Denver beat Chicago 100-84, as Juwan Howard had 23 points to help the Nuggets.  Howard and former "Fab Five" teammate Jalen Rose squared off in their first match-up since being traded.

Kenny Satterfield ran the point position well in George McClouds absence.

Jerry Krause has brought back a few ex-Bulls over the past few years to serve as mentors for his rebuilding team. While Charles Oakley hasn't exactly flourished in that role, former Bull and current Nugget Scott Williams wouldn't mind serving in that capacity next season, reports Mike McGraw of the Daily Herald.

The 34-year-old Williams, who will be a free agent this summer, is on Denver's injured list with a lower back strain. He is healthy enough to play, but the Nuggets want to look at younger players, so Williams likely won't see action the rest of the season.

"This would be an ideal situation if they're thinking about it," said Williams, who plans to play two more years. "I love the city of Chicago. The fans were great to me here when I was just an undrafted rookie trying to scrap for minutes and hustle out there."

Current mentor Charles Oakley wasn't happy about playing for the Bulls this season, but Williams knows his situation is different. Oakley is still trying to earn his first NBA championship, while Williams won three titles with the Bulls from 1991-93.

"Do I want to win? Sure," Williams said. "I was close to getting to the NBA Finals last year with a fun Bucks team. I had a lot of fun up the road. It's important for me to be in a good situation where I'm comfortable, and I certainly would be comfortable here in Chicago."

This season is not even over and already players are starting to jockey for their future destinations.  Chicago's Travis Best, brought over from Indiana in the Jalen Rose trade, said he's interested in signing with the Heat as a free agent this summer if Miami doesn't retain Rod Strickland.

''Miami was trying to make a deal with Indiana to get me [last summer], and Indiana wouldn't give me up,'' Best told The Chicago Sun-Times. ``It's definitely an interesting situation and one that I'll look at. They have one of the best coaches in the league in Pat Riley, and they're a team I feel can definitely go somewhere next year, especially if you have somebody come in and help defensively and run the team.''

``It definitely would be a good situation for me. Strickland's been playing well, but I don't know what's going to happen.''

Strickland, while older than Best, has had a better season this year and would most likely come cheaper to the luxury-lax laden Heat.  There are also questions over whether Best can be a starting caliber point guard on a good team.

Best and Strickland, along with Jeff McInnis of the Los Angeles Clippers, are considered the best of the unrestricted free agent point guards this off season.

The Denver Nuggets try their luck in the Windy City.  Jalen Rose and the Chicago Bulls are 17-55 for the season and a shoe in for the most ping pong balls (again!) in the upcoming NBA Draft.

The Nuggets have won 3 in a row vs. Chicago, and are 1-12 vs. Eastern Conference teams on the road this season.

On this road trip the Camera article sums up the Nuggets problems in this sentence.

Denver has averaged almost 19 turnovers per game during the road trip, including 21 in its loss to Washington.

Denver returns for a home game on April 2nd.

Jamal Crawford has always been labelled the Bulls point guard of the future, but if Chicago gets the first overall pick in the NBA draft this June and select Jason  Williams out of Duke where does that leave him?

''I'm a basketball player first, and I think my natural position is point guard,'' Crawford said. ''I just want to be on the floor."

''They've been saying I'm the point guard of the future, so it would kind of be like, 'Why have you been saying that if you're going to draft him?''' Crawford said after practice Monday. ''But things happen. I think they should draft the best available player, and if that's him, I think they should draft him.''

Crawford didn't play many minutes last season under Tim Floyd, then blew out his ACL during the offseason after wowing everyone at Hoops the Gym with Michael Jordan, so Chicago management and fans have not really had an opportunity to view the package which Crawford could bring to the table.  But Jamal has been heating up lately, going 14-of-19 from the field in his last two games with seven assists and one turnover and is starting to show that the buzz is for real.

''Last couple of games, I played better,'' Crawford said. ''But I'm still not even close to how I played in the summer or how I'm going to be.

And how would he feel if Chicago did in fact take Williams with the first pick?  Under this scenario there has been talk about moving Crawford to shooting guard, giving the Bulls a backcourt which consists of Williams, Crawford and Jalen Rose.

''There are times now when I'm playing shooting guard because sometimes Jalen [Rose] brings it up. The two backcourt positions in the triangle are interchangeable anyway.''

''I do think Jason's a pretty good basketball player; I played against him twice when I was at Michigan,'' Crawford said. ''I can play against anybody. I don't care who they bring in."

''But do you need that [position filled]? I'm not sure you really need that. But you have to draft the best available player, so I guess that's something you have to ask Jerry [Krause].''

It looks like Tracy McGrady's injury which saw him rolling in pain before being stretchered off against the Charlotte Hornets was not so bad after all.  The All-Star guard of the Orlando Magic is due to suit up against the Chicago Bulls tonight as part of an Orlando homestand, one which could forge their path in this year's playoffs.

"I'm playing," McGrady promised Monday. "It's still sore, but it looked worse than it turned out to be. Hopefully, I can help get us back on track."

"The pain just shot up my back. I thought that was it," said McGrady. "I was like, 'Don't touch me, don't try to turn me, just get a stretcher.' I couldn't move. Once I got to the hospital, they drugged me up a little, and things got better."

Brian Schmitz of the Orlando Sentinel writes that Milwaukee (37-31) assumed the No. 4 spot with its victory over the Magic (37-32), who hold a tie-breaker over No. 6 Philadelphia (37-32). Although they only are a half-game behind Milwaukee, the Bucks hold the tie-breaker with more head-to-head wins than the Magic. Only 2? games separate the Bucks and the eighth-place Indiana Pacers. Orlando travels to No. 7 Charlotte on Wednesday and then hosts the Pacers on Friday.  The top four teams have home court advantage in the first round of the playoffs while the top 8 actually make the post season.

There was a general feeling of uneasiness an hour and a half before the game when it was confirmed that Shareef Abdur-Rahim was going to be absent from Saturday?s game against Chicago to witness the birth of his first child, a son.

There was good reason to be nervous, though. The Hawks had lost the other four games without their leading scorer, averaging about twenty points a game in deficit in the process.

There is no doubt that game-winning clutch shots make one feel like a hero.  Ask Michael Jordan, Larry Bird, Magic Johnson, Kobe Bryant, or even John Paxson or Steve Kerr.  But what if that heroic moment should never have taken place?  What if that big shot happened as a direct result to mistakes my the referee, just as it happened with Chicago's Jalen Rose and Cleveland's Lamond Murray last week?  It is NBA policy that officials are prevented from seeing the television replay monitors that everyone else analyse, but what if these two moments occured deep in the NBA finals with a championship on the line?

Mike Wise of the New York Times reports that support for replays to aid officials may be growing. Specifically, there is concern about shot clock situations at the end of the game.

In three games last week involving shots at the end of the game, Nets Coach Byron Scott said that only once did the league "get the call right," referring to Kobe Bryant's game-winning shot in the final seconds against Charlotte. In two other games, shots made after the game was over were allowed to count.

There have been instances where the officials have got some close calls correct, such as Kobe Bryant's game-winning attempt against Boston that didn't count and Steve Francis' attempt against the Cavaliers.  But this does not help the Nets, currently fighting for home-court advantage throughout the playoffs, who stormed the court in protest after replays showed that the clock had not started until Murray was releasing the ball.

The umpires did confer at center court, but they then left the court without reversing the call.  They certainly would have if there were allowed to view the replay.

"Go out there and find out what happened at the end of the game," Rockets coach Rudy Tomjanovich said. "Let's leave the arena getting it right. We don't have to look at everything. We're not talking about judgment calls. We don't want to slow up the game. But that's not the case when the game is over. Let's get it right. This isn't going to hold up anything. Let's get it right."

Steve Wyche writes, "NBA Commissioner David Stern was at tonight's Washington Wizards-Utah Jazz game at Delta Center and addressed several issues, namely Michael Jordan's return to the site where he hit the memorable championship-winning jumper for the Chicago Bulls in 1998.

"'Is there anything better than sitting in an international spectacle and you think you know who's going to get the ball,' Stern recalled of Jordan's shot over Utah's Bryon Russell, a play many figured would be Jordan's final highlight since he retired months later for a second time."

Preston Truman writes, "There was the Michael Jordan of old, the Jordan of new, and, yes, the Jordan that stuck a dagger in the collective heart of Jazz fans with a picture-perfect jump shot nearly four years ago.

"That pretty much sums up No. 23's return to Utah on Thursday night as the Jazz pounded the helpless Washington Wizards 94-79 in front of a 19,911 Jordan-freindly fans -- all of whom seemed to have cameras in tow."