2009-2010 Season: Chicago Bulls 92 vs. Detroit Pistons 85
December 4th, 2009 by Andrew WamboldtThe Chicago Bulls defeated the Detroit Pistons 92-85 at the United Center, snapping their five game losing streak.
The story of the game of course was Ben Gordon’s return to the United Center. When he first checked into the game he was greeted with a mixture of cheering and boos.
It was good to see a sizable portion of the United Center crowd cheering for the guy. Unfortunately, I don’t think this crowd is necessarily representative of what would happen with a normal United Center crowd. I suspect that a lot of Ben Gordon’s bigger fans among the Bulls’ fan base purchased tickets for this game. A normal United Center crowd probably would have been full of more of the non-informed fans who booed Gordon, who don’t really understand basketball and the contribution that Ben Gordon brought to the Bulls’ basketball wise, as well as his great conduct off the court.
It’s impossible to support fans who decided to boo Ben Gordon. Gordon was the Bulls’ best player for almost his entire time in a Bulls uniform, and did nothing but work hard his entire time in a Bulls uniform. His Bull career ended with him scoring 33 points on 55.7 TS%, as he tried to gut out a victory for the Bulls while playing on a torn hamstring.
Ben Gordon ended up having a mediocre return to the United Center, which is not really surprising, given that he was coming off an ankle injury. Gordon still finished with 18 points on 6-16 shooting. To put Gordon’s performance in perspective, he scored on a greater volume and scoring efficiency in this game than John Salmons, Kirk Hinrich, and Jannero Pargo, the three players who are replacing his minutes on the court.
Defensively, Gordon stuck his man pretty well. Derrick Rose and John Salmons had some pretty good nights, but very few of their points came against Gordon.
Defensively, the Bulls were a mixed bag defensively on Gordon. John Salmons and Lindsey Hunter were a complete failure in guarding Gordon. Gordon missed a lot of shots that he would normally make against those two. Neither could keep him from getting clear looks at the basket, and Salmons especially had trouble stopping Gordon from getting to the basket.
Where the Bulls excelled defensively on Ben Gordon was in their help defense. That is because of Luol Deng and Joakim Noah. These two guys were frustrating Ben Gordon all night. I think this shows that Luol Deng and Joakim Noah are some high basketball IQ players. They seemed to know Gordon’s game as good as one can. Whenever he burned John Salmons, Noah or Deng were right there helping, making the correct reactions to frustrate Gordon’s shots.
I think Ben Gordon definitely has the potential to be a Bull killer in the future. He can get any shot he wants at will against John Salmons or Lindsey Hunter. Things might be a little different when Kirk Hinrich is guarding him, but with Hinrich’s physical play, it’s easy to see Hinrich getting into foul trouble. Ben Gordon also has a history of completely burning smaller guards, so that also works in Gordon’s favor in the potential Ben Gordon vs. Kirk Hinrich matchup.
As for the rest of the game, this was a win the Bulls needed, as they were coming off a five game losing streak from their road trip, and they were also playing a bad Detroit Piston’s team. The Pistons were without Richard Hamilton, Tayshaun Prince, Charlie Villanueva, and Ben Gordon was coming off of an injury. The Bulls better beat a team who features Chucky Atkins, Jonas Jerebko, and Jason Maxiell in their starting lineup.
The Pistons starting lineup finished with only 33 points on 11-37 shooting. No team is going to win when their starting lineup performs that poorly.
This is not to say that the Pistons will be a bad team all season. If they get all of their guys back, they can probably make the playoffs. As bad as they have been, they’re only 1.5 games behind Charlotte for the final playoff spot, and are only 4 games behind Miami for a playoff seed that features home court advantage.
The Bulls seemed to be in control of the game nearly the entire time. The Pistons made some runs to close the gap some throughout the games, but the Bulls would repeatedly build their lead back up.
Derrick Rose had a good game, scoring 19 points on 6-9 shooting along with 6 assists. He did have five turnovers in the game, but his highly efficient scoring mitigated the effect of those turnovers.
John Salmons did great offensively, scoring 22 points on 7-12 shooting, but he had trouble defensively, stopping Ben Gordon from getting good shots.
Luol Deng struggled a bit, scoring 14 points on 5-15 shooting, but his defense was superb.
Joakim Noah had another great night, finishing with 7 points, 14 rebounds, 5 assists, and 3 blocks.
Brad Miller finally had a good game, finishing with 16 points, 7 rebounds, and 6 assists.
For the Pistons, Rodney Stuckey finished with 17 points, but did it on 4-16 shooting. Stuceky struggled to score efficiently tonight as he is very much a one dimensional scorer, who gets his points by driving to the basket. The Bulls set up with good help defense when he drove, and that forced him to score inefficiently.
Willy Bynum and Kwame Brown finsiehd with 10 points each.
The former Bull, Ben Wallace, finished with 0 points and 7 rebounds.
With the win, the Bulls improve to 7-9 in the season, and are slotted as the 7th seed in the East.
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Tags: Ben Gordon, Ben Wallace, booing, Brad Miller, Chicago Bulls, Derrick Rose, Detroit Pistons, help defense, Jannero Pargo, Jason Maxiell, Joakim Noah, John Salmons, Jonas Jerebko, Kwame Brown, Lindsey Hunter, Luol Deng, Rodney Stuckey, United Center, Will Bynum
