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Not much good news in Chicago sports, but here are 3 encouraging signs

Since last year was such a miserable experience for Chicago sports fans, it might be comforting to spend time highlighting the slightly encouraging aspects of the local scene.

One month into 2025, there's not much in the way of good news. The Bulls are who we thought they were. The Blackhawks' plan to become more competitive hasn't panned out. Even the local college basketball teams have been disappointing (except for UIC, maybe).

But here are a few positive developments from January that might help ease the winter season suffering.

Matas Buzelis

It's tough to say what the Bulls rookie will become, since he's still a skinny 19-year-old, but he clearly has a world of potential.

Buzelis has all the tools, a decent basketball IQ and is a remarkably fluid athlete at 6-9. In many ways, he compares well to Toronto's Scottie Barnes as a multiskilled big man. But Barnes is a career 30% from 3-point range and Buzelis looks like he could do much better than that.

As mentioned many times here, the No. 1 ingredient in NBA success is luck. Sometimes that's winning the draft lottery, sometimes it's a great player like Giannis Antetokounmpo dropping to the No. 15 overall pick, sometimes it's Brooklyn giving up unprotected first-rounders for an aging Paul Pierce and Kevin Garnett.

Sometime second-round picks blossom into superstars. When Arturas Karnisovas and company drafted Nikola Jokic for Denver in the second round of the 2014 draft, do you think he was high-fiving others in the room, yelling, “Mark my words, this guy will be a three-time MVP.” Yeah, he wasn't.

Buzelis, who made his way from West suburban Willowbrook to a couple of prep schools and the G-League Ignite, was widely projected to be the No. 5 overall pick. Instead, he fell to the Bulls at No. 11. Maybe that's the lucky break the franchise has been waiting for.

It's been a little strange how coach Billy Donovan talked about not gifting minutes to young players when Buzelis led the Bulls in net rating during the month of December. The rookie was a little lost when the season began, but he's been making positive contributions for a while, and can impact the defensive end better than most of his Bulls teammates.

But Donovan seems to have committed to increasing Buzelis' opportunities. He was the first player off the bench in the win at Toronto on Friday and logged 26 minutes. A week earlier, he played just 11 and 12 minutes in games against Golden State and Philadelphia.

Antwaan Randle El

New Bears coach Ben Johnson settled in by hiring his coordinators, Declan Doyle on offense and former Raiders and Saints head coach Dennis Allen for the defense.

One name that stands out among longtime followers of high school basketball is Antwaan Randle El as assistant head coach in charge of wide receivers. Randle El played in one of the most memorable games in IHSA history when his Thornton squad, which featured two future NFL stars (Randle El, Tai Streets) and a future NBA center (Melvin Ely) knocked off the famed Farragut team with Kevin Garnett and Ronnie Flelds in the state quarterfinals.

Obviously, Randle El's top sports was football. He played quarterback at Indiana and wide receiver for the Pittsburgh Steelers before moving into coaching.

He became receivers coach for Detroit in 2021, the same year the Lions chose Amon-Ra St. Brown in the fourth round. Randle El's enthusiasm on the sideline stands out, but it's a nice line on the resume to have coached a player who became one of the league's best at his position.

This is important because the Bears ignored obvious needs on the offensive and defensive lines to take WR Rome Odunze last year. Odunze was decent as a rookie, with plenty of room to improve.

Future Bears drafts better be focused on linemen, so Randle El helping turn Odunze into a star would be a welcome development for the Caleb Williams era. The Lions also had excellent tight ends (T.J. Hockenson, Sam LaPorta), so maybe the new regime will also be good news for Cole Kmet.

New pairs of Sox

A reasonable projection for the White Sox this year would be 100 losses. But by 2026, they should be able to put an interesting young team on the field.

That was the main takeaway from SoxFest, which offered reporters a chance to meet the prospects. Between Colson and Braden Montgomery, highly-rated lefties Noah Schultz and Hagen Smith, Downers Grove native George Walkow and several others, this prediction seems reasonable:

If things work out the way management is hoping, the upcoming era of White Sox baseball should feature a team that's fun to root for. Maybe they can follow the path of the Detroit Tigers from promising young team to playoff wins, but with a more dangerous starting rotation.

Don't worry too much about this season. After the MLB's anti-tanking rules resulted in the Sox picking 10th in the 2025 draft, they need to re-tank in hopes of landing the No. 1 overall in '26.

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