As John Paxson’s two lottery big men draft selections from recent years prove that they are not busts, one of Paxson’s first round picks, Thabo Sefolosha, continues to show that he is a bust.  With the game tied at 93 points with 4 seconds left in the game, the Bulls had a shot to win the game in regulation.  Sefolosha, who was inbounding the ball, passed the ball right to Dwyane Wade, who called a timeout as he was falling out of bounds.  The very next play, Tyrus Thomas rotated to stop a cutting Dwyane Wade.  Sefolosha rotated late onto Marion, who dunked on Thabo to win the game.

Ben Gordon had the entire corner wide open.

Thabo Sefolosha needs to go, he is a bust.  He let down his entire team.  That clutch block by Joakim Noah which ended in a Tyrus Thomas dunk off a pass by Ben Gordon?  Worthless.  The three clutch free throws by Ben Gordon to tie the game at 93?  Worthless.  The clutch steal by Kirk Hinrich to give the Bulls a chance to win in regulation?  Worthless.  When you are tied with 4 seconds remaining in the game and posession of the ball, you don’t lose the game in regulation.  It’s not supposed to happen, but it did, and it was all Sefolosha’s fault.

The worst part of this all is that Ben Gordon was wide open.  Ben Gordon would have had a wide open shot in the corner.  All Sefolosha had to do was lob a floater to Gordon and Gordon would have had a wide open look for potentially his second straight game winner.

Ray Allen will now miss the Allstar game and the East squad is in need of a replacement. Well, tonight Ben Gordon put in a pretty good audition for the spot, scoring 34 points and grabbing 5 rebounds. Gordon did it all tonight, making jumpshots, driving to the basket, dunking, drawing fouls, banking in some shots, and hitting his free throws. It’s a shame that Thabo deprived him of a shot at the game winner tonight.

Derrick Rose had a good, 18 points and 6 assist game. This was just some good solid basketball from Rose. Nothing special, but solid. Unfortunately, he was outplayed by the number two pick in the draft, Michael Beasley. Beasley had 21 points on a very efficient 9-10 shooting, 7 rebounds, and 2 blocks. He was a big reason the Heat won tonight.

Kirk Hinrich had a nice game, finishing with 8 points, 5 assists, and 3 steals. His defense on Wade was great for stretches. Wade, who had 24 points on 9-23 shooting, did light up Hinrich for 6 straight points late in the fourth, but it’s not like anyone, besides maybe a prime Scottie Pippen, would have done much better. Wade also had 7 assists and wore an American flag band aid under his eye.

The Bulls young front court had another nice night. Tyrus Thomas had 15 points, 8 rebounds, and 2 blocks. He did have 6 turnovers to go along with that though. Joakim Noah added in 5 points, 11 rebounds, and 2 blocks. He had 4 turnovers. While neither could be considered stellar tonight, both had solid overall games, and were involved in some big plays down the stretch.

Daequan Cook added 14 points, making 4 three pointers. Shawn Marion, who had the game winning dunk, scored 12 points and grabbed 7 rebounds. Udonis Haslem had 10 points in the game.

Luol Deng had another bad game, scoring 6 points on 2-6 shooting. Going into the trade deadline, the Bulls will have to take a long, hard look at whether they should cut their losses with Deng or not.

And a little more on Thabo Sefolosha tonight. He was horrible tonight, putting up one of the emphasis 0-0-0-0-0 games. That is 0 points, 0 rebounds, 0 assists, 0 steals, and 0 blocks. No positive statistics in the game. He was horrible.

This begs the question, why did Vinny put him in at the end of the game? Derrick Rose would have been a better option to be throwing the inbounds play.

But it’s hard to criticize Vinny too much for this collapse. An NBA player should be expected to be able to make a simple inbounds pass. The play Vinny drew up was actually pretty good. If Sefolosha would have made a good pass, Gordon would have been wide open in the corner with a chance to win the game.

With the loss, the Bulls go into the Allstar Break with a record of 23-30.

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Tags: 0-0-0-0-0, Ben Gordon, Chicago Bulls, clutch, Derrick Rose, Dwyane Wade, Game Winner, Joakim Noah, Kirk Hinrich, Luol Deng, Miami Heat, Michael Beasley, Shawn Marion, Thabo Sefolosha, Tyrus Thomas, Udonis Haslem, Vinny Del Negro

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 12th, 2009 at 9:23 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.