Los Angeles Lakers 117 vs. Chicago Bulls 109
March 21st, 2009 by Andrew WamboldtThe Chicago Bulls fell to the Los Angeles Lakers 117 to 109 tonight in the United Center in a hard fought game.
The Bulls fell behind early, but came surging back to take a double digit first quarter lead behind the hot scoring of Derrick Rose, Ben Gordon, and John Salmons.
Gordon would taper off, but Salmons and Rose would continue on with their hot scoring to maintain the Bulls lead. But then, in the fourth quarter, the Lakers role players started draining threes. When it rained it poured, and the great three point shooting of the Lakers role players was the death of the Bulls.
The undoing of the Bulls tonight was definitely their turnovers. They had 23 turnovers in the game, and you aren’t going to beat a great team like the Lakers when you have that many turnovers. Ben Gordon was the biggest culprit with 7 turnovers.
Derrick Rose was phenomenal tonight, scoring 25 points. This game should definitely help him in the rookie of the year race, although not quite as much as a Rose led win over the Lakers would have helped him. But with two strong performances late in March, Rose looks like the favorite to win the award.
John Salmons was great once again, scoring 30 points. He’s a scorer, and he seems perfect for what Vinny’s trying to do on offense. He is able to hit jumpshots at ease, why corkscrewing his way to easy layup attempts.
For the Lakers, Kobe Bryant had 28 points, but did it very inefficiently, taking 25 shots to score that with. But Kobe had some bothersome defense and had 7 assists, setting up his teammates for easy looks.
Pau Gasol struggles a bit in the first half, but hit his groove in the second half to score 23 points and grab 10 rebounds in the game.
Tyrus Thomas had a nice game scoring 15 points, securing 16 rebounds, and blocking 3 shots. His performance was huge, and was a big reason why the Bulls were competitive with one of the best teams in the league.
Ben Gordon was probably the downfall of the Bulls tonight. He just didn’t have a very good game at all. He had 16 points on a scoring efficiency that was still better than Bryant’s, but it wasn’t a good scoring efficiency by any means, and he left too many points on the board. Gordon had a good 3 or 4 wide open three pointers that he missed. If he makes those, the Bulls probably win. Gordon also had 6 assists, but he also had a lot of turnovers tonight.
That was actually a problem with the entire team. The Bulls gave up 23 turnovers but also 14 offensive rebounds to the Lakers. If the Bulls took away some of these extra scoring opportunities from the Lakers, the outcome could have been different.
Gordon hit 2 three pointers in the game and is now sitting at 744 career three pointers, just 7 three pointers away from breaking Nick Van Exel’s record for most three pointers in the first five years of a players’ career.
Kirk Hinrich had 9 points and his defense on Kobe Bryant was very good.
Lamar Odom finished with 16 points, Trevor Ariza with 18 points, and Jordan Farmar for 13 points. These three combined for 7-13 from three point land, and were the key difference in the game.
With the loss, the Bulls fall to 32-38 on the season and posess a 1 game lead over the Charlotte Bobcats.
Closing Comments
This was a game I thought the Bulls were going to lose coming in. The Lakers are one of the best teams in the league, and they simply don’t lose a lot of games. But the Bulls came out swinging after the Lakers early attack to take a 16 point lead. They held onto this lead for most of the game. The Bulls didn’t lose because they lost confidence or spirit, and that is a positive to take from this game. They competed for the entire 48 minutes. As they go into the playoffs, they will need to focus more to avoid a lot of these bad turnovers. If they reign in their turnovers, they will be a tough team to beat. Nonetheless, competing for almost the entire game against a very good Lakers game is a positive. Hopefully the Bulls can look at this game, look at their mistakes, and ralize what they need to do to beat the best competition in the NBA.
The Bulls survived a tough stretch of their schedule, which included the New Orleans Hornets, Boston Celtics, and Los Angeles Lakers going 3-1, with their only loss being against the Lakers. They come out of the stretch with a 1 game lead for the eighth spot in the East, and have a soft schedule going forward. You have to be happy with where the Bulls are positioned going into the stretch run.
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Tags: Ben Gordon, Chicago Bulls, Derrick Rose, John Salmons, Jordan Farmar, Kirk Hinrich, Lamar Odom, Los Angeles Lakers, March 2009, Pau Gasol, Trevor Ariza, turnoers, Tyrus Thomas
