Chicago Bulls at Portland Trail Blazers Recap

November 20th, 2008 by Andrew Wamboldt

The Chicago Bulls lost to the Portland Trail Blazers 116-74 yesterday at the Rose Garden.

The Bulls’ problem remains the same, their front court is horrible. Whenever the Bulls managed to get stops, which was seldom, the big men wouldn’t box out allowing Portland’s big men to get offensive rebounds giving Portland a second shot to score.

Joel Pryzbilla had 14 points, 9 rebounds, and three blocks. LaMarcus Aldridge had 11 points, 5 rebounds, and 2 blocks. Greg Oden had 11 points, 10 rebounds, and 3 blocks off the bench.

Ben Gordon had a bad game again, scoring 11 points and 3 assists, but he was the best player for the Bulls today. Gordon started to get a little hot during the 2nd quarter of the game. Ben Gordon currently has a 27 free throw streak going.

For the first time in his career, Derrick Rose failed to score in double figures. Derrick Rose finished the game with 6 points, 1 assist, and 3 turnovers. Rose had trouble dealing with shotblockers and got 3 of his shots blocked. Rose adjusted on one possession, hitting a fall away floater in the third quarter.

Brandon Roy scored 20 points for the Blazers.

There is not a whole lot that can be read from this game, except the obvious, that our front court is horrible and that we need to make a trade for a good big men.

These losses on the circus trip should not be taken entirely seriously as we’ve seen Bulls teams bounce back from bad circus trips in the past few years. Our model using all of the post-Jordan years predicted the Bulls only winning one game on the circus trip. The model using just the Gordon-Deng years predicted that we would win just two games on the circus trip. The Bulls might just have some mental block that is keeping them from playing good ball on the circus trip.

The Bulls next game is Friday against the Golden State Warriors.