Saturday was the annual Bulls Family Fest. It’s primarily for season ticket holders, but some other groups are also invited, like the Bulls Kids Club VIPs. Since my son is a member of that group, we headed to the UC with one of his cousins on Saturday afternoon.
It’s a free event, so… I get it. We cannot expect Michael Jordan to come walking in to shake hands, take pics, and sign autographs. It would be great, and if that was the case, I’d probably camp out the night before, but… let’s try to stay realistic. With that being said, you certainly would think more of the players would participate. I don’t know how that works with the team requiring certain guys to be there, etc, but… no DeRozan, Caruso, Coby White, Lavine, Vooch. The only starter in the house was Patrick Williams; he was about 30 minutes late, but hey, at least he showed up. My son and his cousin were looking forward to getting autographs, and no, not to resell on eBay, like many people may do, but instead, to have in their personal collections. No autographs this year though…??? Maybe it takes too long, maybe the Bulls are trying to protect against these memorabilia hawks, I don’t know… that kind of stunk though. They did each get a pic with Patrick; that was cool. I had them ask a question too. My son asked “who is the toughest player you ever guarded?”… I think Patrick was surprised, and took a minute to think about the answer, before blurting out “LeBron”… I don’t believe it, unless he means dealing with all the calls he gets too… haha. My nephew asked for advice for young bball players; Patrick responded about working on your game, staying in the gym, and the rest will come; I liked that answer.
While waiting for PWill, we walked over to meet 2 Bulls ambassadors, Bill Wennington and Randy Brown. They each took a picture with them, as did I. After both the boys took their pics, I told them… “I was actually alive to see you guys play; thanks for the rings!” They thanked me too, shook hands, and snapped a quick pic. I was happy. Couldn’t get to see anybody else that did show up, including Drummond, Taylor, Carter, Stacey King, Kendall Gill… I think that was it. I guess the other easy suggestion, besides having some of your top caliber players in attendance (no disrespect to the guys that were there), is communicating who will be at each station ahead of time. There were people, including us, waiting in lines for someone, but we didn’t know who that someone was… until Chuck Swirsky announced it over the UC speakers. We changed lines to Patrick Williams immediately. Oh well…
The kids did get a customized basketball card made for them; really liked that. Food was half price; 4 pretzels only cost me like $15… haha. Free parking was nice. Still, much left to the imagination for an event like this. If I had more time right now, I’d go into more details, but… I have to get on with it…
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