Bulls and Detroit are even in the standings now. Ben Gordon and CV are leading Detroit in a blowout win against Charlotte. Gordon has 22 points on 8-10 shooting with 8 assists and no turnovers. The Bulls at 4-4 are behind Cleveland and are now tied with Toronto, Indiana, and Philadelphia (as well as Detroit).
Right now, Bulls are 9th best defensive team. Guess who's #8? (Pts against) We're 3rd worst offensive team - only New Jersey and Charlotte are worse. The kicker is point differential. The teams with big positive differentials are the real contenders. The good teams. Bulls are 8th worst in the league at -3.4/game. I should have mentioned that Scott Skiles in year 2 of rebuilding the Bucks and without Redd are 3-2 and ahead of the Bulls for that 4th seed. We're currently #10.
Take out the celtics blowout and what is the bulls' points differential? As far as this team goes, they are going to be underrated by the points differential much like the earlier skiles teams were overrated because this team is struggling to hit the gimme free throws down the stretch. Let me know what the numbers are after the schedules even out a little bit more and the pistons have played as many good teams as the bulls have. And the Bucks gave away all of their talent this last offseason, so we know they can't be contenders, right? All of their good players are on the pistons now, too. And thanks for the update, only 73 games left in the race for the completely irrelevant 4th seed.
After last night's win, the Bulls points differential is -3.1, 10th worst in the league. The bucks are +5.1, 8th best in the league. The Bulls are still 3rd worst in scoring, and last in 3pt shooting. Bucks' last game, they beat Golden State 129-125 (not an OT game). Brandon Jennings scored 55 points. It was clearly a battle of defense.
And yet the Bulls beat the Bucks, and the Pistons didn't. Don't look now, but Detroit is last place in the Central Division. Their season must be over. Too bad, because it started out with so much promise...
More on why the Bulls won't make the playoffs: http://sports.yahoo.com/nba/blog/ba...-Score-where-yeah-Go-Bucks-Who?urn=nba,202058 Toronto 99, Chicago 89 The Toronto Raptors entered Wednesday's game allowing 120 points per 100 possessions, which ranked them last in the NBA, and would have ranked them amongst the worst defensive teams of all time had they kept it up for 75 more contests. The Chicago Bulls, tonight, managed just under 93 points per 100 possessions against the Raptors. This is where I start weeping. The Bulls couldn't even score 90 on the Raptors. Chicago just continues to take a series of low-percentage, long two-pointers, and hope for the best. There's no player nor coach around to tell these Bulls that, perhaps, this might not be the best option. That the odds are stacked against them. That while the continual 20-footers might be OK for a select few — Chicago's Luol Deng(notes), who takes more 16-23 footers than anyone in the NBA, is among that lot — it's not something to be relied upon. The results speak for themselves. The Bulls were 26th in offensive efficiency entering the game, and on Wednesday scored fewer points per 100 possessions than the worst offensive team in the NBA's (Charlotte) average against what could be the worst defensive team of all time. Chicago was on the second night of a back to back. They boast a thin rotation. I get all this. With a full rotation, and with three days' rest, this team is still going to try and fire up 20-footers. Just because they didn't have the legs to take these bad shots, it doesn't mean you excuse the bad shots. Toronto did work hard, defensively. They chased the Bulls around, plugged up the transition game after a while, and used their length to make things tough. Doesn't matter. The Bulls stunk. Bulls came through with a great defensive game, holding the league's best offense (118 points per 100 possessions) to just 103 per 100, but what does it matter when [read the paragraph that precedes the two preceding paragraphs]. 28 and 11 for Chris Bosh(notes), who is just having a fabulous year.
I think once the bulls stop playing division leading teams every night, their offensive efficiency numbers will look a lot better.
Sorry, Toronto is second in its division. I was referring to the C's, Cavs, Heat (who were leading at the time) and Nuggets. I think the bulls offensive efficiency will get a nice bump up after tonights game.
You like to cherry pick. He's the difference in the game. I note he sucked in the 2nd half and the Bulls went from scoring 61 in the 1st half to 40 in the 2nd.
Denny, if I cherry pick, you're the MSNBC/Fox News of bulls forum posters. How many points did the Kings score? In the interest of fairness, in addition to being 27th in offensive efficiency, they are 3rd in defensive efficiency, which basically evens out.
The Bulls deserve a hearty congratulations for absolutely drubbing a team that won 17 games last year.
The Kings came into the game on a four game winning streak. But because BG didn't have anything to do with it, it wasn't a good win?
Of course it's a good win, but it illustrated a few things. The Bulls are in serious trouble if they fall behind in a game. They're in serious trouble if Noah misses any time, since those missed shots won't effectively turn into passes. They benefited from a bad team's even worse bench. And if a team plays a little defense against us, we're in trouble.
The bulls can get back into games playing defense, they are only in trouble against teams they can't stop defensively. But we already knew that. I already said they were in trouble if they lose Noah. And any team that plays defense against the bulls still has to handle the bulls defense. And how many teams in the league play any kind of serious defense? Only a handful do, and they are the teams the bulls weren't going to beat anyway like the Celtics. The bulls are still mediocre, but they are better than last year. Also, it looks like Atlanta might have taken the next step, so I'm not sure that any of the mediocre teams are making it to the second round. The best we can hope for is KG getting hurt late season again.
Three straight blowouts and they don't get back into games playing defense. We couldn't even break 100 in a high paced game where our opponent scored 122 points, and that was with Rose shooting 7-14, Salmons 8-15, Deng 9-14, Hinrich 3-6, and Pargo 4-9.
