The Charlotte Bobcats defeated the Chicago Bulls 96 to 80 in Charlotte tonight.  The game was just a complete debacle by the entire Bulls team.  No one on the Bulls really played well.

The highlight of the game for the Bulls was in the final minutes, when Alexis Ajinca elbowed Aaron Gray.  The toothpick sized arms connected to the paper thin body of Ajinca did not move Gray one bit, and following, Gray proceeded to push the twig like object a few feet.

As said, no one played too well for the Bulls tonight, so here is just a quick rundown of everyone.

Ben Gordon had a bad game, finishing with 14 points on 6-15 shooting, 4 assists, 4 rebounds, 2 steals, and 5 turnovers.  Gordon started off the game shooting well, cooled off some, had a nice little run in the third quarter before being taken out, and then couldn’t hit anything in the fourth.  Gordon had some questionable turnovers on offense, in particular a travel as he was swarmed by three defenders on a fastbreak and an offensive foul on a post up.  The fastbreak didn’t look like a travel, and the post up seemed like a bit of a flop by D.J. Augustin.  Gordon has had some trouble measuring up the three point line, leading to him taking some really long two point shots.

Derrick Rose had a poor game, scoring 13 points on 3-11 shooting, 5 assists, and 4 rebounds.  He looked passive most of the game, passing out when he drove, instead of attacking the rim.  He did get to the line a decent amount tonight though, that was a positive.  Rose’s defensive effort was non-existent.

Two Bulls front court players, Tyrus Thomas and Brad Miller, were the only guys who really played any good.  Thomas had 14 points, 12 rebounds, 3 steals, and 3 blocks.  He did most of his offensive damage earlier in the game, and didn’t do too much offensively in the latter parts of the game.  Brad Miller had 13 points an 8 rebounds.  7 of his rebounds were offensive, giving the Bulls more scoring opportunities on a night when the offense wasn’t going.

John Salmons was bad, scoring 9 points, going 4-13 from the field.  He just couldn’t hit a shot.

Joakim Noah had 4 points, 5 rebounds, and 3 blocks.  His shotblocking was pretty good, but he just doesn’t have the strength to bang around with Emeka Okafor downlow.

Kirk Hinrich was mediocre scoring 10 points on 10 shots.

The Bobcat guards were really impressive tonight.  Raymond Felton had 18 points on 6-11 shooting and 9 assists.  Raja Bell had 18 points on 7-11 shooting and D.J. Augustin had 8 points on 3-4 shooting and 5 assists.  They just scored really efficiently tonight.  The amazing thing was that Felton and Bell were hitting some really tough shots that were pretty well defended by Hinrich and Gordon.

Emeka Okafor had a double double with 14 points, 10 rebounds, and 2 blocks.  Okafor is just too strong for guys like Thomas or Noah to stop.

Boris Diaw had 13 points and Gerald Wallace had 10 points.

Just a very bad loss from the Bulls tonight.  They need to start winning these very winnable games if they are serious about making the playoffs.  It seems at this point the Bulls have no confidence on the road, and are nearly certain to lose any road game right now.

Vinny had some weird lineups played tonight.  The weirdest was a four guard lineup that featured John Salmons at power forward.  Vinny also played a lot of three guard lineups.  You just aren’t going to win very often with three guard lineups, it makes you too small of a team.  You never see the really good teams use a gimmick lineup such as that, and the reason for it is because they’re not very effective.

Yes, Luol Deng and Tim Thomas were injured, but that was no reason for Vinny to panic.  Just play John Salmons (who only played 33 minutes) around 42 minutes at small forward, and call it a day.  That seems like it would have been the smart thing to do to me.

With the loss, the Bulls fall to 27-34 on the season.

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Tags: Aaron Gray, Alexis Ajinca, Ben Gordon, Boris Diaw, Brad Miller, Charlotte Bobcats, Chicago Bulls, D.J. Augustin, Derrick Rose, Emeka Okafor, fight, Gerald Wallace, Joakim Noah, John Salmons, Kirk Hinrich, Raja Bell, Raymond Felton, Tyrus Thomas

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 3rd, 2009 at 8:37 pm and is filed under Game Recap. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.