Phil Jackson Autographed Tie from NBA Finals

Thats right, you guess it folks! This epic tie helped bring home Chicago the first NBA championship on the 1990s, the first of the 5 others to come just in that era. This tie is legendary, as it means so much to Phil and the bulls organization. its epic blackness surrounding the blue on the tie made it a bad jinx for his tenure in New york not and it was the real reason Patrick Ewing never won a championship, and won't ever be the coach of New york either (for current news, Patrick eyeing ways to be the head coach of the Knicks). Led by Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen, the bulls had a regular season record of 61-21, under Phil Jackson. The Bulls set the single season record of 72-10 in the 1995-96 season. Jackson is one of the best coaches in NBA history. Jackson played in the NBA from 1967 until 1980. He was drafted by the New York Knicks and ending his playing career playing for the New Jersey Nets. He was a 2X NBA champion with the Knicks (1970 and 1973). Jackson was an assistant coach for the Chicago Bulls under Doug Collins. After taking over the head coaching job in 1989, Phil led the bulls to six championships (1991, 92, 93, 96, 97, and 98). This is apart of the Bulls history and two three-peats during one of the best eras in NBA history. After the Bulls, Jackson took over the head coaching job in Los Angeles. With the Lakers, Jackson won three championships (2000, 01, 02) to make it his third coaching three-peat. Then he added two more Laker champions (2009 and 2010) to his resume. The guy is a winner with 2 championships as a player and 11 as a coach, he doesn't even have enough fingers for all those rings. Plus this tie is due to come back in style.

Devin "Mr. First Place" Allbright's signed Wake Board

Devin "Mr. First Place" Allbright may not be a very well known name in Chicago sports but he is an up and coming wakeboarder riding for the Illinois State University Shredbirds. He grew up spending his summers in Frankfort, Michigan, Devin fell in love with wake boarding. He quickly picked up the sport and was shredding Crystal Lake by the age of eight. When he started his college career at ISU he was approached to join a new wake boarding club run by godfathers Kyle Burr and Connor Kopp. The new club jumped onto the scene surprising many and ranking 6th in the nation in college wake boarding.  Devin and Kyle became a dynamic dual, winning competitions in their respective divisions. Devin has earned five first place trophies and the nickname of "Mr. First Place". This past season, Devin couldn't compete do to a series of unfortunate injuries. This winter his troubles continued when on a snowboarding trip to Keystone, Colorado where he broke his collarbone going real big, like he always does. Whether in the water, snow, or on concrete this multi-talented athlete tares it up. Devin also dislocated his shoulder this fall during an ISU intramural softball game that he was competing in with his bros. The "Inside Heaters"are going to miss their center fielder's spider-like defense and powerful bat. Devin is trying to rehab his injuries to make a wakeboard come back this spring and do what he does, win first place a lot. In the meantime he enjoys playing with his yellow lab Maggie and shredding his skateboard around the ISU campus and on his personal backyard mini ramp. We are so excited to have one of his first place winning boards autographed. Someday this board will be worthless.

PHOTO: The ISU Shredbirds, you can see godfathers Connor Kopp (Left) and Kyle Burr (Right) in the middle and Devin Allbright on the far right holding, you guessed it, two first place trophies.

Devin Hester's Super Bowl Cleats

A piece of Chicago Bears football history just made it to our shop. We now have the cleats that were worn by the best returner in NFL history, Devin Hester in Super Bowl XLI. Hester started off the game with a kickoff returned for a touchdown. He returned it 92 yards and gave the Bears an early lead, the earliest lead in Super Bowl history. Unfortunately the Bears ended up losing the rainy game to the Indianapolis Colts lead by Peyton Manning. The cleats can be seen in the photograph below. They are black and orange Nikes. The cleats were raffled off in 2007 and were resold online. Hester's return was one of the only bright spots for the Bears in Super Bowl XLI. Hester was drafted by the Bears in the second round of the 2006 NFL draft. In his rookie season, he had six return touchdowns, including a punt return in his first game, and a 108 yard touchdown off a missed field goal. Hester played for the Bears for 7 seasons recording 18 touchdown returns. Later, while playing for the Atlanta Falcons in 2014, Hester set an NFL record with 20 career return touchdowns. Hester is the best to ever do it and we are happy to have such a historic piece in our shop. Hester will always be loved in the Windy City.

My Product Recommendation

I am not a professional basketball player but I do enjoy playing pick up games and competing in rec leagues. I have always been a big fan of basketball shoes. Usually I wear Nike brand shoes but I recently bought a pair of Adidas D Rose 6s. I bought the shoes basically because I think they look awesome and to support the Chicago kid Derrick Rose. What surprised me the most about the show was its light weight. I usually play the guard position on the court and these shoes made it easy for me to accelerate and make cuts. The traction on these shoes are top notch. There is a lot of ankle support on these shoes, I like to have high top style shoes due to past ankle sprains from my high school days. I am a huge fan of the D Rose logo thats sported on the heal of the shoe. The logo is a rose with a "D" inside of it and the "D" forms a number 1 for the jersey number he wears for the Chicago Bulls. Everyone of the D Rose shoes has some sort of design that relates to Chicago, in the model it is very simple with a single Chicago star in the front. Overall great shoes, I feel like they will last me a few years at least. They come in two basic colors the Bulls red and black and the color I have; white. Go to your nearest Footlocker and scoop a pair of your own.

My Review on ESPN's 30 for 30: The '85 Bears

First off I didn't know much about the 1985 Chicago Bears other than the fact that they won the Super Bowl and a handful of players and coaches. I knew there the defense was one of the best there ever was and that there was a thing called the super bowl shuffle. The documentary starts out with the saving of Buddy Ryan's job in the organization. This was unknown to me I was always told what a great defensive coordinator he was. I really liked overall the amount of Coach Ryan in the film, it really showed how effective he made that defense and how much of a impact he made on his players, most notably in Mike Singletary. One of my favorite parts of the film was Jim McMahon. I knew he was the quarterback who won the Super Bowl but not much else. The film showed his kind of bad boy personality that I found entertaining but he was also tough and took a lot of hits that gained him respect. In showing this side of McMahon the film also addressed his condition and the harsh realities that result from taking so many hits throughout a professional football career. Another aspect I enjoyed was getting the see the team struggle through losing in the playoffs the season before, it setup the determination in the championship team and of course the initial decision to put "The Fridge" in at running back. All in all I enjoyed learning more about the '85 bears and would recommend any football fan to watch it. It is currently available on Netflix.

Link: ESPN 30 for 30: The '85 Bears - Ditka

How I will Promote my Blog

It is extremely vital to promote your own blog to insure you are generating traffic. If people are reading your posts and sharing them you can become popular and gain fans who will revisit your website often. All bloggers hope that they can create conversations between their fans and outsiders who may be turned onto your blog. By gaining a following writer also gain creditability among their peers. To promote my blog I will write about topics that generate a lot of conversation. By keeping up to date with new and relevant stories, I will allow myself express my opinions to keep people coming back. If i am one of the first bloggers to post on a topic, then readers will look to my website first. It is also important for me to promote programs that are relevant to my topics. By promoting others I can build a relationship with them and advertise my posts on other, more popular websites. I will also utilize websites like Alexa to measure the traffic of my website and look for new ways to promote and gain competitive advantages. Being unique in my writing and sometimes being very opinionated or controversial will help me gain followers. Lastly I will use key words and phrases in my post titles to help generate traffic from search engines. Because I know that it takes money to gain the top spots on popular search engines, I can create a email mailing list and ask if people would like newsletters promoting my website. Compiling all of these tasks together will hopefully help me gain a following.

Speed Linking

I have compiled some blog posts that I feel any Chicago sports fan would appreciate reading. If you enjoy these posts please look into the other posts from the bloggers. I hope you find these as interesting as I have.

This is a blog post from Chi City Sports on the seriousness of concussions in professional football. I saw it as powerful hearing of past Chicago Bears players being affected by concussions.

Triage of Wounded Bears

I, like all Cubs fans, can't wait the see this 2016 roster start the season. In this blog from SB Nation Chicago, Duane Pesice breaks down the first spring training game of the season.

Cub Tracks Spring Into Action

It has been hard to watch the Chicago Bulls this season. This is a post questioning if making the playoffs is even a good goal to have at this point. The bulls are currently sitting 10th in the Eastern Conference. Tyler Plesis of SB Nation breaks down the current roster and how missing a playoff birth may help the future.

Would the Bulls Missing The Playoff be a Good Thing?

I still love Derrick Rose and I want to see him be successful again. Dane Carbaugh breaks down his recent play and shows us how he has brought back some of his dominate ways of the MVP Rose we all  want back.

How Derrick Rose has Become Deadly in the Lane Once Again

I am big on league rankings before the season, during, and after. It is always fun to read up on who is considered best at a certain point in time. Joel Reuter of Bleacher Report created a ranking of MLB teams going into spring training. Can you guess who he has slotted at number one?

MLB Power Rankings at Start of Spring Training

Here is another Bleacher Report list of NHL teams that got the most out of the recent trade deadline. Where do you think Allen Mitchell ranked the acquisition of Andrew Ladd?

NHL Players Who Benefited Most from Trade Deadline Deals