The Chicago Bulls defeated the Minnesota Timberwolves 94 to 90 at the United Center last night.

Tyrus Thomas was huge in this game, finishing with 22 point, 13 rebounds, and 2 blocks. Tyrus did exactly what you want out of him last night. He was active on the boards, and he was aggressive attacking the basket. When Tyrus attacks like this on offense, he usually scores. Nice to see Tyrus Thomas go and put up a 22/13 game a day after saying he could average 20/10 for the season.

Taj Gibson scored 14 points and grabbed 6 rebounds. He continues to put up solid game after solid game.

James Johnson had a solid 10 points on 4-8 shooting. Joakim Noah added in 8 points and 5 rebounds.

Jannero Pargo had 13 points and 7 assists. He looked to pass more tonight than he had in previous games, and the results were good. It also helps to have another finisher out there in Tyrus Thomas.

Al Jefferson finished with 10 points and 16 rebounds for the Timberwolves. Corey Brewer had 20 points and Johnny Flynn had 10 points an 8 assists.

Kirk Hinrich finished with 12 points on 3-11 shooting and 5 assists. Not a great shooting game for Hinrich, but he helped to mitigate the bad shooting day by getting to the line five times, which is nice to see.

Luol Deng had another bad game, scoring 6 points on 2-7 shooting. This is a disturbing trend. Through six preseason games, he is shooting 50.2 TS%. If he continues to do that in the regular season, he needs to be benched in favor of James Johnson, and the Bulls should look to trade him for any expiring contract available. There is no guarantee that any team would offer an expiring contract for Deng. You can’t have players scoring this inefficiently in your starting lineup, or off your bench, if you want to be a great team.

With the win, the Bulls improved to 5-1 in preseason play.

Closing Comments

The Bulls have done nothing yet in the preseason to get you too excited for the regular season. All the teams that they have beaten in the preseason thus far have been mediocre to bad. However, there is reason to be excited because of the play of the Bulls’ front court. Joakim Noah, Tyrus Thomas, James Johnson, and Taj Gibson have all looked good. If they can continue the good production into the regular season, the Bulls should be able to make the playoffs, as they will get good perimeter play out of Kirk Hinrich, John Salmons, and Derrick Rose.

Hopefully the Bulls frontcourt continues to play this way into the regular season, because we will be good if that’s the case.

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Tags: 2009 Preseason, Al Jefferson, Chicago Bulls, Corey Brewer, James Johnson, Jannero Pargo, Joakim Noah, Johnny Flynn, Kirk Hinrich, Luol Deng, Minnesota Timberwolves, Taj Gibson, Tyrus Thomas

This entry was posted on Sunday, October 18th, 2009 at 12:33 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.