Wayne, thanks so much for joining us. We appreciate it. As someone who is now an outsider,

like you're parachuting in for a few games to call Bulls basketball. What were the things that

you were hoping to find out? What were your questions about the Bulls as you were putting your

boards together for these games? Yeah, I mean, I think basically just if they could hang with some of these teams in the Eastern Conference, I mean, their schedule really aligns at the beginning of the season. They have all these tests, and they've passed them. You know, they beat the Knicks at home. They've been crazy comeback last night against the Sixers. You know, they kind of laid a little bit of an egg in New York,

but they also didn't have to assume, nor did they yesterday. But I think they're checking a lot of boxes right now, and it's been fun to watch it. You know, a lot of talk about Buzellis going into the season, making his leap from year one to year two. But really, I think Giddy, the one was making making the big leap, that's taking those next steps,

and he's elevated his game tremendously.

He's really the star of their offense.

Did you feel last night, Wayne, that that was even on the table, that comeback?

Did Stacey feel like it was on the table?

You guys must have discussed at halftime and during commercial breaks.

Yeah, we did. And, you know, it's just because of the nature of the beast in the NBA that,

you know, a 20-point comeback is really not crazy. You know, it felt like it in the moment.

They were down by 24, and it kind of was a slow process comeback and was mostly all done in the second half.

You know, I think the biggest surprise of it was how they shut down Philly defensively in the

second half. I mean, the Sixers scored 75 points in the first half and I think with 36 in the

second half. So that was a huge swing in terms of what Philly was doing offensively. But we didn't really know what Mb

could do for four quarters, and it looked like toward the end, he couldn't do a whole lot. I mean,

he was moving pretty slow in the second half. And you could even notice him like kind of warming

up before he even re-entered the game in the fourth quarter. There's still some issues there as far as

getting him into mid-season form.

And Maxie lost his touch as they went along. The Bulls made some big shots.

And we never did close the door. It wasn't like we thought, well, this is over.

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