He’s baaaack!

Yes, Dennis Rodman, he with the multi-colored hair and tattoos to match, has finally made his comeback to the Chicago Bulls after an 11-game suspension for kicking a cameraman last month in Minneapolis. With the media and much of the country — particularly Chicago and probably NBA commissioner David Stern — watching, Rodman behaved himself for the most part as the Bulls beat the Charlotte Hornets Tuesday night 103-100 on a Michael Jordan buzzer-beater.

Rodman, in a quiet 37 minutes of action, picked up 14 rebounds to go along with his earth-shattering three points. Not a bad night of action for a guy who’s missed about month of game time.

Has he finally learned his lesson from his experience this past month? All we can do is sit back and see, but we can try to gauge that from his past history.

He was fairly normal during his days as one of the original “Bad Boys” with the Detroit Pistons, helping them win back-to-back championships in 1989 and 1990. Sometime during that time, as he wrote in his autobiography/whine-fest “Bad As I Wanna Be”, he became suicidal to the point of sitting in the parking lot of the Palace of Auburn Hills in his truck with a loaded shotgun at his side.

Soon afterward, he was shipped off to the San Antonio Spurs, where his hair color kept changing and the tattoos added up on his body. After more battles with then-Head Coach John Lucas, he was traded to the Bulls for Will Perdue, to become the new headache for Zen master Phil Jackson. With him in the role of rebound-master, Rodman helped Da Bulls win the championship again last year.

But why does he act the way he does? Is it for attention? Is it perhaps to further his career after his playing days are through (which could happen after this season if the price isn’t right)? Or is he what he says he is, just simply misunderstood by the public at large?

As an avid Bulls fan, I think it’s a little bit of everything. No one truly knows what is going on inside his head during any of his episodes, like marrying himself in a publicity stunt last August and kicking the cameraman (he was screwed on that deal, personally, by his having to pay the guy $200,000 to settle a lawsuit), and I doubt Rodman really knows himself.

As for his career, if this is his last year as he says it might be, I hope he finds something more worthy to work on than what he has. Though he has a movie with Jean-Claude Van Damme coming out at some point this year, his other ventures have not been that great, to say the least. His show on MTV, “The Dennis Rodman World Tour” sucks, simply put. It’s just an outlet for Rodman to impose his “values” and beliefs on the rest of society. Anything outside of basketball just hasn’t been all that noteworthy to mention here.

Should he be allowed to stay though? Yes. Why? While his antics have been a headache for the Bulls and the NBA, his staying wouldn’t be any different than baseball allowing Steve Howe to come back seven times from drug banishments.

However, to save the world the wonder, he just might leave. Then again, he might not. Stay tuned.

Rob Daniel is a junior in journalism and mass communication from Zion, Ill.