The Chicago Bulls defeated the Boston Celtics 127 to 121 at the United Center tonight giving the Bulls a much needed win as they fight for a playoff spot.
John Salmons was leading the Bulls all night long. He finished with 38 points in the game. Salmons scored 19 points in the first half, and helped the Bulls stay afloat early in the game.
Tyrus Thomas was the other Bull who was big in the first half. Thomas really bothered the Celtics with his athleticism and got a lot of his points on dunks and layups, as well as drawing fouls around the basket on the Celtics players. Thomas finished with 18 points, 5 rebounds, and 2 blocks. It was good to see Tyrus Thomas bounce back and have a good game finally.
Ben Gordon only had 2 points in the first half, but he came in in the second half and gave the Bulls solid production. Gordon finished the game with 17 points and 4 assists. His starting backcourt counterpart also had a rough first half as well as early third quarter. But when Rose came back in the game, he had a stretch, in which he scored the ball at will. The Celtics, because of foul trouble and injury were forced to play a small lineup, and Rose took advantage of it, and made his layups for a change. Rose also managed to set up his teammates very well in the fourth. Rose finished with 11 points an 8 assists.
Brad Miller, was the other guy, in addition to Salmons that was most important in getting us this victory. During one stretch in the mid fourth quarter, Miller scored 8 straight points for the Bulls. Miller hit some big shots for the Bulls tonight and also grabbed some big rebounds. Miller finished with 21 points, 14 rebounds, and 5 assists, easily his best game as a Bull.
I think tonight, was a night where Vinny Del Negro actually outcoached the other team. Boston’s hand was kind of forced tonight in the fourth, a little, as Leon Powe got injured when he banged his knee against Ben Gordon, Kevin Garnett was already out with an injury, and Mikki Moore fouled out. So the Celtics were going to have to play small at least at the power forward position.
But Doc Rivers decided to play small altogether, and put Paul Pierce at the center position. At first, it looked like Del Negro was going to go somewhat small, with Tyrus Thomas at center, guarding Paul Pierce. This didn’t quite work, and Del Negro quickly subbed in Brad Miller at center, much to my delectation. On defense, the Bulls played a zone to avoid the awkwardness of Miller chasing around a smaller, much quicker player.
Anyone who has played basketball knows that there is no substitute for height. Unless a big man is soft, which Brad Miller is not, the taller player will generally rebound better than a smaller player who is matched up on him. It doesn’t matter whether the smaller player is more athletic, and tries really hard. When you’re boxing out, and putting a body on another player, very few have the strength to get a good jump going when fighting for position, so the height advantage is huge. This also comes into play on the offensive end, as the bigger player can just shoot over the smaller player.
I think that Doc Rivers should have put Kendrick Perkins in the game down the stretch. You can play small ball, but you need at least one legit big man in the game if you want to be competitive.
Also, John Salmons has to be praised. This guy is such a smart basketball player. There are two things that John Salmons has been doing that I really like. The first, is that he will measure up three pointers. When Salmons gets the ball on the wing, and the defender is playing loose, he will just look at the basket measuring up a three point shot. Yes, there is a defender within the vicinity, but when you’re able to measure this shot up, like Salmons does so often, it becomes a high percentage three point shot.
The other thing I really like is how Salmons uses Ben Gordon as a decoy. A lot of the Bulls sets have Ben Gordon set up in the corner. What Salmons does is he drives baseline, and then when Gordon is in the other corner he will make eye contact with Gordon. This gets the defensive players thinking that he is going to pass the ball to Gordon, so they meet him with soft help defense, or back off to block a pass to Gordon, which gives Salmons some really good looks around the basket on his drive.
Paul Pierce was really good tonight. he finished with 37 points. He played his heart out tonight, and tried to keep the Celtics in the game. Ditto for Rajon Rondo, who finished with 26 points and 10 assists.
Ray Allen had a bit of a rough game tonight, scoring 17 points on 5-12 shooting. Vinny used a really effective strategy on Allen tonight. Ray Allen is such a good player at moving without the ball, and using screens to get open. Instead of letting Allen get a wide open shot, like he is apt to do, Vinny would switch a big man onto Allen as he was coming around the screen, and then switch the defender, often Ben Gordon, onto a Celtics big man. This strategy was pretty effective, so well done Vinny.
Kendrick Perkins finished with 14 points, 10 rebounds, and 4 blocks. Eddie House had 13 points on 4-7 shooting from three point range.
Kirk Hinrich finished with 9 points, 6 assists, 2 steals, and 2 blocks. Not a spectacular game, but a good gritty game out of Hinrich, with some solid defense. He just played his role, and he played it well.
Ben Gordon hit 2 three point shots tonight. He now is sitting at 742 career three pointers, and is just 9 three pointers away from breaking Nick Van Exel’s record for most three pointers made in the first five season of a player’s career.
Doc Rivers was ejected in the closing minutes of the game, in what seemed to be a premeditated ejection.
With the victory, the Bulls improve to 31-37 on the season, and now sit alone in the eighth seed.
Closing Comments
This was a great win for the Bulls. Even without Kevin Garnett, the Celtics are still a really good team, possessing two stars and a really good young point guard. The Bulls have now beaten the Boston Celtics, New Orleans Hornets, Orlando Magic, Denver Nuggets, Cleveland Cavaliers, Utah Jazz, Dallas Mavericks, and Phoenix Suns at the United Center. The Bulls are a really good home team. 9 of the Bulls final 14 games are at home, and against not so great competition, with the exception of the Lakers, and with an easy road schedule (OKC, WAS, TOR, IND, DET), so presumably, the Bulls will make the playoffs.
It was nice to see Vinny Del Negro actually out coach someone this season. Vinny gets a lot of criticism this season, but he has done some nice things. Most notably, how he handled the backcourt situation. He gave Ben Gordon the starting shooting guard spot, and has rewarded him, by letting him keep it all season long, even through his rough patches. He has relegated Kirk Hinrich to a bench role, the role that is best for Hinrich on this current Bulls team. And all reports say that even if Deng didn’t get injured, Salmons would be replacing him in the starting lineup, which would have been the right decision.
I think Del Negro deserves a lot of the criticism he has received. He was a horrible coach up until Reinsdorf called out the coaching staff. He has been a relatively horrible X’s and O’s coach, especially on the defensive end, although he did have some interesting X’s and O’s tonight. But one thing that has to be recognized, is that Vinny has the team playing hard and competing right now. He seems to have the right rotation being used. The Bulls are playing like world beaters at home. He deserves some credit for this. If Del Negro can orchestrate a successful playoff run, getting the Bulls back to .500 and competing hard in the playoffs, then maybe, just maybe he should keep his job. Then again, you look at the list of potential coaches avaiable including Avery Johnson, Flip Saunders, Jeff Van Gundy, and Tom Thibodeau, and then you think again…even if Vinny does accomplish getting the team back to .500, maybe he should be fired anyhow because of the great coaching talent available.
The Bulls looked good in their green uniforms. There is just something about Tyrus Thomas wearing a green uniform against the Boston Celtics that makes him play really well. He did the same thing 2 years ago against the Celtics with the Bulls wearing their green jerseys. Benny the Bull also looked pretty snazzy in green.
Luol Deng has got to be done in Chicago. John Salmons is just a much better player and also a better fit for this team. This isn’t quite like the Tyson Chandler situation. With Tyson Chandler, we had the likes of Othella Harrington and Malik Allen in the front court, with our additions being Ben Wallace and a rookie Tyrus Thomas. There were still plenty of minutes to be had for Chandler. With Deng, John Salmons is clearly a better player, who deserves to play around 36 minutes a game. You don’t want to pay your backup small forward $80 million, so I fully expect the Bulls to aggressively shop Deng this summer.
Well if you change Luol Deng for Ben Gordon you come really more close to the reality than waht you have said.
John Salmons is better than ben gordon in every aspect of the game but the jump shot, and about the money that’s what the bulls gonna have to pay to keep ben gordon, so, in fact, is ben gordon who has got to be done in chi town.
A backcourt of Rose-Salmons-Deng is much better than Rose-Gordon-Salmons
Salmons very well could end up replacing Ben Gordon as the starting shooting guard next year. But it will either be because 1. Ben Gordon jumped ship because he decided he was done with the Bulls. or 2. The Bulls fail to unload Deng or Hinrich, and let Gordon go because they don’t want to pay the luxury tax.
According to a recent Mike McGraw article, the Bulls definitely want to keep Ben Gordon.
John Salmons definitely isn’t better than Ben Gordon in every aspect of the game.
Ben’s a more accurate three point shooter. Ben will actually go down as the greatest young three point shooter ever. If you think he’s scary now, wait until he makes the improvement in shooting that most shooters make over the course of their careers. Gordon is about to become the player who has made the most threes in the first five years of his career…and not only that, but of the top 100, only one player, Hubert Davis, who made less than half the amount Ben has made, has a higher three point percentage in his first five years.
Ben Gordon is also a much better fastbreak player. He is actually one of the best fast break players in the NBA. Ben is top five in the NBA in fastbreak scoring, and he has made good decisions on the fast break all year while leading it. When he has only one other player trying to stop him from scoring, he’s going to score about 90% of the time.
Gordon’s also a better free throw shooter.
Ben, throughout his career has been an overall better scorer. This year, Salmons has closed the gap quite a bit though. Gordon has a 2.3 higher PPG and Salmons had a 0.3 higher TS%. Both are playing tremendous.
But there is no reason to make this a Gordon vs. Salmons thing. Both are playing really good basketball, and more importantly, they are playing well together.
Luol Deng has a TS% of 51.1%, which is unacceptable for a player if we want this to be a good team. Actually, the only year where Deng had a good TS%, was 06-07, in which he shot 56.0 TS%. Every other year he’s been at a very low level of scoring efficiency, which makes 06-07 seem like a fluke year.
When you take into account that Deng is injury prone, and has an albatross of a contract ($80 million) if you can move him, and re-sign Gordon for cheaper, that is entirely the right thing to do.
Ben Gordon won’t demand $80 million. I think $54 million over 6 years is around what Gordon should get this summer. And even if you were to shrink Deng’s contract down to $54 million, with Gordon at $54 million, you still get more bang for your buck than Deng at $54 million.
For the Bulls to be a good team, we can’t be choosing between good players, and saying only one can stay, especially when they’re clearly able to play different positions like Gordon and Salmons. We need to build up a set of good players and get rid of the bad ones.
Even if the Bulls are willing to keep all three of Gordon, Salmons, and Deng, I think you still have to move Deng. Salmons is clearly a better small forward than Deng, and should deserve to start and play ~36 minutes a night. You don’t pay $80 million to a backup small forward.
The huge flaw in Luol’s Game is hat he can’t create his own shot, so on selfish teams like so often this bulls team is, he suffer much more then guys like gordon and slamons who can create his own shot easily.
The thing is, a championship contender or just a pretty good team can’t be build with sefishness, and once we star to be less selfish luol’s 06/07(the las really selfish bulls team) game will reappear. I really believe that.
You’re right about the three pointers, free throwsand problably about the fast break points( so many times he don’t pass the ball, what could create a much easier shot). He definitely is amazing shot maker, if he has a better(maybe much better) shot selection he could be the best shooter of the game.
The problem is that winning teams are not made just with scoring, and a comobo of Deng-Salmons is really(REALLY) better defensively than Gordon-Salmons, and offensively with unselfishness and the versatility of luol’s game(under a unselfish team) the team could very well be better, eliminating some of the jump shot dependece of our team.
But don’t get me wrong, i’ll really like to have Gordon in bulls jersey next year, but as a sixth man, i just hope he likes the idea too.
I’m not really too concerned about the defensive benefits of a John Salmons/Luol Deng 2/3 over a Gordon/Salmons 2/3. I think in the end, having good perimeter defenders are overrated. As long as they try hard, and contest jumpshots, they are fine. Look at Gordon, he logged heavy minutes on the best defensive team in the NBA in 2006-2007.
What’s the difference between then and now? Our interior defense has gone to crap. Great defensive teams start with great interior defensive. Guards are going to get driven past, you need big men who are able to both defend their man and alter shots on penetration. We had that in the past with both Tyson Chandler and Ben Wallace. Boston has it with Garnett, Spurs with Duncan, Magic with Howard. We’ve seen it in the past with Mutumbo, a prime Shaq. A great interior defender is much more important to beingi a good defensive team than great perimeter defenders.
And I think we are seeing an unselfish Bulls team right now. Ever since the trade for Salmons/Miller, and especially Deng’s injury, the Bulls have just been playing great, unselfish basketball. Pkaying the right way, and the results have been great of late.