[UPDATE by your friendly BullsBlogger, 01/27/12 5:32 PM CST - per KC, Rip aggravated his groin and is likely out, Jimmy Butler to get the start -ed.]
[Thanks to pocketwatch for today's game preview. Game Thread up at 7:08 -ed.]
Tonight, the Chicago Bulls look to bounce back from their first home loss at the hands of the Pacers on Wednesday. The 7-10 Milwaukee Bucks look to add to their 3 game road win streak.
The Bulls catch a break (pun slightly intended I guess) as Bucks' big man Andrew Bogut suffered a fractured ankle against the Rockets on Wednesday and is out indefinitely. This means we will likely get a hearty dose of Drew Gooden tonight at center.
If we can keep Brandon Jennings in check this should be a game where the Bulls take care of business with relative ease. Jennings is averaging a career high 20.2 points on 44% shooting this year paired with a 20.7 PER. He comes into tonight extra hot averaging 26 points over his last 5 games. Jennings is a streaky shooter that can quickly light you up, but without Bogut our defense can mainly focus on shutting him down. But IF he's got it going tonight, it should be extra hilarious to see Boozer trying to defend him on pick and roll situations.
Taj Gibson looks like he'll be back tonight as he participated in the team's shootaround this morning saying, "I'm feeling a lot better, anxious to play." This is splendid news. Watching Boozer Wednesday against the Pacers led to me yelling at my TV more than I'm comfortable with in front of strangers. Here's also to hoping for zero meaningful Scal minutes tonight.
The Bucks with Mbah a Moute, Ilyasova, Delfino, Jackson, and Dunleavy have the potential to give us some matchup problems at the 3 and 4 tonight with different size and skill sets, but having Taj back should help a lot.
Despite torn ligaments in his left wrist, Luol Deng could return as early as Sunday, when the Bulls face the Heat in Miami, Adrian Wojnarowski is reporting.
With speculation of surgery after the season, there isn't cause for concern that Deng will now suck until he has surgery, as it's his non-shooting hand. But while the injury is so fresh, this injury is being taken lightly if such a swift return is seriously entertained.
That left wrist is needed to max out to do all of those things that Deng does to 'glue' the team together. It's needed to fight for rebounds, establish position off the ball, create space on the dribble drive, attack passing lanes, and set effective screens.
On top of that, how is anyone comfortable with Deng checking a 6'9", 275-pound freak of nature playing the most aggressive basketball of his career in LeBron James on Sunday afternoon?
On the bright side, if Brian Scalabrine hit that three with 22 seconds left and put the Bulls up for good, I may have had to shut down the blog and just troll the BaB Facebook page for likes with Scal mixtapes and photoshops. As it stood in reality, the shot missed, the rebound got away, and 9 seconds went off the clock before the Pacers had an easy dunk to put them up four.
Scal came in on a strange defensive substitution the possession prior, with Carlos Boozer playing with 5 fouls and him being all Boozer-y on defense and whatnot. Though it was a situation where having either Taj Gibson or Luol Deng healthy would've changed everything, inserting Omer Asik could've been workable with him taking Roy Hibbert and Noah switching to David West. Maybe Thibs reasoned that Scal was less likely to be called for a questionable foul, something that the Bulls bigs encountered for much of the second half. I can't as easily guess his reasoning soon afterwards to not have Kyle Korver in for the last-ditch effort down 4 points, outside of him, er, hitting only 6 of his last 24 three-point attempts. It likely wouldn't have mattered, but it was obvious how much the Pacers overplayed Rose and dared Noah (or anyone else) to do anything about it.
As far as Rose himself, he just didn't look completely right, though he did lead the team with 24 points. It seems that he can still do everything, just not all the time, and this was a 4th quarter where the Bulls needed him to completely take over as they were always close they never were able get the lead. Meanwhile, a difference for the Pacers this year looks to be that not only do they have Danny Granger to make shots late-and-close (and a spot where Deng would've been big, literally) but David West has arrived as someone willing to take those late possessions as well. Granted, those aren't ideal closers, but they're willing, and technically in terms of quantity have more than the Bulls do in that department.
Though Ronnie Brewer is unfortunately a bit too small to completely check Danny Granger, or couldn't be the one to replace Boozer on defense instead of Scal, he had a fantastic night filling in for the rest of what Luol Deng usually does. Highlighted by a 2nd quarter one-man run where he lived off transition and on the baseline, Brewer finished the first half with 16 points and 3 steals. On the other side of the ledger was CJ Watson, who was due for a regression to the mean but it didn't have to be all in one night: 0-6 in only 10 minutes of action, culminating in his usual move of making sure to get another shot up when he sees Derrick Rose check in. The UC was so soured by Watson's play the 'M-V-P' chants started before Rose even took the floor, but unfortunately that script was merely that, not reality.
There were some other solid performances as well: Joakim Noah did wonders to give the Bulls extra possessions in the 2nd half. Rip Hamilton continues to add a new dimension to the Bulls offense, though I think that we saw a fairly good defense in Indiana's start to sniff out the Hamilton catch-pass that others never could figure out. Hamilton only shot 6-20 tonight but continues to be a threat, which is the difference from that spot on the floor this season for the Bulls.
Carlos Boozer had a brief spasm of great play in the middle of the 4th quarter, but otherwise looked to have fed the perception that he can only do real damage against bad frontcourts. The Pacers certainly don't have that, though West wasn't great himself, Tyler Hansbrough still is a flailing mess, and Hibbert needs total isolation and the entire shot clock to get his go-to move off...outside of some key boards from Noah the Pacers bigs did a better job against the Bulls frontcourt than anyone this year. Now, it'd be different if the Bulls had two key members of their frontcourt healthy, but credit to them for taking this victory even though I hate their team maybe even moreso than Miami. At least I respect that the Heat are contemporaries (and, sigh, deserved favorites) in their matchup with the Bulls, whereas it's annoying when this Pacers team plays good enough to hang around. This game doesn't mark any kind of major change in the conference hierarchy, but it does show that the Pacers are indeed still...around.
[Thanks to blackgallagher for the full-fledged character game preview. Ronnie Brewer is starting for Luol Deng, and the backup 4 minutes will likely go to Scal. I'll be at the UC, so likely some live-tweetin'. Game Thread at 7:08 -ed.]
Tonight, we welcome the Indiana Pacers to the UC. This game is the second of a three game home stand before things get really Hollywood as Chicago heads to Miami to face the Heat on Sunday. For the Bulls, it’s the chance to keep a four-game winning streak going, while for the Pacers will be heading into town on the second game of a back-to-back and trying to avoid a losing streak.
Bulls Last 5: L-W-W-W-W (@ Home: W-W-W-W-W)
Pacers Last 5: W- L-W-W-L (Away: L-W-L-W-W)
While this has been a very down year for Danny Granger and despite not having a 20 ppg scorer on the roster, the Pacers are 11-5, good for second in the Central and the eighth best record in the league. They’ve been able to do this with balance, as they have six players that average at least 10 a game, seven if you count Tyler Hansbrough’s 9.9 ponts a game. They’ve been able to get it done on the defensive end of the floor, placing sixth in the league in Defensive Efficiency, however they are in the bottom half of the league in Offensive Efficency, at 20th. That aside, they are playing well and they always play the Bulls tough, so it will be a good matchup.
The Bulls come in to the UC with a 16-3 record, best in the league behind stifling defense, second in the league in Defensive Efficiency at 93.5 points per 100 possessions. Our offense has been effective as well, as we lead the league in Offensive Efficiency at 105.7 points per 100 possessions.While The Bulls have been banged up as of late, we are starting to get healthy now, as there are only two players listed on the injury report in Lu and Taj, and even though they will be missed, Chicago has the depth to cope with their absences.
News broke swiftly and depressingly on Tuesday as the severity of Luol Deng's injury was announced, a ligament tear on his left wrist meaning at the least missing the next few games, but most likely being a concern the rest of the season.
Courtesy of the Trib here's the lengthiest video (not embeddable, sorry) I could find of Luol Deng discussing the injury. And the Sun-Times has the bulk of the quotes. For his part, the guy sounds matter-of-fact and confident, referencing the same 2005 injury on his other wrist:
This time around I'm familiar with it. It's on my left which is not like having it on my right (or shooting hand). I know how it feels pain-wise and am just trying to get it down to a certain level where I can play again. I'm really confident in the fact that I'll be out there. Hopefully soon, but I'll be out there...I really feel like we have a very good chance of doing something special and I feel like without the surgery I'll be fine. I know what I can do with it and what I can't do. I really think I'm going to be really effective out there. There will be days when it's sore. We'll try to control how sore it gets. Everybody's body responds differently to it. But I'm very confident I'll be able to handle it.
I have no use for Thibs' quotes on the matter. He clearly is as uncomfortable talking about injuries (Skiles was the same way) as he is about being subjective in allotting minutes to potentially-overworked players. He and Luol couldn't even get straight whether Luol recently dribbled a basketball or not. That's fine, it's not Thibs job to expand his duties beyond fantastic coach to also play doctor.
I'll leave that to reporters, like Sam Smith!:
Doctors generally recommend surgery with such injuries, though doctors tend to recommend surgery, based on at least my own observation.
Deng was told he wouldn’t do any more damage without surgery, though he will have pain. He’ll receive regular treatment. This also is the kind of injury that if left untreated can heal. There are records of people having such an injury and not knowing exactly what it is and it eventually healing.
Still, it can be very painful and more so in a contact sport and the possibility of surgery remains open.
KC Johnson had more useful reporting in saying that Luol's "doctors suggested he have surgery to repair".
It was mentioned in both pieces Luol's injury history and the dovetailing narrative of him succumbing to them. To me they're entirely different matters. Yes, outside of last season, Luol's been injury prone. But any suggestion of a lack of toughness was never really justified, even when it was done through official Bulls communications (thanks Doug for the reminder). So I hope that Luol's can-do attitude, including him mentioning a possible return on Sunday in Miami, isn't some way to prove anything, least of all to the fans.
As to considering the surgery option, I'm not sure how to take Smith's report that Luol can't do any more damage to it playing NBA basketball. It seems unlikely to be true, and it doesn't rule out causing more pain which would necessitate the surgery eventually. The consensus return date from surgery seems to be 3-4 months, and figuring the time needed to fully work one's way back from that kind of procedure it's no guarantee that he'd be 100% for the playoffs even if the surgery was today. So maybe they figure why not just be less than 100% now, and Luol plays when he can, instead of enduring a guaranteed absence.
Kelly Dwyer tries to squint and see some kind of silver lining in Luol getting some rest from Thibodeau, but I'll believe that when I see it. And that's partially because of Deng himself, as he admitted today he knew his injury was serious at the time, but still told Thibodeau he could come back in to stop that dreaded Bobcats comeback on Saturday.
And short-term, it's not as awful as it would be for the not-insanely-deep teams, as Ronnie Brewer can do a respectable Deng impression (though he couldn't take Taj Gibson's minutes like Deng could...hurry back Taj and save us from Scal) But, big picture, things look quite dim, with a now likely best-case for the Bulls being that their two most important players will be less than optimal for the duration of this long season and postseason run. And if Deng's plan fails and a (then) season-ending surgery is required, it would effectively sink their shot at the Finals.
Well, shit. Following tweets say he'll play through it.
The Bulls didn't get many games with Joakim Noah and Carlos Boozer in the lineup together last season, heavily increasing, the playing time of Kurt Thomas. Thomas didn't hurt the team, but where his teammates were covering up his deficiencies, consistency in the offense was difficult to execute and often painful to watch.
Tom Thibodeau made the correct trade-off toward a 62-win season -- to sacrifice having more than three scoring options on the court to maintain continuity in the dominance of the defense. No matter how bad the offense, the Bulls were so seldom out of games that they faced blowouts at a rate that felt was within a margin of error for any 60-win team.
The goal of the offseason wasn't to add a shooting guard. The goal was to diversify the offense without the trade-off of their bread and butter -- the defense.
The addition of Richard Hamilton was a means to the end of -- more than lessening the load Derrick Rose was carrying, but -- lessening the need for him to be nearly flawless. Other means to this end was improving Ronnie Brewer's jumpshot, C.J. Watson utilizing his speed and handles more and trust his teammates to follow that pace to force mismatches, more active legs from all wing players to create and find space in sync with the ways in which Rose moves the defense, and that movement being trusted by ball handlers to allow for plays to mature -- even when Rose is off the ball.
The NBA-best 16-3 Bulls' unadjusted plus-minus per 100 possessions is higher this year without Rose on the court than with him on the court, according to BasketballValue.com -- plus-12.49 to plus-11.12 for Rose's minus-1.37 net rating. The offensive rating is higher with Rose (108.53), but the 105.04 without Rose on the court, which is pretty good next to Basketball-Reference.com's (BBR) 102.4 NBA average.*
It was another injury-plagued permutation of players for the Bulls tonight, as Taj Gibson and John Lucas were out, and the big news being Luol Deng missing his first game in the last season-plus. Deng's left wrist diagnosis is still up in the air, with the 'surgery' pre-game mention by Thibodeau being enough to freak everyone (including myself) out. It may not come to that, and post-game KC Johnson reported that Luol may try to rest it instead and play through the pain. That's not exactly better news on the same day that Derrick Rose conceded he'll likely never be 100% this season with his own toe injury.
Meanwhile, Rose did return, and the team put in another dominating performance over an overmatched opponent. Rose looked solid in his first game back with 22 points on 16 shots. He had a few boneheaded turnovers but those were his only few of the entire game. Tough to really gauge how much the toe hurt, as while he pulled off a couple elite finishes it wasn't a game where he was tested to do so constantly.
And with Taj and Deng (the only SF who can plausibly play PF) out, Brian Scalabrine actually played 23 minutes at the 4, and the Bulls weren't killed in that time. The Nets started small and stayed that way all game, so it was an actually somewhat-plausible move to see so much Scal and so little Asik (10 minutes), though nothing any Bulls fan should actually wish for. If the same players are available in future contests, you'd hope we'd see more of the tandem named 'JOmer' (Joakim+Omer) instead of 'Butterball Turkey' (Scal+Omer). No matter the combination in this one, the Bulls frontcourt dominated the glass and inside scoring. Asik was outstanding in his 1st half stint, and Noah was a force again around the rim with 7 trips to the line on his way to 16 points (and only 1 personal foul!), supplemented by Boozer's 14.
The big story on offense was the way the Bulls shared the ball, getting a season-high 33 assists. And the man behind the nearly a third of those was Rip Hamilton, who continues to impress. The Bulls and Hamilton are making it look so easy when he's on the court: relentlessly moving Rip off-the-ball, forcing the opponent to react and him either hitting a midrange jumper of dumping it to a Bulls big. The latter option has actually been the stronger suit of Rip all season, and I'm hoping teams never adjust and instead keep aggressively trapping, as he's proven constantly that he's willing and able to find the open man.
It was likely that opportunity to see Rip and Rose together that gave Thibodeau the idea to keep both in yet another very late and clearly-decided game. If that was the reason, or just the general order of taking every minute seriously, it's somewhat accepted at this point: This is Thibsball, and why you both get a full roster of guys playing their hearts out for a single goal, but also some unnecessary over-extending of minutes. And, in a word, that's what it is: 'unnecessary'. Hamilton, Rose, and Noah are all coming back from injury, and even if there's something to be said for game-time together, against the Nets second unit while owning a double-digit lead isn't exactly meaningful time.
Thibs has certainly been consistent on this, but one can be consistently wrong (I would know). And though you can't truly tie any of these present injuries to overexertion, that doesn't mean it's not better to play it safe, or even mildly cautious. However, the upshot is the Bulls just win, and swept through some dreadful opponents battling through myriad injuries. But with the schedule ramping up with the Pacers and Bucks before a Sunday showdown in Miami, the Bulls not only will encounter challenges from injury, but from their opponents as well.
