PARIS (The Monday International Show) - I thought it might be fun to look back on some of my preseason predictions from a month ago and see if I was on the money or not (in this latter case it's not quite so fun!).

Of course for the moment my big boo-boo was overrating the Bulls and Noah who like Golden State and Cleveland are off to weak starts for playoff favorites!

The Bulls are a defence oriented team with no low post offence and an attack that depends solely on hitting the mid-range jump shot.

Their togetherness seems too easily shattered by the Kobe rumors, contract problems and a slow start as Noah pointed out much to the dislike of coach Skiles who must be feeling the heat as well as the GM, Paxson, who has now missed out on Gasol, Garnett and Kobe while miserably overpaying Ben Wallace!

Noah is paying his frankness by riding the bench and can't really be judged but the season is early and this is a young team that can bounce back if they all get on the same page!

I was also worried in the first week that my prediction of success for Scola and Navarro was going to go belly up too but thankfully they both had breakout games recently!

With T-Mac out, Adelman went to Scola for some needed scoring and Luis hit 10 of 11 shots for 20 points against the Spurs, the team that traded him and then the next night got 20 with 11 rebounds in a loss to the Suns.

Wow! Navarro had a carreer night last friday too scoring 28 making 8 of 9 three pointers in a 2 point loss to the surging Hornets led by an AllStar level Chris Paul.

After playing little in the first week Scola and Navarro seized golden oppurtunities like the shrewd veterans that they are!

The next difficult step for them is to become consistent each night.

I feel that I was right about the magic tandem Howard-Lewis and their coach, Stan Van Gundy, while the big surprise is Turkoglu as an early MIP candidate.

My ideas on Boston, Cleveland and Durant seem to be panning out but watch out when accumulated fatigue starts to hit the Big Three and the rookie wall hits Kevin!

The two Frenchman Diaw and Pietrus have had good stats to start the season as predicted and we'll wait to pass judgement on Utah, Phoenix, Dallas and Memphis.

The Spurs are still a perfect storm with their role model and leader, Duncan, showing the way by agreeing to not max out his contract extension and also modestly taking a step back while letting Tony and Manu lead the team in scoring even if this might affect his standing as an AllStar starter!

For me it's between Tom Brady and Duncan for USA Sportsman of the year!

After a strong start Bargnani is now shooting too fast, missing too much and not rebounding enough!

Unfortunately unforseen, the Hornets and Clips are the early surprise teams in the west and Boston and Orlando, somewhat forseen, are most improved in the east.

The health of T-Mac and Arenas is worrisome for their teams and like Ginobili and Wade they need to take more outside shots to avoid getting beat up when penetrating!

Three weeks into the season, so far so good, only the incredible debacle in New York is still giving sleepless nights to the NBA bosses!

George Eddy