to the Chicago Bulls. The Bulls still own his rights, even though he is still playing overseas for Madrid. In 2011 he signed a five year extension with Real Madrid, so the only way he will get out of that deal and come play for the Chicago Bulls in the NBA will be if the Bulls buy out his current contract and then agree on an NBA contract, so he won’t come cheap.

The question everybody wants to know is what position does he play.  Mirotic is a 6 ft 10 Power Forward and is currently only 21 years old. Thus, his game is still developing.  He is a big shooter who can shoot from all over the court.  Please read his Bio and scouting report.

For a young shooter he has potential, but looks to have room to grow. You can see His Stats and make your own conclusions. He is doing well now and in a year or two should be ready to come over to the NBA. A lot could depend on Carlos Boozer who is currently the starting power forward for the Bulls. When his current contract expires or if the Bulls decide to amnesty him if they think Boozer is not living up to his contract, then they could bring Nikola Mirotic over. Or if they think Mirotic is ready sooner they can make the transition for the future.

Hopefully this preview allowed you to get to know Nikola Mirotic a little more. If there should be more of  him in the future.

The Bulls without Derrick Rose

The Chicago Bulls season just started and they are 4-3 on the young season.  The team with the best record in the east for the last two seasons are coming into the 2012-2013 season as an entirely different season and the underdogs. Yes, the underdogs even though they had the best record in the eastern division for the last two years and won the Central division both seasons. This is because this year they don't have their star player and leading scorer. The NBA is a star driven league and without a star of his caliber many experts and myself (not a expert) don't consider the Bulls a top team in the Eastern division and the NBA.

The key is the eastern Eastern division is not a strong division.  Without Rose the Bulls could probably make the playoffs, but the bottom of the playoffs. I think the 6 or 7th seed. Last year they were eliminated in the first round of the playoffs when Rose got injured. Without Rose they would not have a chance to advance far into the playoffs.  If the Bulls can hang in there until they get Rose back they could be a strong enough playoff team. 

Please vote in the poll on side with how many wins you think the Bulls will win this season.

GOI Fantasy Basketball League 2012 is back

Over the last three years GOI has had our Fantasy Basketball league. We had our draft a few weeks ago and were back for our fourth year with a few changes. We kept it an Auction League like last season, but changed it from a Rotisserie to a Head-to-Head. Channing the scoring format came with controversy in the league. We had some of the league members that wanted to make it Head-to-Head and others that wanted to keep it Rotisserie.  There is a big difference between the two. Finally after polling all of the members, many who have played in the league last year or longer we decided to change the scoring for the majority of the league.

With two weeks in the books I have to say I am not a big fan of Head-to-Head scoring for Fantasy basketball. I feel for some fantasy sports Head-to-Head is the only way to go such as Fantasy Football, but for other sports like Fantasy Baseball and Basketball (especially basketball) Rotisserie makes more sense. Like this season I like the team I drafted and talent on my roster, but not off to a good start because I have too many point guards on my roster with 6 and not enough big men. This was because all of the big men were going for too expensive after the cornerstone big men I bought to build my roster around.

Here is how my team turned out:

Here is the team TBO drafted:

Like every year TBO and myself have our rivalry for first. He is off to the early lead because I am in the basement while trying to figure out this new scoring format for basketball and making some trades for a better balanced team.  There will be periodic updates about the league.

Let us know what you think.

Our Pick'em League Keeps on Living

A few years ago we started picking the winner of each football game on this very site Game Of Inches. We started doing this before there were other websites that allowed us to do more of an automated system than manually tracking each game by hand like we did on the blog. So we moved to do this format and with that, stopped posting updates on the blog. So we will be posting an update mid season (now) and then at the end of the season so you can see how the three of us did in Adam Kaplan, TBO, and myself (Cubsfan4evr).

This year we added a new wrinkle compared to how we have played for the last several seasons. Were playing against the spread for the first time. This was Adam's idea and TBO has embraced it. To put it simply, I am still adjusting and like the old style. I like picking games straight up and none of this fancy stuff.

With Ten weeks in the books this is how the standing look:

TBO and myself are tied for first with Adam slightly behind us.  Superdup is also known as TBO.

I should point out in that in week six I had a really bad week and couldn't seem to pick a game correct against the spread.

Also, TBO forgot to fill out most of his picks last week for week Ten. He only filled out two picks (Thursday night and Sunday) and got both correct.

Here is how we did with the number of selections we got correct broken down by week:

Even with Cubsfan4evr bad week in week six and TBO bad week in week 10 because he forgot to fill out most of his picks were hanging in there. We will have a final update after the season with how we did.

Baseball Board Bets (2012) Updated

We have finally updated the Baseball board bets from 2012 to see how our predictions were. Yes, we were a little tardy in getting the results up, but better late than never. We have slacked here at Game of Inches in not doing any Basketball or football (very surprisingly) but hopefully we will get our game back together for baseball season again. The contributors are always talking sports, especially baseball and football and as a result should have our very popular board bets back.