Another solid challenger from the West comes to town tonight. Denver playing very well early.

I really like Denver's team, they're probably my second favorite. It sucks that JR is coming back tonight and it doesn't help that they're on a 2-game losing streak. I guess the best the Bulls can do is try to keep up with them. They definitely can't have any 3-15's or anything like that either.

Hopefully Rose is closer to 100% and can perhaps have a breakout scoring game.

If there's one thing we should be hoping for it's that Melo doesn't wipe the floor with us

We're paying a SF a lot of money so that other SF's can't do that to us.

LOL hopefully that SF will make it rain on melo instead.

That'd work too, although I think we're paying him for both defense and offense.

I was at the game in March of '07 when the Bulls won at the last second on Ty's tip in. I got seats from a friend of a season ticket holder and was two rows up across from the visiting bench.

Two guys that absolutely crushed us that night were Melo and Nene. I couldn't believe how physical Melo was and how he looked for contact while going to the tin...Lou did his best, but Melo pushed him around most of the night.

AI had 31 that night as well, but he hurt the Nuggets a hell of a lot more than he helped. It'll be interesting to see how the maturation process of Lou's physical strength has come tonight against Melo.

The other thing to watch here is how our supposedly improved defense outside the middle works. While it hurts not having TT, by going to Salmons, Deng, and Rose/Hinrich, we're supposed to be able to better defend big guards, like say, Billups and Smith, whereas a Gordon/Rose backcourt would just have to score with them.

Hurts having lost a bit of depth in the frontcourt. Be nice if we could develop Johnson into a guy who can take up a few minutes.

Any reason he hasn't played at all this year? I know we were logged before Ty got hurt...but you'd think Johnson could break the lineup somewhere.

He's played a few minutes, got into the last game for a couple. It seems they've just been really unhappy with how raw he is. I think they wrote he played a few minutes last game and wound up back on the bench after an error or two. The Tyrus Thomas treatment, essentially.

*insert generic deng injury joke here*

It'll be a lot easier to have patience with him with Taj Gibson playing so well.

I'm unable to watch the game... did Denver REALLY not foul? Or has the calling been pretty bad?

The Bulls got a couple tough calls against them, but I don't remember any bad no calls.

Johnson just had a nice drive and finish. It's really odd to know so little about a college player that was almost taken in the lottery.