I was invited at the last second to go to last night’s Bulls game against the Nets, so I of course gladly accepted.  The Bulls looked like a playoff team last night in beating New Jersey, the first place team in the Atlantic Division, 95-87.  Playing the Pistons tonight, however, won’t help the Bulls in terms of stringing together a bona-fide winning streak for once.  A few random thoughts:

1) I didn’t realize that the Bulls signed Carrot Top to an NBA contract a couple of days ago.

2) Andres Nocioni is the Bulls’ reincarnation of former Illini player Lucas Johnson.  Nocioni is a tough and scrappy player that you love to have on your team and opponents love to hate.  He had a fantastic game last night with 24 points off the bench.

3) Vince Carter scored the quietest 25 points that I’ve ever seen.  Seriously, our group commented throughout the entire game on how Carter looked sluggish, hurt, sick, and disinterested.  Yet we were all shocked to see at the end how many points he had scored during the night.  Vinsanity has got to be high on the list for the NBA record for most garbage-time points.

4) I wouldn’t have been surprised if Carter, Jason Kidd, or Richard Jefferson went nuts on the Bulls.  However, I wasn’t expecting Nenad Krstic to look like the Serbian Shaq with 29 points.  The dude was on fire – Carrot Top had no chance.

5) What’s up with Ben Gordon’s relationship with Bulls coach Scott Skiles?  While Gordon is a liability on defense, he’s such a ridiculously good offensive player that the Bulls need him out on the floor a majority of the time.  Instead, he only received 24 minutes of playing time and was absent for most of the 4th quarter even when the score was close.  Skiles has done an admirable job with this franchise over the past couple of years, but his handling of the one player on the team that has the skills to become a true NBA star is puzzling.

Coming up – after tackling the Big Ten issues of the locale of its basketball tournament and the adding of a 12th team, I’ll be reviewing some changes I’d like to see to the Big East Tournament and the World Baseball Classic over the next few days.  Stay tuned!