If your vestibule resembles a salt mine and wet boots are stacked up on a mat like planes at O’Hare, it’s important to remember spring training starts next week and you’ve survived the worst of winter.

It can only get better from here on out.

While we await the NBA trade deadline, the Bad Bunny Super Bowl halftime show, the start of the Cactus League and March Madness, rest assured, many mellifluous moments are just around the corner.

Here are some thoughts to ponder while the boots dry.

I think the Chicago Bulls have got it. They’ve finally got it. In a real moment of clarity, the Bulls gave Nikola Vučević his escape from the Groundhog Day existence he’s lived in for the past four seasons.

Vučević, who was dealt to the Boston Celtics on Tuesday for wing Anfernee Simons and a swap of second-round draft picks, was the ultimate team player in an organization that never could seem to pick a lane between contending and rebuilding. “Vooch” never complained about it, even as he watched teammates DeMar DeRozan, Zach LaVine, Alex Caruso and Lonzo Ball get to escape, making him the last man standing from the 2021-22 team that made us believe for a second that the Bulls’ future was bright.

Chicago Bulls center Nikola Vučević drives the lane against Atlanta Hawks’ Onyeka Okongwu on Monday, Oct. 27, 2025, at the United Center in Chicago. (Dominic Di Palermo/Chicago Tribune)

Executive vice president Artūras Karnišovas, who has a recurring habit of looking at the final month of a lost season and projecting a short window of success into next year’s team-building plan, finally succumbed to reality. Better late than never.

Simons will probably be gone after this season, and so will Jaden Ivey and Mike Conley Jr., the other acquisitions on Tuesday in a three-team trade that saw Kevin Huerter and Dario Šarić, the Bull who never was, go to the Detroit Pistons.

And as the Bulls took the floor at Milwaukee, everyone wondered whether Coby White and Ayo Dosunmu would be next.

Is this any way to run an iconic NBA franchise? Or does it even matter as long as the United Center is filled every year?

At least Vooch has finally been freed and can make plans for the postseason again. He gave Chicago everything he had, even if it was never enough to change the trajectory of a franchise stuck in never-neverland.

Before Northwestern’s game with Michigan at Wrigley Field last November, an NU student reporter sitting next to me in the press box suddenly began clapping.

“Uh, what are you doing?” I politely asked.

“It’s Pat Ryan,” he said, referring to the billionaire NU alum whose name had been announced over the public address system.

“Yeah,” I said. “And …?”

“He’s paying for our stadium,” the student reporter said, referring to the new Ryan Field in Evanston that bears the family’s name. “He deserves our applause.”

Workers continue their construction of Northwestern’s Ryan Field, Nov. 21, 2025, in Evanston. (Dominic Di Palermo/Chicago Tribune)

There is no cheering in the press box, as former Tribune baseball writer Jerome Holtzman used to remind young reporters back in the day when they got giddy over a Chicago team. I was going to pass that advice on, but you can’t tell Gen Z what to do without triggering them, so I just shook my head and let it go.

But I was thinking about that young reporter on Tuesday when I heard that the opening of the new Ryan Field won’t be until the third home game of the 2026 season, on Oct. 2 against Penn State. Hopefully, he was applauding Pat Ryan in his dorm room.

The Wildcats will now play their first two home games at Martin Stadium, aka “the mini-Mart,” so we’ll have to wait a bit longer for what Ryan’s son, Pat Ryan Jr., called “the best place to watch football in America.”

I have no doubt that will be the case. Yet I wonder why it took them so long to announce the stadium wouldn’t be ready for the start of the season. Martin Stadium, located on the lakefront, is a nice, little place to watch a game. But it’s not exactly the kind of stadium befitting a real Big Ten team, and it was supposed to be a temporary home until the start of the ’26 season.

Pat Ryan Jr. said in a press release the construction work was “on track to deliver the new Ryan Field on time, despite the unexpected number of weather days that we’ve experienced.” Well, it does get chilly in the winter in Chicago, and in Evanston, too.

Ryan Jr. told the Sun-Times the new Ryan Field would be ready by mid-September. That suggests the home opener on Sept. 5 against South Dakota State was out of the question, and meant it was not “on track to deliver the new Ryan Field on time.” It also doesn’t explain why the Sept. 19 game against Colorado couldn’t have been the stadium’s debut instead of the Penn State game.

Oh well. We’ll just have to reserve our applause until Oct. 2. Just not inside the press box, kids.

If you’re a Cubs fan and an experienced social media brand manager, you might want to look into the latest job opening at Wrigley Field. According to LinkedIn, the Cubs are searching for a Social Media Manager to work in the marketing department. The job description says part of your day-to-day responsibilities will be to “keep your finger on the pulse of real-time trends, adapting content to stay fresh, authentic, and at the center of the cultural conversation.” No one has their finger on the pulse like Crane Kenney and the Cubs business operations department. Among the perks of the job are free access to EV charging stations and a free subscription to the Marquee Sports Network. There was no mention of working closely with the team mascot, Clark the Cub, who was so difficult to work with that former President Theo Epstein once threw a ceremonial first pitch at his head.

New Chicago White Sox player Munetaka Murakami walks onto the field at Rate Field on Monday, Dec. 22, 2025, announcing his acquisition. (Eileen T. Meslar/Chicago Tribune)

Kudos to White Sox Chairman Jerry Reinsdorf for keeping up with the times after new Sox slugger Munetaka Murakama noticed the White Sox clubhouse was missing something that would tie the room together — a bidet. “One thing he did notice is we didn’t have a bidet in our locker room,” general manager Chris Getz told MLB.com’s Scott Merkin. “That’s new to him. It was like, ‘OK, that’s new. We can do that.’” So a new Sox-sanctioned bidet was added to the budget, and we’ll soon find out whether it’s a change that can help the Sox flush away the last four crappy seasons. One press box wag asked: “Will they install it behind the mound to clean up that mess?” For that, he deserves a round of applause.

https://www.chicagotribune.com/2026/02/04/chicago-bulls-nikola-vucevic-escape/