The Chicago Bulls blew out the Detroit Pistons 120-87 to hand the Detroit Pistons’ their 13th straight loss. The win was the 2nd straight for the Bulls.

Most Bulls fans who bought tickets for this game probably did so to see the Bulls play against Ben Gordon. Those fans were left disappointed, as Gordon was only able to go for 6 minutes before being pulled for the rest of the game. Gordon suffered a thigh injury in the Pistons loss against the 76ers, and he re-aggravated the injury in the second quarter of tonight’s game. On a fastbreak, Gordon was running side by side with Jannero Pargo, and when Pargo made a burst towards the basket, Gordon was unable to keep up as his thigh tightened up. Gordon was then pulled from the game.

Without Gordon, the Pistons are a pretty pathetic team. Coming into this game, all five of the Pistons’ starters had a true shooting percentage of less than 50%. That changed coming into tonight’s game, as the Pistons were without Tayshuan Prince and Jason Maxiell was sent to the bench. Starting in their place, was Jonas Jerebko and Chris Wilcox, two players with scoring efficiencies greater than 50 TS%.

But the change to the lineup did very little, as the Pistons starting lineup, featuring Rodney Stuckey, Richard Hamilton, Jonas Jerebko, Chris Wilcox, and Ben Wallace is still pathetic. The Pistons fell behind the Bulls in the second quarter, and once the Bulls got up double digits, the Pistons seemed to quit exerting effort on both sides of the ball, allowing the Bulls to continue to pile on the points.

The Bulls took advantage of the Pistons’ lack of defense, converting easily on the good looks the Pistons were providing. Luol Deng led the way for the Bulls with 27 points on 13-18 shooting, and Derrick Rose had a great game as well, scoring 22 points on 11-13 shooting to go along with his 9 assists.

Joakim Noah got another double double, finishing with 16 points, 11 rebounds, and 4 assists. John Salmons gave the Bulls 17 points on 6-10 shooting off the bench. Salmons has just played great ever since being sent to the bench.

Jannero Pargo got some minutes tonight, first getting in the game during the second quarter. Pargo finished with 9 points on 4-10 shooting and 3 assists, and also turned the ball over 4 times. Pargo did a poor job managing the offense when he was out there, and turned the ball over a lot.

Richard Hamilton finished with 17 points on 6-11 shooting, and really frustrated Kirk Hinrich tonight, drawing foul after foul on him.

Jonas Jerebko finished with 15 points and 9 rebounds, starting in place of Tayshaun Prince. Jerebko is really active, moving off the ball, and going after rebounds.

Rodney Stuckey finished with 11 points, and Chris Wilcox had 10 points.

Charlie Villanueva really struggled tonight, scoring 4 points on 1-10 shooting.

James Johnson accomplished the impressive feat of fouling out in only 8 minutes.

The Bulls did a good job tonight of beating up on a bad team. The best stat of the game was that the Bulls shot 8-19 from the three point line. The more and more the Bulls make their threes, the more potent their offense will become.

With the win tonight, the Bulls improve to 16-20 on the season.

The Chicago Bulls defeated the Detroit Pistons 98-87 in Detroit, to extend their win streak to three games.

The Bulls took control of the game early behind Derrick Rose. Early in the game, Rose was making his jumpshots, and either finishing on the fastbreak, or drawing a foul on a Detroit player, and then converting at the free throw line. Rose did stall out a bit towards the end of the game, but overall, he played solidly, finishing with 22 points on 7-18 shooting, along with 4 assists and 4 rebounds.

Joakim Noah provided the Bulls a strong presence on the glass, grabbing 21 points. Noah also scored 15 points in the game, to put together another double double. One point of concern was Noah’s 8 turnovers, but when you are scoring and rebounding as Noah did tonight, the turnovers are forgivable.

The Bulls really started to pull away from the Pistons in this game behind John Salmons and Tyrus Thomas.

John Salmons finished with 17 points on 6-10 shooting, to put together one of his better games of the season.

Tyrus Thomas was the main difference maker in the game. Thomas attacked the Pistons defense relentlessly, drawing foul after foul on the Piston’s players. Thomas finished the game with 19 points and 7 rebounds. Thomas should have earned a place back in the starting lineup after this game.

The Bulls are now 3-0 since getting Tyrus Thomas back in the lineup, and seem to be improving as a team. The Pistons on the other hand, are going in the opposite direction, losing their ninth straight game.

The Pistons problem is that they have no clear pecking order of who the offense should run through, and they have too many selfish players who are ineffective on the offensive end, notably Rip Hamilton, Tayshaun Prince, and Charlie Villanueva.

Hamilton finished with 7 points on 2-13 shooting, Prince 11 points on 5-16 shooting, and Villanueva 10 points on 4-14 shooting.

The best solution to the Pistons’ problems would be to bench Richard Hamilton, and move Ben Gordon into the starting lineup in his place. Gordon is so much better than anyone else on the Pistons, that it is just silly to watch him continually coming off the bench for inferior players, such as Rip Hamilton. The Pistons should then run their offense through Gordon, as he is the one player they can depend on to draw double teams, while also scoring the ball efficiently.

Gordon finished this game scoring 21 points on 59.1 TS%.

Gordon got some help from Rodney Stuckey scoring the ball. Stuckey scored 22 points on 53.3 TS%, while fighting through ankle injuries. Stuckey rolled his ankle twice in the game, but continued to play through the injuries.

Kirk Hinrich struggled scoring the ball once again, shooting 1-6, but he did grab 6 rebounds and 6 assists, and played good defense on Ben Gordon for some short stretches.

Luol Deng was largely invisible, scoring 7 points on 3-10 shooting.

Former Bull Ben Wallace finished with 9 rebounds and 2 blocks in just 21 minutes, while playing through an ankle injury. The Piston’s defense looked noticeably worse when Wallace was out of the game.

With the win, the Bulls improve to 13-17 on the season.

The 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.

Ben Gordon appeared on the Waddle and Silvy show on ESPN 1000 today, to talk about him becoming a Detroit Piston. Here is a recap of what he had to say.

• He is happy about the situation he’s going into.  Joe Dumars is really focused on winning and his priority is winning a championship.  That’s also Ben’s main goal as a player.
• He first knew he was going to sign with the Pistons right after he met with Dumars.  Dumars exuded winning, and everything he talked about was building a team to win a championship.  Dumars convinced Ben pretty easily to sign, and it was a no brainer to sign with the Pistons.
• The Bulls didn’t pursue him at all, they didn’t even make an offer.  It was pretty much a one team race.
• On whether the Bulls were lying when they said it was a top priority to re-sign him, Ben said that it is what it is.  There was no offer made.  You have to put it together.
• He felt that he always got a lot of love and respect from the fans that really followed the games.  When walking down the street, people always showed him love.

(more…)

The Chicago Bulls ended up in a tough match against the Detroit Pistons tonight. What made the game so difficult, was that the referees were completely on Detroit’s side, making call after call in Detroit’s favor.

Tyrus Thomas, who was frustrated for not being able to get a foul call, took out his agression on Richard Hamilton, checking him in the backcourt. From this point forward, the Pistons seemed to play a little more shaky.

Brad Miller also lost his cool over not being able to get a call, getting thrown out of the game with two technical fouls.

But even with the one sided officiating, the Bulls managed to stay relatively close to the Pistons. The Bulls trailed the Pistons 85-79 with 5:58 left in the ball game. From here on, Derrick Rose took over the game to get the Bulls back in it. He would score the Bulls next 9 points, tying the game on an up and under move on Rasheed Wallace on the fastbreak, in which he drew an and one, making the free throw.

With the game tied at 88, Rodney Stuckey pulled up for a jumpshot with 34 seconds left. Rose leaped into the air, extending his arm as high as it could go, blocking the shot. Joakim Noah grabbed the ball, got it to Rose, and the Bulls called a timeout.

And this is when that other clutch guy the Bulls have would step in. The Bulls ran a play for Ben Gordon, who found a seam in the defense. Gordon drove past Prince and right into Antonio McDyess, as he laid in the right handed layup to give the Bulls a 90-88.

Gordon’s shot would end up being the game winning basket, as the Pistons missed a few shots, and Rose made a free throw to make it a 3 point victory for the Bulls.

Derrick Rose was absolutely phenomenal, finishing with 24 points and 8 assists. Rose stepped up tonight in the clutch, scoring baskets when his team needed him to and coming up with the clutch block on Rodney Stuckey.

Ben Gordon was solid tonight as well, finishing with 19 points on 8-15 shooting, including the game winning layup. Ben Gordon was hammered by Antonio McDyess on that play. That should have been an obvious foul call, but the foul went uncalled. In the end, the Bulls didn’t need the foul call to beat the lowly Pistons, but that play just exemplified the bad officiating.

Tyrus Thomas finished with 13 points, 8 rebounds, and 2 blocks. I thought his foul on Richard Hamilton was warranted. The Pistons were playing dirty and taking shots at the Bulls which were being uncalled. It’s nice to see a player actually stand up and not take his opponents crap.

Brad Miller finished with 10 points and only 2 rebounds, and 6 turnovers. A lot of Miller’s turnovers were on travels. That wasn’t part of the bad officiating, as Miller just simply traveled. He travels a lot, with it often going uncalled. I thought Miller did the Bulls a favor by getting thrown out, because he was playing so poorly.

Joakim Noah finished with 11 points and 13 rebounds.

I wasn’t very happy with the front court tonight. They did a poor job securing rebounds. Then again, that might have just been a result of Detroit being allowed to commit looseball fouls after every shot without repercussions.

Richard Hamilton finished with 25 points. He was a tough cover for the Bulls and did a good job scoring.

Rodney Stuckey did a nice job setting up his teammates for 9 assists, but he had a tough time scoring the ball, scoring only 16 points on 6-15 shooting.

Tayshaun Prince finished with 19 points, and again, like Richard Hamilton, he has always been a tough cover for the Bulls.

Rasheed Wallace finished with 11 points and 9 rebounds.

With the win, the Bulls improve to 41-40 on the season. They have clinched at least the seventh seed in the East and took a 1/2 game lead over Philadelphia for the sixth seed in the Eastern Conference.

Closing Comments

Tonight was a good win for the Bulls. There was no excuse for them to win this game tonight. Not because they didn’t show up to play (well Brad Miller and Kirk Hinrich didn’t really show up to play, and John Salmons is still struggling with his groin injury), but because the officiating was so much in favor of the Pistons. That’s what makes this such a good win. Good teams find ways to win ugly games, that seem like a surefire loss, and that’s exactly what the Bulls did tonight.

The Bulls now have a half game lead over Philadelphia for the sixth seed. If the Bulls get the sixth seed, they get to play the Orlando Magic, who are an injury plagued team who are stumbling into the playoffs. If the Bulls get the seventh seed, they get to play the Boston Celtics, who have had their own injury problems with Kevin Garnett. The Bulls magic number for the sixth seed is 2.

Good win for the Bulls tonight.

Go Bulls!

The Chicago Bulls defeated the Detroit Pistons 99 to 91 at the United Center tonight, but that didn’t stop Kirk Hinrich from being booed at the end of the game. Kirk Hinrich was at the free throw line with a chance to bring the Bulls to 100 points with little time left in the game. Hinrich bounced his shot off the front of the rim, thus denying the Bulls fans of their precious Big Macs.

This one was a bit of an improvement though. Only half the stadium was booing Hinrich while the other half was cheering the Bulls win. Much better than getting booed by the entire stadium.

Tonight was just a very ugly game. Detroit was essentially Tayshaun Prince and Antonio McDyess plus a D-League ensemble tonight. No one on Detroit besides those two are really any good, so the Bulls didn’t have to play all that well to get the win tonight. Detroit is going to have difficulty beating anyone without Allen Iverson, Rip Hamilton, and Rasheed Wallace.

I think a lot of the Bulls ugliness came from Kirk Hinrich at the point guard. He just doesn’t run the team as well as Derrick Rose, who missed the game with an injury tonight. Hinrich didn’t seem to know when to look to score and when to pass. Hinrich scored 24 points in the game, but he took 23 shots to get it. When playing point guard, he has to look to set up his teammates more. Hinrich did have 8 assists, and his defense was pretty good.

The Bulls got good production from both of their young big men tonight. Tyrus Thomas finished with 18 points, 12 rebounds, and 5 assists. Joakim Noah finished with 15 points and 10 rebounds. The two finished well inside when set up and played very good defense.

Ben Gordon was solid tonight scoring 19 points and dishing 6 assists. Gordon forced up some shots tonight. I think that was a result of him feeling ignored by Hinrich a lot of times on offense. Gordon also has that continuing problem of missing good three point looks. He needs to start making his three point shots soon.

John Salmons had a tough game. He finished with 16 points on 5-14 shooting. Tayshaun Prince really bothered him with his length.

For the Pistons Tayshaun Prince had 20 points and 6 assists and Antonio McDyess had 16 points and 8 rebounds. Those two got some help from Will Bynum tonight who had 20 points and 9 assists. The Bulls didn’t seem too concerned with stopping him after they gathered their big lead in the second half.

Outside of those three, the Pistons were terrible. Stuckey played poorly as usual, scoring 14 points on 5-14 shooting and passing for only 3 assists. I never understood why Stuckey got so much hype, as he wasn’t very good as a rookie. They traded Billups on the premise that Stuckey was their point guard of the future, but the guy clearly isn’t that good, averaging 13.5 points on a poor 51.1 TS% for the season. The scary part about Stuckey being so bad is that it could push the Pistons to spend their cap space on Ben Gordon this summer, especially if Boozer doesn’t opt out or re-signs with the Jazz quickly.

The worst part of tonight’s game was when Lindsey Hunter was getting minutes in the first half. He was just horrible. The Bulls survived Lindsey Hunter’s reign of terror and were able to escape with a victory.

With the win, the Bulls improve to 34-38 on the season. They now have a 2 game lead on the Bobcats for the eighth spot in the East. They now trail the Pistons by 1 game for the seventh spot in the East.

Closing Comments

Things are looking up for the Bulls now. They are now only 1 game behind the Pistons for the seventh spot, and with the Bulls soft schedule and the Piston’s injury problems, I think the Bulls can catch them.

A few weeks ago I challenged Vinny Del Negro to get the Bulls to .500, otherwise he should be fired. It looks like Vinny might just pull it off. If he gets the Bulls to .500, I won’t call for his firing this offseason. Vinny is no longer doing a terrible job. Ever since being given Salmon and Miller and having Deng go down, the Bulls have looked really good. Vinny has the Bulls competing and headed in an upward direction. If he gets the Bulls back to .500, we should all say good job. It really is pretty solid for a rookie coach who took over a 33 win team. But if he doesn’t have the Bulls heading towards further improvements the next year, his job should not be safe.

Good win to the Bulls tonight. As long as they keep winning the games they are supposed to, they will surely make the playoffs, and might even be able to get in the 5th or 6th spots if they’re lucky.

Tonight, the Bulls gave tribute to the great Johnny Red Kerr, thanking him for all that he has done for the organization. The Bulls showed their gratitude for Kerr by giving him a game to remember by beating the Pistons 107 to 102 at the United Center.

It looked like it was going to be another one of those nights where the Bulls just didn’t bring it, as they fell down by 15 in the second half. But the Bulls really turned it on in the fourth quarter to make it a close game.

The early credit has to go to Tyrus Thomas, who was big in helping the Bulls to start chipping away the lead. Him and Noah were also making the big defensive stops down the stretch. Then Derrick Rose stepped up by making some baskets, including a midrange jumpshot to bring the Bulls within one, with a score of 102 to 101.

The Pistons then had a chance to build up their lead, but Rasheed Wallace got greedy, taking a stupid, fallaway three in the corner after bobbling a pass. The Bulls called a rebound and called a timeout.

So were the Bulls going to shake things up at the end this time around? Of course not. This game looked like it was going to end just like many other close games before it this season. Derrick Rose went to the basket and got blocked. We’ve all seen this scene many times before. But something different happened this time. The ball bounced back to Rose and he caught a wide open Ben Gordon in the corner. Gordon rose up for three, causing Stuckey, who went in to go for the rebound, to rush out to Gordon, fouling Gordon, who sunk the game winner with that three. Gordon then sank the free throw to give the Bulls a solid three point lead. This is Gordon’s second four point play in a crucial moment this season, previously doing it against the Clippers to tie the game and bring it into overtime.

BrooklynBulls of the RealGM forums sums up Gordon’s clutch exploits the best, saying, “Ben Gordon is a bundle of muscle and clutch. That’s all he’s made of. Drink BG7 energy drink, you’ll grow a pair of balls on your balls.”

Ben Gordon came out aggressive tonight. You could tell from the get go that he wanted to be the star of this game. He wanted to have a big performance on Johnny Red Kerr Tribute night in front of many important basketball people. Gordon had an up and down game, scoring 24 points on 8-18 shooting with 5 turnovers. A lot of turnovers that Gordon had were on drives to the basket where Gordon was expecting to get a foul, but the refs didn’t call the fouls. While Gordon wasn’t great throughout the entirety of the game, this was his best game of the season, because he made the big shots when it mattered.

Derrick Rose had a really nice game as well, scoring 23 points and passing for 4 assists. He had some trouble guarding Stuckey in the first quarter, leading to some early foul trouble, but he picked up his defense as the game went on. Rose left the game left with seconds left after running into McDyess’ shoulder on what looked like a moving screen. Rose left the game sobbing.

And this win wouldn’t have been possible without the Bulls front court duo, which is starting to play very well. Tyrus Thomas had 22 points and 10 rebounds and Joakim Noah added in 12 points and 16 rebounds. They are both starting to make those easy baskets around the basket and they both are playing good defense and making solid hustle plays.

If Steve Kerr was planning on trading Amare Stoudemire to the Bulls, he probably wishes he had done so before this game, because Noah and Thomas both upped their value a little bit more. While I think Thomas and Noah are playing at a good level, I still would include both of them in a trade for Stoudemire if that is what’s needed to get a trade done. Conglomerations of superstars generally win in the NBA, and the Bulls would have a good superstar duo in Derrick Rose and Amare Stoudemire, as well as the super role player, Ben Gordon, to build around. Noah and Thomas’ play tonight should help solidify a package that includes both Thomas and Noah as the best package out there.

After a hot start to the game, the Bulls slowed down Rodney Stuckey, limiting him to 16 points on 6-16 shooting. His backcourt counterpart, Rip Hamilton had a great game, scoring 30 points on 11-21 shooting.

Rasheed Wallace gave the Bulls fits in the third quarter, but the Bulls prevented Wallace from making big plays down the stretch. Wallace finished with 20 points and 10 rebounds.

Andres Nocioni had an efficient 14 points tonight on 5-6 shooting. Kirk Hinrich added in 5 points and 5 assists.

Tayshaun Prince had 16 points for the Pistons.

Luol Deng was pathetic tonight, scoring 7 points on 1-7 shooting. He played some selfish ball, forcing up bad shots, instead of passing to his teammates, and he really didn’t move without the ball all that much.

At halftime, the Bulls held a tribute ceremony for Johnny Red Kerr that was emceed by Neil Funk. During the ceremony, the Bulls unveiled the statue they made in the likeness of Kerr. The speakers for the event included Michael Jordan, Scottie Pippen, Jerry Colangelo, Dolph Schayes, and John Paxson. President Barack Obama sent a video message that was played as well.

Allen Iverson sat out the game with the flu.

With this win, the Bulls improve to 23-29 on the season.