The Chicago Bulls defeated the Golden State Warriors 110 to 88 with some exciting, high scoring basketball tonight at the United Center.

The Bulls fell down big pretty early on, but Vinny subbed in Brad Miller and Kirk Hinrich, and that pair brought stability to the lineup, and the Bulls quickly fought their way back into the game. Brad Miller had an impressive 19 points on 7-9 shooting off the bench and Kirk Hinrich had a nice 13 points 6 assist effort.

John Salmons led the charge tonight with 23 points on an efficient 7-14 shooting along with 9 rebounds. He is just playing great. He makes some nice drives to the basket, which he usually finishes with a reverse, double clutch layup. He is also a shot maker. The offense is much improved with Salmons in the starting spot than with Deng, for two reasons. First, Salmons is a much more efficient scorer than Deng. Second, Salmons is less of a blackhole than Deng. Salmons will take shots when he has them there. Deng tries to force up some bad shot everytime he has the ball. Salmons really should be the starting small forward for the remainder of the season.

Joakim Noah was great as well tonight. He finished with 14 points, 17 rebounds, and 4 blocks. He was just all over the place tonight, making good defensive plays and rebounding the basketball. Just an all around great game from Noah.

Ben Gordon had another off night. He finished with 15 points on 6-15 shooting. The shots just weren’t falling for Ben tonight. You could tell it was a rough shot by the point blank layup he missed, as well as the 2 misses from the free throw line. The problem with Ben right now is that he’s taking some pretty bad shots. That’s not to say that he has bad shot selection, but his form is broken right now. He is severely leaning into a lot of his shots. He has to go straight up. On the three point attempt that he missed, he pumped, hesitated, then leaned in. On the three point shot he made, he just went straight up, and took a well balanced shot. If Ben gets back to taking square, well balanced shots, he will probably begin to see more of them go in again.

Derrick Rose had a so so game, scoring 14 points and passing for 6 assists. He didn’t seem to really impact the game in any great way, he was just sort of out there, making a nice play from time to time.

Tyrus Thomas had 8 points and 7 rebounds. Thomas was kind of checked out of this game mentally. Early in the game, Anthony Randolph had a vicious block on Thomas, that sent Thomas to the floor, writhing in pain. After that, Thomas really didn’t have it mentally tonight, which is understandable.

Stephen Jackson led the Warriors in scoring with 19 points. Corey Maggette had 14 points and Jamal Crawford and C.J. Watson had 11 points each.

The Warriors just aren’t a good basketball team. They chuck up a lot of bad shots and hardly play any defense. It’s easy to see why they have the record that they do. Still, the Bull have been losing to some teams that they’re better than, so beating a bad team is not something that should be taken for granted.

With the win, the Bulls improve to 28-34 on the season. Around the league tonight, the Bucks fell to the Cavs 91 to 73 and the Nets fell to the Celtics 115 to 111. The Bulls are now tied with the Bucks record wise for the eighth seed in the East. The Bucks at 29-35 have one more win, but also one more loss than the Bulls.

According to theKnicksblog.com, the Bulls and Warriors were close on pulling the trigger on a trade that would have sent Kirk Hinrich to the Warriors in exchange for Al Harrington.

A source has told TKB that the Warriors and Bulls were getting ready to pull the trigger on a Kirk Hinrich-Al Harrington swap earlier this month right before the Bulls guard suffered an injury to his thumb. Hinrich damaged ligaments to his thumb in a win against Phoenix a few weeks ago and required surgery. He will be sidelined for up to 3 months.

The Warriors then went into a stalemate with Harrington until trading him to the Knicks on Friday for Jamal Crawford. Harrington told reporters he wanted to be dealt to New York “back in April.”

Hinrich would have fit a bigger need for the Warriors at point guard, but the combination of Harrington’s hold out and Hinrich’s injury forced them into going after Crawford, who Donnie Walsh resisted on trading before okaying a deal after Crawford’s poor performance in Boston last week.

The source assured TKB that if Hinrich stayed healthy he would have been dealt to Golden State for Harrington and the Knicks would have had to keep Crawford.

This is a real shame that this trade did not go through. Harrington would have given us some solid big man contributions for the next two years. Harrington is not anywhere close to being a star, but he is a competent NBA level big man, which is more than you can say about Tyrus Thomas and Joakim Noah. He would have made the Bulls a substantially better team this year.

Also, Al Harrington’s contract expires before 2010 and would have allowed us to become a player in the 2010 free agency.

The good news from this is that it appears that the Bulls are ready to move on, in a new direction, away from Kirk Hinrich. This is a barrier that the Bulls have had so much trouble with as Hinrich should have been traded away as soon as we drafted Derrick Rose, regardless of how the Gordon situation turned out. Hopefully the Bulls will be able to find a suitor for Hinrich when he comes back from his injury in February.

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