The Bulls Are Struggling Right Now… And I Know Just the Sharpshooter Who Can Save Their Season

Look out hoopsters, there’s a new sheriff in town and he ain’t running around your local AAU circuit. Oh no no no my friends, it’s a very out of shape former hockey player who’s creeping up on 30 who has never played a minute of competitive basketball in his life. That’s right, I’m talking about myself and I honestly think I could be an impact player off the bench for the Bulls after shocking myself with my basketball abilities this past weekend.

So for those who haven’t been following along, I got myself into a little bit of a pickle this past weekend… or so I thought. So Jake and I bet on our NCAA Tournament Brackets with whoever had the worse bracket being forced to do the Dr. Pepper Halftime Challenge which consists of making a layup, free throw, 3-pointer, and a half court shot, consecutively. It was a close race the whole tournament and as the tournament went along we were able to crunch the numbers and realized by the Elite 8 that if Gonzaga won the whole thing I would win the bet, but if anyone else won the tournament, Jake would win. Well come Final 4 time I was all aboard the Zag hype train and was Zaggin off hard. Give me all the Jalen Suggs bounce passes, the Drew Timme mustache cellys, and the Corey Kispert 3 bombs.

Well as thrilled as I was when Gonzaga won that wild OT game in the Final 4 on the Suggs buzzer beater, you can probably imagine how deflated I was when the National Championship game happened and Gonzaga’s play looked a lot like this:

So fast forward to this weekend and I was prepared to die in Jake’s driveway. We had all of Sunday blocked out and I decided to head over Saturday after Jake got off of work to get a few reps in. I legitimately thought this was going to take at least 8 hours for me to complete. As I mentioned above, I have never played a competitive game of basketball and I probably haven’t shot a basketball in about 10 years. I’m also in the worst shape of my life and coming off a second shoulder surgery so pretty safe to say the odds were not in my favor. I was also shooting on a hoop that clearly has been through some shit. It has definitely fallen over several times because the rim is bent in the front making it more of an oval shape than a circle. The rim is loose so it’s extra springy and the backboard is pretty dead. Oh ya and it has a gigantic hole in it.

That one is on me. This was the result of my final practice shot from half court before we started officially recording. WHOOPS! So as we got underway I was actually doing better than I thought. My original thoughts were I could make 95% of my layups, 30% of my free throws, 10% of my 3-pointers, and 1/500 half court attempts. I ran the numbers and at those percentages I had roughly a 1 out of 17,500 chance of making all of these shots consecutively. You can see where I would’ve thought I needed an entire 8 hours to complete this.

How I thought it would go:

How it actually went:

Look at that form! Clean as a whistle. Stay tuned for the final video coming out soon, but the final stats read as follows:

Total Time: 33 minutes, 17 seconds
Total Attempts: 116
Layup Stats: 91/116 (78.4%)
Free Throw Stats: 31/91 (34.1%)
3-Point Stats: 8/31 (25.8%)
Half Court Stats: 1/8 (12.5%)
Overall Shooting Stats: 131/246 (53.3%)

As you can see I overestimated my layup proficiency, but I didn’t realize how hard it was going to be to make a layup when I was getting tired. I also expected to have more than half a backboard to work with. On the flip side I was pretty spot on with my free throw shooting. I thought I could make 30% and I made 34%. The surprising part was my ability from deep. When I first started thinking about this I didn’t even know if I could make it to the hoop on a fly from half court. I actually shot it decent from 3 and 1/8 from half court is ridiculous. And that wasn’t a total fluke because I actually had 2 or 3 other misses from half court that looked good out of my hand and were just off. So if the Bulls front office wants to give me a shout for the stretch run, I will gladly sign on. Just for reference 53.3% from the field would currently rank 21st in the NBA just behind guys like Giannis and Durant and ahead of All-Stars like LeBron, Steph Curry, Kyrie Irving, and Devin Booker.

Now sure I might not have the size or natural ability as these guys, but I am a winner. I’m sure all of these guys can complete the Dr. Pepper Challenge, but can any of them eat an entire 16 piece of KFC fried chicken? I doubt it. I am now 0 for 2 on Ham Radio bets, but 2/2 on proving the doubters wrong because I do nothing but hand the haters L’s. So if the Bulls brass wants a winner to turn their season around, they know where they can find me. Imagine how good this would look if it was the Larry O’Brien Trophy: