33333333333333333333333333333333 point field goal..Andres Nocioni! They need that effort for the rest of the game! 96 - 90 Cavs lead
I am going to go crazy if we run that idiotic pick and roll with Gordon where he just ends up getting trapped because the big man stands there again.
Stacey King just spent 2 minutes on the telestrator talking about how BG needs to get rid of the ball quicker. The bulls aren't doubling LeBron because he will hit the open guy and they can't bring anybody quick enough to effectively double him.
He sure makes Deng look average. Is there anybody in the league who is quieter putting up 8-17 for 20 with 7 boards?
106 - 97 Cleveland.....We are improving...but we still have to work on learning how to stop dominant players...Lebron went 42 or something like that points tonight, we should have made him go 20 points and make him rely a bit more on his team. We need to work on keeping leads. Deng just doesn't know how to guard Lebron. It was the quietest 20 points ever.
Not that I can tell. The big problem is he just doesn't seem to make Lebron work at all. Lebron's gonna go off, for sure. But if we had someone that could sort of make Lebron chase him on offense or take some punishment on defense, maybe we're a team that Lebron scores 30 against instead of 40 against. That routine 40+ points against us is a pretty hard thing to overcome.
That Stacy King quote was pretty interesting because it's one of the rare occasions King has said something useful (I heard he also complained about how Gordon "went cold" in the fourth - when he was on the bench!) and because it's a good example of how we need to build this team around Rose. It's taken forever, but Cleveland is filled with guys who can shoot the lights out. The Bulls don't have that at all. Deng and Gooden are adequate for their positions, as is Kirk if you consider him next to Rose and if he's not busy pounding the hell out of the ball before shooting it. Gordon is pretty good and if he continues to play with Rose he'll get better. Thabo and possibly Tyrus and Noah are close to useless in this regard. You can have one of them on the court with Rose, but no more than that. They're destined to be the garbage men. Which isn't derogatory, because they could be really good garbage men, but it is meant to recognize that you can't have three garbage men and Rose out there.
I'm surprised the Bulls don't put Nocioni on LeBron for longer periods of the game. The physical defence that Nocioni has played on LeBron in the past seemed to work for some spells. And hey, for the Bulls, it can't be worse than giving up 41 points twice in a row, can it?
Noc can't guard SF's. James kills him. Pierce kills him. Noc is only effective against PF's that can't play the perimeter game. Actually, the bulls are most effective when Kirk and LeBron get tangled up and LeBron gets injured. That's how they beat the Cavs last year at least.
It was a tale of two halves. In the first BG was pounding the ball and the bulls fell behind like they always do. It wasn't until the Cavs went to their second team and BG got hot that things tightened up again. And when BG went out, the ball started moving and the second team went on a 17-4 run. In the second half, the bulls went on a nice 8-0 run when Noc subbed for TT, but the team went cold after that. And the second team went cold even without BG. It's kind of disappointing that this teams fortunes still seem to hinge on Noc being able to come in and create a mismatch at the 4...
What killed us were those first 4 minutes of the fourth quarter, where Thabo was in instead of Ben, where we didn't score the ball. Gordon was great in the first half and the fourth. It's amazing he was able to put 12 points up in the 2nd half with how much defensive attention was on him. I know a lot of Bulls fans won't like to hear this, but we lost this game because of Derrick Rose. He shot the ball 7-21. When Cleveland made the decision that they were going to double Ben every time he touches the ball, meet Ben with a big man every time he comes off a screen, it was up to Rose to deliver us the game, and he failed. We need to get a big man. I think you have to take the risk of Eddy Curry. He can catch and dunk, or throw up a hook, which is saying more than any of our other bigs.
Wow, you don't think the fact that BG, even after 4 years in the league, can't effectively dribble or pass out of a double team had something to do with it? I think they problem was that the ball was in his hands in the first place. BG should have been spotting up looking for a dish from Rose, not trying to create and/or score through a pick and roll. But for whatever reason, BG doesn't spot up. I don't know if that is his fault or the coaching, but these are disturbing trends, especially for a guy holding out for a big contract. And, no, they didn't double team him every time he got the ball, only when the bulls tried to have him run a pick and roll. When BG just dribbled up and took his shot, there were no double teams. Also no passes and movement on offense, but no double teams.
What it looks like from the game flow is things were really lost when we had the Rose/Thabo/Deng/Noc/Thomas early in the forth. Lebron was surrounded by Gibson, Wally, Williams and Varejao, and not a damn thing we did stopped him. And that's about the best "defensive stopper" sort of lineup we could expect to put out there. And it didn't do much, if any stopping.
The problem is that Gordon is now the best defensive stopper we have in the backcourt with Hinrich out. I think things will be a bit better when we get Hughes back and put Thabo back in the role of human victory cigar. Thabo just shouldn't be on an NBA basketball court.
Thabo was +11 in the first half and had some really nice blocks of Lebron. His problem is he is probably a better SF or maybe even point forward than a shooting guard, but the bulls want him to be a shooting guard, so they keep running him out there... The game was lost in the middle of the third quarter. The Cavs went on an 8-0 at the end of the third to tie it up, then with BG out a 15-0 to start the third. It wasn't just the second team that did them in. And it was really Noc missing shots that he hit in the first half and middle of the third to give the bulls their cushion. And if BG is the bulls defensive stopper, they are in even more trouble than I thought.
Wow, I didn't realize that it was a 15-0 run we allowed them to get on. That's horrible. That's the game right there. Not sure why Vinny didn't make an adjustment sooner to stop the bleeding. I think we should play Demetris Nichols some minutes at shooting guard over Thabo Sefolosha, but only when Derrick Rose is at point guard, not Ben Gordon. Nichols can actually shoot the ball.
