The Chicago Bulls find themselves in a very peculiar situation this morning.

Bulls GM John Paxson is faced with this question do you essentially trade away all your young talent from a team that went to the playoffs last year for the best player in the world?

Of course there’s a little more to it than that. Any trade, one could presume, that would involve Kobe Bryant going to Chicago would have to include Luol Deng. As the Lakers aren’t likely to see the value in acquiring Tyrus Thomas, Joakim Noah and Ben Gordon, giving they are sending the best player on the planet to the Windy City in exchange. It gets even more complicated when you consider that Bryant is the only player in the league with a no-trade clause in his contract and he has made it known that he wants to play with Luol Deng and likely wouldn’t accept a trade to Chicago if Deng is involved going the other way.

I’m not going to say this deal is dead in the water because the Lakers front office has been known to do some colossally stupid things (trading Shaq comes to mind) but they are faced with the reality that Kobe can, and most likely will, opt out of this contract in a year, leaving the Lakers with nothing.

But that can’t enter into the decision-making for Lakers GM Mitch Kupchak. He has to try to win now and trading the best player in the league for the 2005 College All-American team is an awful, terrible idea, regardless of what happens in a year.

Am I convinced this trade won’t happen? No. Do I think that Kupchak is desperate enough to pull the trigger and forgo a season of Kobe and Phil sniping at each other in the papers? Yes.

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No, seriously….

A six-month old baby girl is named after 25 different prize fighters.

A burglar called for a “time out” during a foot chase with police.

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SI.com’s Kevin Armstrong, most recently remembered by this blogger for slurping Duke lacrosse, is reporting that the Hoover football program is under investigation for alleged grade changing.

Writing for Slate, Paul Shirley ponders what would happen if Kobe and Kevin Garnett ended up on the same team.

In a column, today in the New York Post, Paul Schwartz calls on NFL commissioner Roger Goodell to begin docking teams who draft trouble players, a notion that I whole-heartedly agree with. I think too often teams are willing to take a flier on a guy with off-the-field issues if he’s talented enough. The league needs to ensure that doing so comes at a cost, Schwartz suggests draft picks or a tightened salary cap for those teams.

The New York Daily News is reporting that former Knick Allan Houston is planning a comeback and supposedly has a lot of interested parties, including, which shouldn’t surprise anyone, the Miami Heat. If they sign Houston, the median age of the Heat roster will be 56 years old.

Chris Webber is putting his personal collection of documents and letters from African-American leaders like Frederick Douglass, Malcom X, Muhammad Ali, Martin Luther King, Jr on display in Detroit. The exhibit will run through September.

Another column slurping the passion of Joakim Noah. This time its the Orlando Sentinel’s Dave Curtis.

The Dallas Morning News’ Tim Cowlishaw thinks the Cowboys should hold off giving QB Tony Romo a contract extension.

A very interesting piece in the New York Times about former Wisconsin forward Alando Tucker. Stephen Danley draws some very interesting comparisons to the perceived weaknesses of Tucker’s game and what some scouts believed Josh Howard’s weaknesses were coming out of Wake Forest four years ago.

The ASPCA has voted Georgia’s “Uga” as the most lovable mascot in all of college sports.