I haven't been writing here much - everything I seem to have on my mind seems too pissy to put down into words and saved for posterity (yeah right).

But now Halloween is coming up, and with the end of October comes the Bulls' regular season.

Me, I'm what I'd call a casual NFL fan - I root for the Bears and will watch a game if I'm around, but I don't plan my Sundays or any other day around football. I'm also an even more casual NHL fan, which means I'll get excited about the Black Hawks around playoff time.

I'm a big baseball fan, but even that I haven't been all that interested in using a lot of my valued time to watch games. Even the World Series. I'm rooting for the Phillies (sorry, Eric) but there's just too much else going on to actually sit down and enjoy a game. Now if the Cubs were in it...(yeah, right, again).

And I like the NBA. It may be the one sport I can watch no matter who the teams are. I really just like watching the game. (Even so, I don't exactly plan my TV viewing around games.) And I'm enthusiastic about the Bulls, usually.

This year, I'm getting even more enthusiastic, because I get the sense that expectations are low since they let Ben Gordon go to Detroit. It seems a lot of the experts didn't think the Bulls would find a way to replace his scoring, and while I wasn't wondering so much about his ppg, I was worried about his pressure time scoring.

If what I saw last night is any indication, however, the improved defense and balanced scoring will overcome the need to have someone go off for 20 in the fourth quarter as often. I feel really good about a team that pretty much dominated what should be a very good Spurs team. Derrick Rose is going to be a superstar at point guard, and Joakim Noah looks like he has matured as an NBA player. There are solid vets around Rose with Hinrich, Deng, Salmons and Miller. And Tyrus Thomas, while still a question mark, looked to me to have turned a corner where his athleticism might be serving his game for the first time, rather than his game depending solely on his athleticism.

So I'm excited about the beginning of the NBA season. Looking forward to watching as much hoops as I can find the time to.