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.

The Chicago Bulls defeated the Dallas Mavericks 98-91 at the United Center yesterday.

The Bulls fell down early, 24-5, but Ben Gordon, who had 12 points in the first quarter, got the Bulls back in the game single-handedly.

Luol Deng then helped Gordon with a big 2nd quarter to give the Bulls the lead going into the half.

In the third quarter, Derrick Rose had 14 points to help grow the Bulls lead to a comfortable margin. From there on, the Bulls just put the game in cruise control and eased their way to their fourth win of the season.

Ben Gordon was absolutely phenomenal. He finished with 35 points and 4 assists. Neither Kidd, Terry, or Stackhouse could stay in front of Gordon, and Gordon ate it up, driving the ball play after play. Gordon also continued his great defense. Jason Terry had 16 points, but it was on a highly inefficient 5-14 shooting, and Stackhouse only had 4 points on 1-5 shooting off the bench.

Derrick Rose played poorly in the first half but significantly picked up his play in the 3rd quarter. Rose finished with 16 points, 9 rebounds, and 6 assists. In the first quarter, Rose had a great set up to Deng for a dunk on the fastbreak where he turned his body to fake a pass to the trailing Gordon for three, but bounced it in to Deng for the dunk. At the start of the game, Rose had difficulty creating anything against the Mavericks, but once Gordon captured the Maverick’s attention on defense, Rose was able to get going driving the ball on Kidd.

At one point during the middle of the 4th quarter, Rose had some unkind words for Gordon after Gordon refused to pass Rose the ball after Rose clapped for it. It seems that Gordon was just going with the rest of the offense while Rose was trying to go rogue.

Luol Deng also continues to show signs of improvement. He finished with 20 points and 9 rebounds. His jumpshot looked better and he was able to attack the rim with some good aggressiveness tonight.

When all three of Rose, Gordon, and Deng have it going, the Bulls will be a tough team for anyone in the NBA to beat, and Rose and Deng didn’t even have that good of games, just good stretches tonight. The trio is similar to the Hinrich-Gordon-Deng trio from 06-07, only Gordon is a better player now and Derrick Rose is a much better player than Kirk Hinrich.

Tyrus Thomas had a solid game, finishing with 8 points, 8 rebounds, 2 steals, and 2 blocks. Thomas is so much better when he doesn’t try to take over on the offensive end.

Joakim Noah finished the game with a 0-0-0-0-0 stat line, after Vinny Del Negro pulled him after less than 4 minutes and exiled him to the bench for the rest of the game.

The two former Cavaliers returned to action today. Gooden had an okay performance, finishing with 8 points and 8 rebounds. Larry Hughes had 5 points and provided solid defense off the bench.

Thabo Sefolosha got a DNP - Coach’s decision.

Josh Howard finished with 21 points and 11 rebounds. Dirk Nowitzki had 12 points on 5-17 shooting. Deng did a solid job locking down Deng for most of the game. Ben Gordon even was able to stop Dirk on one posession where Dirk was posting Gordon up off of a switch.

The Bulls next game is Saturday against the Indiana Pacers at the United Center.