This man is good at basketball. No, really.
It took me until tonight, when a seemingly devastating event occurred to the Bulls' roster, to understand that this Bulls team is for real. On a night where the Bulls best player, Rose, was held to a mere 6 points on 3-9 shooting, his teammates stepped up in a big way. The frontcourt for the Bulls was dominant with Boozer scoring 34 points on the night. Deng contributed his usual 19 points. Bench players like Kyle Korver and Ronnie Brewer made huge contributions. The Bulls are a team. With Boozer starting to find his niche on the team after missing much of the beginning of the year to injury, the Bulls will cause problems for everyone they play later in the year if they can all remain healthy. They may have missed out on "The Decision" of the summer, but the Bulls have found out that what they have this year is special. While beating struggling Toronto might not impress anyone, what we saw tonight is that this team is not just Rose; it's one entity playing under the impecable leadership of Rose and new head coach Tom Thibodeau.
Yes, their record will suffer over the next 8-10 weeks. Noah has been a vital part of the Bulls roster this year building off a career best season last year with an even better one this year. However, the Bulls will be in the playoffs. I don't see a team in the Eastern Central that will catch them even with a depleted roster for part of the year. They have already established a 5 game lead. The NBA is a league where teams show what they've got in the playoffs, and when the Bulls are healthy, watch out.
Did it take you until last night or did it take Michael Wilbon writing the exact same article and publishing it 12 hours earlier to realize we're good? Don't act surprised Joakim Noahs a star, he's averages a double double the past season and a half and could have been an allstar last year. Also didn't mention Rose's 6 points on 3-9 shootings were largely due to his sprained wrist which he did up 2 or 3 nights ago.
ReplyDeleteAs for maintaining the lead in the lowly central, the Bulls play one game against a team over .500 in their next 12 games, and like 2 in their next 15. The one is Christmas day against the Amare Stoudamires, with the winner probably taking home the first half MVP.
Good article, always a knack for the obvious, keep it up rundall.
http://sports.espn.go.com/chicago/nba/columns/story?columnist=wilbon_michael&id=5921192
ReplyDeleteoh awkward...
Henry,
ReplyDeleteI'm confused by your point. You validate everything I said in the article with your points, yet still have an argumentative diction. My point is that Noah is a star. I know he's averaging a double double. He's averaging career bests in almost every single category. I'm aware he sprained his wrist, I wasn't putting Rose down. I was saying that when Rose was out of his usual role, his teammates picked him up yesterday. The schedule is a good point. I see you got that point from the Wilbon article...
As for the Wilbon article...are you kidding me? I wrote my article about the Raptors game. Wilbon's article was written before the Raptors game. Many people write about the Bulls on a daily basis. Wilbon's article was really good. I liked it a lot, but to tell me that my article was taken from an article that was written about something completely different is just wrong. I'm reacting to Noah's injury and the Raptors game.