The Chicago Bulls defeated the Dallas Mavericks 98-91 at the United Center yesterday.

The Bulls fell down early, 24-5, but Ben Gordon, who had 12 points in the first quarter, got the Bulls back in the game single-handedly.

Luol Deng then helped Gordon with a big 2nd quarter to give the Bulls the lead going into the half.

In the third quarter, Derrick Rose had 14 points to help grow the Bulls lead to a comfortable margin. From there on, the Bulls just put the game in cruise control and eased their way to their fourth win of the season.

Ben Gordon was absolutely phenomenal. He finished with 35 points and 4 assists. Neither Kidd, Terry, or Stackhouse could stay in front of Gordon, and Gordon ate it up, driving the ball play after play. Gordon also continued his great defense. Jason Terry had 16 points, but it was on a highly inefficient 5-14 shooting, and Stackhouse only had 4 points on 1-5 shooting off the bench.

Derrick Rose played poorly in the first half but significantly picked up his play in the 3rd quarter. Rose finished with 16 points, 9 rebounds, and 6 assists. In the first quarter, Rose had a great set up to Deng for a dunk on the fastbreak where he turned his body to fake a pass to the trailing Gordon for three, but bounced it in to Deng for the dunk. At the start of the game, Rose had difficulty creating anything against the Mavericks, but once Gordon captured the Maverick’s attention on defense, Rose was able to get going driving the ball on Kidd.

At one point during the middle of the 4th quarter, Rose had some unkind words for Gordon after Gordon refused to pass Rose the ball after Rose clapped for it. It seems that Gordon was just going with the rest of the offense while Rose was trying to go rogue.

Luol Deng also continues to show signs of improvement. He finished with 20 points and 9 rebounds. His jumpshot looked better and he was able to attack the rim with some good aggressiveness tonight.

When all three of Rose, Gordon, and Deng have it going, the Bulls will be a tough team for anyone in the NBA to beat, and Rose and Deng didn’t even have that good of games, just good stretches tonight. The trio is similar to the Hinrich-Gordon-Deng trio from 06-07, only Gordon is a better player now and Derrick Rose is a much better player than Kirk Hinrich.

Tyrus Thomas had a solid game, finishing with 8 points, 8 rebounds, 2 steals, and 2 blocks. Thomas is so much better when he doesn’t try to take over on the offensive end.

Joakim Noah finished the game with a 0-0-0-0-0 stat line, after Vinny Del Negro pulled him after less than 4 minutes and exiled him to the bench for the rest of the game.

The two former Cavaliers returned to action today. Gooden had an okay performance, finishing with 8 points and 8 rebounds. Larry Hughes had 5 points and provided solid defense off the bench.

Thabo Sefolosha got a DNP - Coach’s decision.

Josh Howard finished with 21 points and 11 rebounds. Dirk Nowitzki had 12 points on 5-17 shooting. Deng did a solid job locking down Deng for most of the game. Ben Gordon even was able to stop Dirk on one posession where Dirk was posting Gordon up off of a switch.

The Bulls next game is Saturday against the Indiana Pacers at the United Center.

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Tags: 0-0-0-0-0, Ben Gordon, Chicago Bulls, Clapping, Dallas Mavericks, Derrick Rose, Dirk Nowitzki, DNP - Coach's Decision, Jason Kidd, Jason Terry, Jerry Stackhouse, Joakim Noah, Josh Howard, Kirk Hinrich, Luol Deng, Thabo Sefolosha, Tyrus Thomas, Vinny Del Negro

This entry was posted on Friday, November 14th, 2008 at 1:17 pm and is filed under Game Recap. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.