According to Bulls.com, Derrick Rose has been named as a reserve for the Eastern Conference in the 59th All-Star Game, to be held in Dallas.

Bulls guard and Chicago native Derrick Rose has been named as a reserve on the Eastern Conference All-Star team, which will play in the 59th NBA All-Star Game on Sunday, Feb. 14, 2010.

“I was in awe just thinking about it,” said Rose after the announcement was formally made on TNT. “I’m happy for the organization and I know they’re happy for me. My teammates, I wouldn’t be here without them. The coaching staff has been doing a good job. I’m just in awe right now.”

Rose becomes the first Bulls player to attain All-Star status since Michael Jordan in 1998.

It is nice that the Bulls finally ended their streak of not having a representative in the All-Star Game. The Bulls really should have had an All-Star in 06-07, when the Bulls were one of the better teams in the Eastern Conference, and Ben Gordon and Luol Deng were putting together good seasons. I think those two guys were hurt a lot by the Bulls never really marketing them as star type players, rather elevating players like Kirk Hinrich and Andres Nocioni to their level. With Rose, it was the complete opposite, Rose was marketed as the star from day one. Rose was being marketed as the star last season, even when Ben Gordon was clearly the best player on that team.

While I think this marketing of Rose as a star helped him over Gordon and Deng in years past, Rose still deserved his All-Star spot. When trying to come up with players who should be selected for a reserve role over Derrick Rose, I came up with: Rajon Rondo, Chris Bosh, Joe Johnson, Gerald Wallace, and David Lee. That is only five players and there are seven reserve roles, which meant Rose should be an All-Star.

David Lee is the one guy who I feel got snubbed. I think that Al Horford should have been left off the roster in favor of Lee. Here is a comparison of the two players’ stats.

David Lee: 19.6 PPG 11.6 RPG 3.4 APG 1.0 SPG 0.3 BPG
Al Horford: 13.6 PPG 9.8 RPG 2.2 APG 0.7 SPG 1.3 BPG

David Lee is nearly better than Al Horford across the board. The only thing that Horford is outproducing Lee in is shotblocking, and Horford isn’t exactly a great shotblocker himself.

Reflecting more on Derrick Rose, it really is amazing that Rose is an All-Star. For the beginning of the season, Rose looked like he had regressed as a player from year one to year two. In addition the Bulls were horrible as a team. Just a little over a month ago, there were whispers of Vinny Del Negro being fired. Now the Bulls are at 22-22, and any thought of Vinny deserving to be fired is crazy now. And this Bulls turn around began with Derrick Rose starting to take over more. After his poor start, Rose is nearly averaging 20.0 PPG on the season. It is truly amazing that Rose has managed to put together an All-Star level season this year after the poor start, and we can only hope that Rose keeps the ball rolling towards super stardom.

According to ESPN.com, Brandt Andersen, the owner of the Utah Flash, the D-League affiliate of the Utah Jazz, is offering $100,000 to charity for a Michael Jordan vs. Byron Russell one on one game.

The owner of the Utah Jazz’s NBA Development League team wants to see Michael Jordan go 1-on-1 against Bryon Russell one more time.

Brandt Andersen is offering a $100,000 donation to the charity of the winner’s choice if he can get Jordan and Russell to play a game of 21.

Jordan’s jumper over Russell in Game 6 of the 1998 NBA finals gave the Chicago Bulls a 4-2 series win over Utah. Jazz fans still insist Jordan pushed off Russell.

During Jordan’s Hall of Fame speech, he said he was motivated by Russell’s trash talk toward him during his first retirement.

Andersen says he has spoken to Russell and left a message for Jordan through a mutual friend. Andersen’s suggestion: Jordan vs. Russell during halftime of the Utah Flash’s home opener.

There is not a whole lot to say on the subject, except that it is time for Michael Jordan to fly out to Utah (or wherever they’ll play the game) and take on Russell. Jordan made the conscious decision to call out Russell in his Hall of Fame speech, and now he has to live with the consequences of that speech, and one of the consequences is that he has to play Byron Russell one on one.

Last night at the VMA’s, Kanye West took the microphone out of Taylor Swift’s hands as she was accepting her award for Female Music Video of the Year, to put Taylor on blast, implying that Beyonce should have been taking home the award.

Similarly, on Friday, Michael Jordan put his enemies on blast during his speech during the Hall of Fame induction. During his speech Jordan called out Jerry Krause for his organizations win championships comment. He called out Isiah Thomas for freezing him out at the 1985 Allstar Game. He called out Jeff Van Gundy for saying that Jordan conned players by befriending them. He called out Byron Russell for saying that he could cover Jordan if he was still playing when Jordan was retired in 1994.

Kanye West’s actions were obviously much worse, but both have been talked about as classless. While they are similar in that respect, they are also so very different, because of who Michael Jordan is.

Kanye West thinks he can say anything he wants about other musicians without repercussions because he has self deluded himself into thinking that he’s The Beatles. Michael Jordan, however, can say whatever he wants, because he is The Beatles.

Michael Jordan is the greatest basketball player to ever play the game. Not only that, he is the greatest athlete to ever play in any sport, and that is why it seemed okay to do what he did last Friday.

Him being the greatest athlete of all time, as well as donning the Chicago Bulls uniform is also why it’s now Monday, and this is just being written. The fact that Jordan is the GOAT and also wore a Bulls uniform makes this a hard post to write, because I want to make it a good one. I want to make it a perfect one, just like Jordan, the perfect basketball player.

And I know I’m not alone in this. Kelly Dwyer explains the same difficulty in writing about Jordan that I have.

At least Dwyer know completely what Jordan meant to him, as he got to witness it all. Doug Thonus of Chicago Bulls Confidential and Matt from Blog-a-Bull are admittedly indifferent about the entire thing. I am the in between, which is incredibly difficult to write about.

As a sports fan, I root for all of the same professional teams that my Dad did. That is the Packers, Cubs, and Bulls. So I was out there watching the Bulls when they were out winning these last three championships. But it wasn’t until after Jordan retired from the Bulls that I really got into basketball (I started becoming a hardcore basketball fan in 1998).

While I was watching Jordan win these championships, it wasn’t with the same fervor that I watched Ben Gordon lead the Bulls to the second round of the playoffs or Rusty Larue lead the Bulls to 17 wins. The Bulls winning a championship now would mean a lot more to me than the ones they won in the 1990’s.

Just off the top of my head, here are some of the athletes that mean more to me than Michael Jordan:

Sammy Sosa, who was the only exciting thing about the Cubs for a long while, and one of the greatest home run hitters to ever play baseball.

Dwyane Wade, who graced us with his presence for two terrific seasons at Marquette, culminating in a Final Four appearance.

Ben Gordon, who helped in re-energizing the Bulls, leading them back to the playoffs for the first time since the guy I’m writing this article about.

And also Aaron Rodgers, the new face of the Green Bay Packers, and one of the best quarterbacks in the NFL.

But this list is still very small. Michael still means a lot.

The first video game I ever owned was Bulls vs. Blazers and the NBA Playoffs for Super Nintendo.

While I was more excited for Bugs Bunny at the time, Michael Jordan is the reason why Space Jam is still one of my favorite movies of all time. (Although I still find Bugs hilarious!)

The first jersey I owned of any athlete was Michael Jordan. Elton Brand, Derrick Rose, and Ben Gordon are the only other Bulls that I have owned a jersey of.

When I used to wear headbands when playing basketball (before deciding it was tacky), about half the time I would wear a white Air Jordan headband. I owned a pair of those butt ugly Jordan Retro 5’s, but thought they were cool because they were Jordan’s shoes.

My basketball card collection, which I stopped collecting for during the 2004-2005 (just enough time to get some Ben Gordon rookies!), has a massive pile, dedicated to just cards of Jordan.

When NBA 2K3 came out, in quickplay games I often played as the Wizards (although Jay Wiliams was sick in that game too!). In franchise mode, Jordan would curiously be traded for (or fantasy drafted) time and time again to the Bulls, and I would try to win the championship before Jordan retired in the game.

I also watched a lot of Wizards games that year. Anytime they were on national TV, I would watch them, although I never brought myself to get a Jordan Wizards jersey. I’ve gotten jerseys of guys on other teams in the past. I had a Shaquille O’neal and Penny Hardaway Magic jerseys, a Chris Webber Kings throwback, and a Tim Duncan Team USA jersey. But getting an MJ Wizards jersey just seemed wrong, and I never ended up purchasing one.

During the offseason I will often find myself watching one of the documentaries or games on the Ultimate Jordan collection. It’s also not uncommon to be on youtube re-watching some of Jordan’s greatest moments on youtube.

But my memories of Jordan when he was actually playing for the Bulls are thin. My memories of Jordan are more from the culture Jordan created than anything Jordan actually did in a Bulls uniform.

So now, at the end of the article, I still cannot say what Jordan meant to me in exactness. He probably means more to me than both Doug and Matt, but less than Kelly Dwyer. Maybe I will never know how much Jordan means to me, or my basketball fandom, but I can tell you one thing, Michael Jordan was the greatest athlete to ever play a sport.

According to Marc Spears of Yahoo Sports, Byron Russell has challenged Michael Jordan to a game of one on one.

Bryon Russell has a message for Michael Jordan: Whenever you’re ready, I’ll be waiting in California – in my basketball shorts.

“I’ll play his ass right now,” Russell told Yahoo! Sports. “This is a call-out for him to come play me. He can come out here in his private jet and come play. He’s got millions of dollars. He can pay for the jet. He can meet me at the Recreation Center in Calabasas.

“We can have Mark Jackson do the commentating. We can have Mitch Richmond do the officiating. We can put it on TV and see if Michael’s still got it.”

After Michael Jordan called out Byron Russell in the manner that he did during his Hall of Fame enshrinement speech, Jordan really doesn’t have a choice, except to fly himself out to California and play Russell. Jordan doesn’t have a choice, except to play Russell, otherwise he will have to take back all his talk about still having that competitive fire and put to rest that silly talk about a comeback at 50 years old.

If Jordan does accept the challenge, who would win the game between the two? I’d pick Michael Jordan.

Here’s a cool video of Michael Jordan throwing a football 65 yards. This footage is from one of the documentaries on the Ultimate Jordan DVD set.

According to Eurobasket.com, Joakim Noah was forced by the Chicago Bulls to withdraw from the French National Team. The French National team is apparently, expected to file an appeal.

Joakim Noah (211-F/C-85, college: Florida) did not receive the clearance from his team Chicago Bulls to take participation at the upcoming qualifying games. Even though he started preparations and played at the Tournament in Strasbourg, Noah was forced to withdraw form the team even though he is not injured. It is expected that French Basketball will file an appeal with FIBA because of the treatment by the Chicago Bulls regarding Noah. It remains to bee seen how the situation will develop further, but everyone at French National Team are hoping Noah will get the clearance and will be able to help his team qualify for EuroBasket.

I’m not a fan of the way the Bulls are treating their players regarding international play this summer. It isn’t their right to stop these guys from playing internationally. They shouldn’t be directing their players one way or another on whether they should play internationally.

I think it would be a good experience for Joakim Noah to play for France. Noah would probably benefit from playing with a NBA champion like Tony Parker.

He can continue to do strength and basketball related workouts while playing in the qualifiers, and possibly the European Championship. Michael Jordan used to lift weights on game day, so Joakim Noah would probably be fine doing it as well.

The Chicago Bulls introduced James Johnson and Taj Gibson in a press conference today. Here is a rough recap of what was said during the press conference today.

Gar Forman: We are very excited about how things turned out.  Think with both players there is great versatility, both for the roster, but also as far as their games are concerned.  James can play inside and outside.  He can play at the 3 and the 4.  Taj is a skill player, who brings length and activity to the floor that will really help us.

James Johnson: Chicago is a great city, going to be happy to play here.  They’re a great young team.  Going to be fun running with Derrick and the rest of the guys.

Taj Gibson: I feel the same way.  I’m blessed to be here, a great city, a great team.  Looking forward to filling any need the team has, looking forward to the season.

Reporter: Do you liken yourself to anyone in particular or the kind of style of play?

James Johnson: I watch everyone.  I have a couple guys, inside and out.  Try to take everyone’s game who makes great moves, and make them in my game.

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