The Chicago Bulls fell to the Milwaukee Bucks 97 to 90 at the Bradley Center early tonight.

The Bulls got a great performance out of their perimeter tonight. Derrick Rose, Ben Gordon, Larry Hughes, and Luol Deng combined for 74 of the Bulls’ 90 points. Unfortunately, the Bulls only got 16 points out of their front court.

It should be clear what the team’s problem is. It’s definitely not Ben Gordon and likewise, definitely not Derrick Rose. It’s not Larry Hughes, and not really Luol Deng either, although he hasn’t been spectacular. It’s the horrible big men. Paxson needs to make some kind of trade soon, because the Bulls’ big men have few redeeming qualities.

Ben Gordon was especially spectacular tonight. He didn’t have a great overall game, but he scored 15 straight points for the Bulls in the third quarter to rally the Bulls back into the game by himself. Gordon finished with 22 points, 6 rebounds, and 4 assists. Gordon has been rebounding the ball very well as of late, similar to what Jason Kidd does, albeit, not as good. This might not be a bad thing, given how bad our big men are at rebounding. Gordon also did a solid job on Michael Redd, limiting him to 13 points on 6-11 shooting.

Scott Skiles did a good job adjusting to Gordon’s hot scoring. Skiles began to meet Gordon with double teams and switched Luc Mbah a Moute onto Gordon, which helped slow him down.

Luol Deng had a good game for the first time in a long while. Hopefully this wasn’t just a one time occasion, in which Deng wanted to have a big game against his former coach. Deng had 21 points on 9-14 shooting, although he did his usual fourth quarter disappearing act. Disappearing act or not, any production out of Deng like this is great. This is the player we expected Luol Deng to be all year. It is pretty simple, Luol Deng has to make his jumpshots to be an effective player.

Derrick Rose was solid tonight. Rose finished with 18 points, 9 assists, and 4 steals. Unfortunately, Rose was sloppy with the ball tonight, turning it over 5 times. A lot of Rose’s assists had nothing to do with anything he was doing, but rather he got them by passing to Gordon off screens who was on fire in the third. Rose did have two very nice alley-oop passes though; one to Deng and one to Thomas.

Larry Hughes had 13 points off the bench, and did a good job from long range, hitting 3 of 4 three point shots.

Luke Ridnour had a solid game for Milwaukee, scoring 12 points and dishing 10 assists. Richard Jefferson added in 21 points.

Charlie Villanueva and Dan Gadzuric tore up the Bulls front court. Villanueva had 23 points and 10 rebounds and Dan Gadzuric had 11 points, 14 rebounds, and 3 blocks. Gadzuric did a good job of altering some of Rose’s layup attempts.

As usual, the Bulls need major front court changes before they can be a consistently good team.