The Chicago Bulls defeated the Los Angeles Clippers 95 to 75 at the Staples Center tonight to snap their five game losing streak.

The Bulls only led by three at halftime, but the starting unit blew the game open in the third quarter.

The Bulls tonight were led by Derrick Rose and Luol Deng. Rose had 21 points, 6 assists, and 4 rebounds. Rose was making his jumpshots tonight, and when Rose makes his jumpshots, he looked really good offensively. When he misses, he looks bad. Tonight was one of those nights he was on, and he looked tremendous. His 5 turnovers were a little much, but he’s a rookie, and rookies often turn the ball over.

Luol Deng also looked great, putting up 23 points, 9 rebounds, 3 assists, and 3 steals. He aggressively looked for his shot tonight, and stuck it with great consistency. This is the Luol Deng Bulls fans were expecting to show up for the past two years. He has been playing very well since coming back from injury. When Rose and Gordon completely come out of their winter slumps, the three will round out into a nice trio that could help lead the Bulls on a run towards the post season.

Ben Gordon had an off shooting night, only scoring 11 points on 4-12 shooting. Gordon still had a pretty solid game though, as he played good defense, grabbed 5 rebounds, and dished 8 assists. Gordon played completely within the offense, and took good shots, his shots just weren’t falling.

Kirk Hinrich was pretty terrible tonight, scoring 2 points on 1-4 shooting and dishing 5 assists. Kirk Hinrich’s defense was nothing special tonight, just like in the past few games. Kirk Hinrich looked like a special defender in his first few games back from injury, but has looked more mediocre each game he takes the court. Kirk Hinrich probably cannot continue to exist on this team. Since coming back Hinrich has averaged 8.7 points on 51.6 TS%. Hinrich is scoring both a low volume and inefficiently, while providing only solid defense, yet is still playing ~28 minutes a game.

It is imperative that the Bulls move Kirk Hinrich before the trade deadline. He is not good for the team. He does not produce at an adequate level for the minutes he is getting or score at an adequate efficiency, given the majority of his shots are uncontested. His presence on the team leads to more jerking around of Gordon, which obviously has affected Gordon’s game for the worse.

The Bulls got good production from their young big men tonight. Joakim Noah had 10 points, 8 rebounds, and 4 blocks. Tyrus Thomas had 16 points and 10 rebounds. The Bulls are a hard team to beat when their two young big men play this well. Both Noah and Thomas did a good job defensively tonight, providing good help and man defense.

The Bulls actually tried to get Aaron Gray involved in the offense a little bit more, with good results. Gray scored 9 points on 3-3 shooting. I encourage Del Negro to run more plays for Gray, as Gray’s post up skills give the Bulls another dimension.

The Clippers as a whole really struggled tonight. Eric Gordon led the Clippers with 19 points on 6-16 shooting. Baron Davis had 3 points on 1-10 shooting, and Al Thornton had 10 points on 5-17 shooting. When three players combine for those shooting numbers, their team is going to lose.

DeAndre Jordan was actually somewhat impressive. Jordan, who got the start, had 9 points, 6 rebounds, and 3 blocks in 24 minutes of action. Jordan has a good size for the NBA and is really athletic. He altered some shots, and most importantly, he dunked it with authority. That is one of my biggest peeves with the Bulls front court, that they too often miss at the rim or fumble a pass from the guards. DeAndre Jordan knows how to throw it down with authority. DeAndre Jordan could make a good living off our guard’s passing if we were to somehow acquire him, similar to Tyson Chandler in New Orleans living off of Chris Paul’s great passes offensively.

Andres Nocioni scored 0 points on 0-6 shooting.

With this win, the Bulls improve to 19-17 on the season.

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Tags: Al Thornton, Andres Nocioni, Baron Davis, Ben Gordon, Chicago Bulls, DeAndre Jordan, Derrick Rose, Eric Gordon, Joakim Noah, Kirk Hinrich, Los Angeles Clippers, Luol Deng, Tyrus Thomas

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 29th, 2009 at 12:13 am 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.