The Chicago Bulls got blown out in Boston to the Boston Celtics 118-90 Friday night.

The Pistons big four completely destroyed the Bulls. Paul Pierce scored 22 points on 8-12 shooting, Ray Allen had 20 points on 7-9 shooting, Kevin Garnett had 16 points on 7-13 shooting, and Rajon Rondo had 16 assists. Great production for the Celtics big four.

Eddie House also managed to destroy the Bulls from the bench, scoring 22 points on 9-13 shooting.

While this is a blow out, and I would generally say to throw away the results (unless blowouts become a common thing with this team), but there are a few things that need to be looked at with our players.

The big two is our struggling production from both wing positions in this game.

Luol Deng went out and laid a nugget in this game, scoring 4 points on 2-8 shooting. Through two games, he is scoring at a poor 10.5 PPG on 48.0 TS%. That type of production from one of your starters is going to kill your team.

The problem with Deng is that his game is flawed. His game is built around basket cuts and then shooting the midrange jumpshot. The basket cuts are fine, but you’re only going to score 4-6 points a game on them, so you need to be able to do something else on offense, whether it is spot shoot, take your man off the dribble, or post up. Luol Deng can do none of these things, and here in lies the problem with Deng. He can’t shoot. A look at Deng’s shot chart for this game, it is seen that Deng missed all five of his jumpshots. Luol Deng has only scored the ball with good efficiency in the 06-07 season, in which he was an elite midrange shooter, every other year, when he hasn’t been hitting it at a great rate, he has been an inefficient scorer.

The other problem on the wings is of course John Salmons, who scored 8 points on 2-14 shooting. It’s too early to say whether Salmons is just in a shooting slump or if he is returning to his true form, and that last year was just a fluke. Nonetheless, the Bulls need Salmons to get going, otherwise they may lose a lot of these early games.

Joakim Noah gave the Bulls 16 points and 10 rebounds and Tyrus Thomas 10 points and 8 rebounds.

Kirk Hinrich was solid, scoring 10 points on 4-9 shooting along with 7 assists. Unfortunately he shot 0-5 from three, but Kirk still had a pretty good game.

Derrick Rose finished the game with 10 points and 2 assists. A lot of Rose’s problems came from the Celtics clogging the lane, and giving the Bulls the three.

With the loss, the Bulls fall to 1-1 on the season.

Closing Comments

The loss isn’t that big of a deal. The Bulls should have been expected to lose, and to lose bad. The Bulls have been blown out by the Celtics everytime they’ve played since the KG trade that KG dressed in. In these games, the Celtics have won 92-81, 107-82, 116-93, 106-92, 96-80, 126-108, and now 118-90. If Garnett is playing, the Bulls will probably lose the rest of their games to the Celtics this year as well.

Similar Posts:

• 2009-2010 Season: Bulls Dominate Celtics Defensively and Win 96-83
• 2009 NBA Playoffs First Round - Game 3: Boston Celtics 107 at Chicago Bulls 86
• 2009 Playoffs First Round - Game 7: Boston Celtics 109 vs. Chicago Bulls 99
• 2009 Playoffs First Round - Game 5: Boston Celtics 106 vs. Chicago Bulls 104 OT
• 2009 Playoffs First Round - Game 6: Chicago Bulls 128 vs. Boston Celtics 127 3OT

Tags: Boston Celtics, Chicago Bulls, Derrick Rose, Eddie House, Joakim Noah, John Salmons, Kevin Garnett, Kirk Hinrich, Luol Deng, Paul Pierce, Rajon Rondo, Ray Allen, Tyrus Thomas

This entry was posted on Sunday, November 1st, 2009 at 9:35 am 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.