Jalen Rose Upset..in Other News: Sun Will Rise From the East Tommorow Wow, big-time soap opera action goin on in Bulls-land. Another bad bad loss to the Sixers on friday. I wasn't able to see the game because it was exclusively on media powerhouse WCIU. Saturday's game against the Hornets will be remembered for some time. Either for turning the corner on the season by beating a quality team on the road, or for starting the in-fighting that could sabotage the season. I missed the first few minutes of the game, and when I came in, I assumed that Crawford and Rose were in serious foul trouble cause E-Rob and Kirk Hinrich were in the game. But I soon found out that they started. Basically Cartwright's saying it was change for the sake of change, but Crawford and Rose viewed it as being scapegoats for the team's poor start. Its really a combination of both, because while SOMETHING had to be done, choosing those particular players to bench shows once again Cartwright's insistance on defense. Did it work? Well both players played well enough off the bench to the extent that they played the entire fourth quarter and helped pull out a nice road win (already 2/3 of the way till last year's total). But did the benching actually help the team? I'm not so sure, unless the benching truly made Crawford and Rose play harder, in which case the move was completely justified (they should be playin hard anyway). The move also seemed to inspire Eddy Curry, who put in a solid game. Other observations include Pippen's nice cream-colored suit, and Kirch Hinrich looking completely overmatched. He had 9 turnovers in 27 minutes, and missed a key free throw in the final minute. The shot would've made it a 2-possession game, and for some reason when Hinrich made the 2nd one, Wayne 'I'll work any game' Larivee enthusiastically remarked "way to go kid!". whatever that was supposed to mean. So Rose is upset that he ends some meaningless streak for consectutive starts he had, but who cares he's always upset. And Crawford is upset and saying "the writing's on the wall" as far as returning, but hey, that isn't really up to him. It's up to Pax to wait and see if Crawford is worth the money that he most likely won't get anywhere else. So as of now all this is overblown. However if the same starting lineup is out on the floor tonight (Cartwright has inferred it may be), and the players start taking sides, things could get ugly. You'd like to think that the players wouldn't care about the starting lineups as long as their winning (and they're still getting a lot of minutes), but as we know it doesn't always work out that way. This is a big risk by Cartwright, and has Sam Smith even requesting that he gets an extension, as a was to not allow the 'inmates to run the asylum'. I'm hoping that the move was a one-time deal to give the team a wakeup call, and that a motivated Rose and Crawford are back in the starting lineup tonight. Along with the day-to-day Tyson and Pippen. Cause while its nice to shake things up once in a while, having your best players off the court in the beginning of the game can't be a long-term solution.