At some point yesterday I happened to read somewhere that some Euroleague games were available on ESPN3. So I took a moment to check the ESPN3 schedule to see when we'd have a chance to watch Nikola Mirotic, who plays for Real Madrid.

The next available game is next Thursday, November 10 at 3:45 p.m. ET (2:45 p.m. Chicago time). Real Madrid plays Partizan Belgrade (copy and paste FTW!).

With the absence of the NBA, this may be little more than a sniff of glue for a hardcore drug addict who needs a fix, but I have to admit that I'm looking forward to actual game action involving someone who should ultimately help the Bulls win some games.

Didn't see this posted here yet. In one of Bill Simmons's recent podcasts, he suggests that the Bulls should reject a potential Nuggets offer of Carmelo Anthony for Luol Deng, Taj Gibson, $3M, and 2 first-round draft picks (including the pick from the Bobcats). In other words, the deal most of us wanted to make all offseason.

I should add that Simmons's guests - Mark Stein and his buddy House - agreed that the Bulls should reject the offer (to be fair, that is off memory - it may have been just House that agreed). The Bulls are playing at a very high level thusfar, and people are taking notice.

Personally, I still think you do the deal assuming 'Melo agrees to an extension - Taj has been great*, but there's no way I let ~15 games influence my opinion of the players involved in the deal to that great an extent. I love this team right now, and am optimistic about the outlook when Boozer gets back...but not optimistic enough to think we'd be able to beat a top-3 team in a Playoff series in this or future seasons.

I know most of us are "'Melo'd out", but I thought this was worth posting.
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*I would also like to take this opportunity to formally offer my apologies to the Organization re: Taj Gibson over DeJuan Blair. I was one of the raving mad lunatics who thought taking Gibson over Blair was asinine and completely indefensible, and while I'm not going over the top in believing that Gibson's new level of performance is as great as what he's done thusfar this year (I think there'll be some regression to the mean; we'll see where that leaves him exactly), I've seen enough to know that the Org was correct in their evaluation of him as a player, and he was clearly the proper choice.

I was loud and "vocal" about my disagreement with the choice when they made it, and I think it's only right that I 'man up' and admit I was wrong. In this case, I'm happy to do so.

Kevin Pelton writes about DeJuan Blair's knee condition, discusses his draft slide, and provides a prognosis for his NBA career.

All things considered, I'd take him over Taj Gibson every day of the week and twice on Sundays. Hopefully I'm wrong.

For anyone who hasn't seen this and might be interested in reading it. In order to be fair to VDN, please read the letter without any predeceived notions about what he'll have to say.