The year is over. The aughts — or whatever the hell we’ll end up calling them — are over. Grab a drink. Grab your friends. Grab your girl. Celebrate like there’s no tomorrow, even though there will be.

Happy New Year’s, y’all.

There are countless pitchers with more talent, those that throw the ball harder, those with more wins, more awards than Mark Buehrle.

But there are are now only six pitchers in the history of the game we call baseball that have thrown a no-hitter and a perfect game, an accolade Buehrle achieved on lazy afternoon on July 23. He’d already thrown his no-hitter back in 2007; the perfect game was his cherry on top.

But it wasn’t so much that Buehrle went 27 up and 27 down with no walks or anyone reaching base on an error, becoming only the 18th pitcher in major-league history to toss a perfect game. It was that ridiculous ninth inning, when Ozzie Guillen was provoked to insert DeWayne Wise into center field as a defensive replacement and move Scott Podsednik over to left. It turned out to be one of the smartest moves — if not the smartest move — Guillen would make that season.

Wise’s beat on Gabe Kapler’s hit to left center was immaculate; one false move and that’s a homer, one false move and he drops that ball, and Buehrle’s perfect game becomes a one-hitter, maybe worse. Wise won’t be remembered for much during his tenure on the South Side, but he’ll be forever remembered and linked to that moment, and he deserves it.

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You may have seen this floating around the Web on Tuesday morning after the Bears beat the Vikings:

OMG IS THAT JAY CUTLER FLICKING OFF THE CROWD?!?!?

Oh, come on. Let’s not think Jay is the type of guy that would do that. (Ahem.) Anyway, Jay says he wasn’t flicking anyone off as the Bears decided to take a knee instead of running one last play in regulation. He was just simply pointing at the clock:

“I was just pointing to the clock,” Cutler said Wednesday. “I didn’t really understand why they were booing. We had eight seconds left, not much we were going to do. I’m going to suggest we take a knee there every time and go to overtime, and take our chances there.”

Ah, of course. The old clock point. Totally normal, natural gesture at such an occasion. Case closed. Mystery solved. Let’s all go out for a drink and celebrate, shall we?

Yesterday, for a litany of reasons, I decreed T-Mac to the Bulls sounds nice, but may not be all that realistic of a scenario.

Yet, Mike McGraw of the Daily Herald chimes in with this today:

Sources suggested the Bulls are open to acquiring McGrady, who is just 30 years old.

The 6-foot-8 swingman is the NBA’s highest-paid player at $23.2 million, but his contract ends after the season. A trade with the Bulls would almost have to include the expiring contracts of Brad Miller and Jerome James.

The Bulls might also be interested in moving John Salmons to guarantee a larger amount of cap space next summer. He’s owed $6.5 million next season but has an option to terminate the deal and become a free agent.

Without Salmons on the payroll, the Bulls could have more than $20 million to spend on the 2010 free-agent class.

These three contracts add up to about about what T-Mac is making, so it’s a nice little equal swap. But again, I come back to what i said yesterday: the Rockets are also hoping to acquire some value here. Expiring contracts are always nice because it gives you more options once the season is over instead of being locked into another team’s discarded trash for a few more years, but I don’t see anyway Salmons uses that option to terminate his deal.

He’s likely not going to get $6.5 million in the open market, so why even risk it by exercising that option?

And if the Rockets aren’t looking for a longer-term player unless he’s a piece for the future — see: Bulls players with actually upside and talent, as I mentioned yesterday they’d would likely have to give up — then I don’t see why they’d go for this. Salmons isn’t the type of player they’d want in their system beyond this year for his potential expiring contract.

Unless the Bulls are willing to give up a better player, or the Rockets become desperate because they can’t find a better deal anywhere else, the odds of this happening are pretty slim.

After Chris Broussard reported Vinny Del Negro was out the door once the Bulls found a replacement for him, I thought it was a pretty telling sign that after Del Negro defended his honor and said he was on the same page as management and that “rumor” was bunk, no one from the front office stepped up.

GM Gar Forman declined to talk to reporters the same day Vinny was saying everything was all good. If Vinny is really their guy, really the person they want leading this time now, and for the foreseeable future, why wouldn’t Forman step to the mic and put all the rumors to rest? Why wouldn’t he tell the media that Del Negro is “our guy” and we’re sticking behind him?

Because that’s likely not the truth. That’s why.

But Forman did step to the mic yesterday. And here’s what he had to say, via the Chicago Tribune:

Asked if the Bulls are committing to Del Negro for the remainder of the season, Forman said: “I feel we shouldn’t talk about evaluations with any personnel that we do internally. We are all being evaluated at all times. That goes from me to our management staff to our coaching staff to our players. Those are things we keep internally.”

Asked specifically where he’d like to see Del Negro improve, Forman said: “I don’t know if you pin it on one guy,” Forman said. “As a whole, we want to get better defensively. We’ve talked about that all year. We want a defensive base to how we play the game. We want to be an up-tempo team that gets up and down the floor and takes advantage of our athleticism.”

I don’t know about you, but I’d say Gar Forman has a nice career in politics ahead of him. Talk about two non-answers completely avoiding the questions at hand.

The fact that there continues to be no vote of confidence for Del Negro from the front office leads me, and everyone else, to believe that Broussard’s report was correct: Del Negro’s days are numbered as head coach of the Bulls.

Tracy McGrady has left the Rockets for good, and they’re now looking to trade him. He’ll come up to Chicago to train at Attack Athletics in the interim. Some pros and cons about T-Mac joining the Bulls …

PROS: The Bulls are lacking a scoring punch since Ben Gordon signed with the Pistons. Tyrus Thomas has returned yes, but I wouldn’t exactly call him a volume scorer, at least not on a consistent level. T-Mac can come right in and fill that void, and add a little buzz to an otherwise forgettable season.

CONS: The Bulls are going to have to give up too much. The Rockets don’t seem amicable to a buyout for McGrady, because they want to at least get something of value back for him instead of just letting him walk. Adding T-Mac to a lineup of Derrick Rose, Joakim Noah, Tyrus Thomas and Luol Deng might sound nice (though, I’m not sure who plays the 2 here, those are just the team’s best players), but it’s unlikely this would even be a lineup the Bulls could toss out on the court, as one or two of these guys would have to be shipped in return for McGrady. The guy is also making a league-high $23 million this year. The Bulls are just over luxury tax level now with their $69,967,615 payroll (2009-2010’s luxury-tax threshold is $69.920 million). Depending on how a deal is structured, adding McGrady could put them even higher into the luxury-tax zone. Jerry Reinsdorf doesn’t want to pay any more luxury tax.

This might only be a one-year dam plug, as McGrady’s contract expires after this season anyway. I suppose this makes it attractive for the Bulls: they can get McGrady on a one-year loner and not worry about him taking up cap space, so they’ll still be well-positioned for a top-name free agent this summer.

And I suppose if T-Mac works out, they could bring him back. But considering his history of injuries and the money he’s probably going to want, this likely isn’t a good option for the Bulls.

VERDICT: Notice all the cons? It’s an intriguing prospect, but it probably ain’t gonna happen. Vote no on T-Mac.

Because my words don’t do this game justice, here are the visuals: