Bynum Back to Business

Every night there are some stupendous, silly, stupid, or downright outlandish individual lines from around the "lig." Doing Lines lets you know which one tops the list.

Andrew Bynum earns obvious headlines in coming back from a bad knee injury suffered in January. Bynum looked decent on Thursday, scoring 16 points and grabbing seven rebounds in 21 minutes of work against the Nuggets. He wasn't the main factor in L.A. knocking off its closest challenger, though.

Kobe Bryant and Pau Gasol took care of that, combining for 60 points on 38 FGAs. Gasol added a whopping 19 rebounds, 11 of them on the offensive end. Nene had an iffy defensive rebounding night for the Nuggets, and Johan Petro (!) started at the power forward position. So, uh, yeah. Too much Pau.

"T" Time: Tyrus Thomas alert! An absurdly mundane line from the mystical Bulls forward: 24 points, four rebounds, two steals. You know you're odd when a normal points+rebounds line sticks out like a sore thumb. We're used to more combined blocks and steals than points, and all sorts of irregularity! T.T. did, however, boggle on the screen, with at least two jaw-droppingly athletic plays in the first half alone. Bulls win by 14, taking not only a 1/2-game lead on Detroit for No. 7, but pulling within 1-1/2 games of Philadelphia for No. 6.

Back in Sac: Ron Artest made his first regular season appearance in Sacramento since turning up in Houston, and it's a reminder of why the Artest trade was great for the league. Ron-Ron isn't stable enough to exist on a losing team -- he would have been catatonic this season, even if the Kings had been 10 wins better. But on Houston, he looked patient, controlled, and ... well, incredible. Artest ran up 26 points on 18 FGAs, with four boards, three assists, two steals and a block. He absolutely dominated Andres Nocioni, and he showed what he's had all along: elite talent.