Last year the Chicago Bulls were knocked out of the NBA Playoffs in the first round, but there seven game series with the Boston Celtics might of been the highlight of the entire postseason. This year head coach Vinny Del Negro has a much more difficult task ahead of him playing the #1 seed Cleveland Cavilers. Lebron James is probably the last player you want to face in the NBA in the playoffs. The Bulls were able to defeat the Cavs with Lebron early on in the season in a low scoring game in November 86-85. Lebron told the media he’s been thinking about game 1 of round 1 of this year’s NBA playoffs since losing to the Orlando Magic in last year’s Eastern Conference Finals. The return of Joakim Noah to the Bulls lineup helped Del Negro’s team finish the season going 7-3 in the last ten games. Derrick Rose can take over games himself, but he needs Noah to perform at his best if the Bulls want any chance of giving Lebron and the Cavs a fight. Game one tips off from Cleveland on Saturday at 3PM ET on ABC.

SI’s Ian Thomsen wrote about the likelihood of the NBA adopting a stricter salary cap in 2011 bringing up the question if the NBA would benefit from restricting the amount team’s cans spend on their roster. We’ve seen super-teams form in recent years with the triad of Kevin Garnett, Ray Allen, and Paul Pierce coming together in Boston and the LA Lakers bringing in Paul Gasol and Ron Artest to compliment Kobe Bryant. Having a NBA salary cap system that allows teams to basically buy championships doesn’t really help the NBA night-in and night-out when you have 30 teams in the league each playing 82 games in the regular season. The 2010 off season will likely shake things up in the NBA with the list of free agent stars up for the highest bidder. However, with the future of the salary cap unknown teams might be doing themselves a disservice devoting so much of the allocated money they can spend on roster to one player. Don’t expect the NBA to go out its way to breaking up the superteams, but it seems pretty likely that change in some sort is on its way after next season.

Last Friday night’s contest between the Chicago Bulls and Phonexi Suns was a benchmark game for 21-year-old Chicago Bulls guard Derrick Rose. The 2008-09 Rookie of the Year has proved the last year and a half that he was one of the most promosing young players in the NBA, but on Friday against the Phoneix Suns he showed that he’s ready to step up and be a star. Prior to the game Rose announced that he would donate $1,000 to the relief effort ongoing in Haiti for every point he scored against the Suns and the point guard didn’t dissapoint. Rose amazingly went 15-21 from the field scoring 32 points looking unstoppable at times. After hitting a 3-point shot falling away from a Suns defender Rose just threw up his hands as if to say “I can’t believe how good I’m playing”. The Phoneix crowd couldn’t help but be silenced when Rose threw down a vicious dunk that reverbarated throughout US Airways Center. One can’t expect Rose to play this well night in and night out, but his performance might just be a sign of things to come for the young professional.

Now that the basketball season is fully in motion, we can take a look at what’s going on so that you can get your NBA tickets. You shouldn’t miss your favorite team playing down the stretch. Of course, the Cleveland Cavaliers are dominating everyone this year. They have been able to show that LeBron and Shaq can get together without much of any trouble. Meanwhile, the Boston Celtics and Orlando Magic remain at the top of the Eastern Conference. In many ways, not much has changed since last year but some of the teams further down in the standings are poised to make a big comeback. In the West, the Lakers are ahead of everyone else by nearly 5 games. They look like they will stay ahead, but Dallas, San Antonio and Denver are holding onto their playoff spots very well indeed. Get ready for some fun and get your tickets soon!

With the Washington Wizards getting questioned about the Gilbert Arenas affair, the team hasn’t been able to focus. They haven’t been winning much lately anyhow, but this seems to be making it even harder. Several of them have already been into the police for questioning about the incident, which involved Arenas entering the stadium with some of his guns in hand. He put them in his locker, apparently to keep them away from his kids and then played around with some of his colleagues and them. This isn’t just an issue about having them at the Verizon Center, though the NBA is acting on its rules about that. It’s more about the Washington DC rules about guns and the fact that a person can’t have many kinds of weapons within city limits. There are various laws in play here, and Arenas would do well to keep a low profile for quite awhile moving forward.

It all started with a card game. That’s how these things always start, isn’t it. At least, if you are in a Wild West saloon. The Washington Wizards’ Gilbert Arenas got into an argument over a card game with Javaris Crittenden on the plane and that apparently escalated to the point of him bringing a gun (or several?) to the Wizards’ home stadium, unloaded, and setting them on Crittenden’s chair. This could be in violation of several laws and definitely violates the NBA’s policy on the matter, let alone any workplace’s decision on the matter. Perhaps this could be viewed as a goofy mistake made by a young man. But then he followed it up with jokes on his Twitter and making finger-gun hand gestures during a recent starting lineup introduction. And that wasn’t all. So commissioner Stern had to come out with a stern response, suspending Arenas indefinitely and threatening worse. He is in deep trouble and should probably keep quiet until this all blows over. The Wizards might also have to take out Crittenden, since he might have also brought guns to the workplace. Tough love sometimes hurts, especially from David Stern.

The Detroit Pistons are doing a good job this year. They have been absolutely riddled with injuries all around their roster. They have lost Ben Gordon at times, Hamilton and Prince have had trouble keeping themselves going since the beginning of the season. But the coach has been able to put players in who are able to do a good job in the starting lineup. If you see the Pistons this year, you might think that they are on the way to the playoffs. That’s a long way off, but they are making a good case. They are currently in the 7th seed and close to the 5th, depending on how some of the other teams do. When their best players get healthy again, they might be able to win even more. This might be a team that is dangerous for other Eastern Conference teams. If you’re a fan in Chicago, Cleveland or Orlando, watch out!

LeBron James has gained a little habit of dancing a bit when he’s happy. When the team is doing well, he is dancing and goofing off. Someone must have told him to relax and be himself. James was taken to task earlier this week when Joakim Noah decided to shout him down in the 4th quarter. They got into a bit of a verbal spat and were split up. But it was clearly Noah’s annoyance at the less-sportsmanlike manner that this dancing is occurring and such. Hopefully we can enjoy LeBron James back in normal humble form sometime soon. But maybe the Cavs have decided that getting their opponents annoyed would be to their advantage. Stay tuned and it will be interesting to see what he does in future games.

When the Bulls battled against the Kings earlier this week, it was expected to be a fairly even match. These two teams seem to be sitting at about the same level and could have given a tough competition. In some ways, it was. The Bulls played an amazing first half. Even late in the 3rd quarter, the Bulls were ahead by 35 points. But that was the high water mark. Then the Kings hit their stride and ended up heading far down the road of comeback, ending up with a 4 point win in the end. This is a bad moment for the Bulls’ coach, who seems to be struggling to get his team to focus and get the job done. On the other hand, it shows that the Kings have a surprising amount of energy and action that will make them a potential contender in the division, if not this season, then possibly next.

The Mavericks are having a little bit of trouble getting themselves moving the way that they have in previous years. They have had some great successes recently, but this season just isn’t quite working out. But they had a game just the other day which had a couple of calls to be appealed. GM Mark Cuban has taken charge of it and says that the game should be restarted in Dallas with just over a minute remaining on the clock and the Mavs with upcoming possession of the ball. What? This is an unusual statement to come out of an NBA GM. Usually, the coaches or players might say something like this, but they know that they’ll be subject to trouble if the NBA objects to it. We’ll see what actually happens with this, but it’s just one more odd Mark Cuban story to add to the pile.