Ben Gordon hasn't had plenty of opportunities. Yes, he's been in the playoffs before, but he never had taken a shot in the playoffs before this year that fit the game winning and game tying shot criteria. Only two games his rookie year had those opportunities. In one, Jannero Pargo was the hero, scoring 9 points in a 34 second span, but Arenas hit the game winner over Hinrich. In the other, Gordon was on the bench in the fourth as the Bulls lost to the Wizards and lost the series. He didn't have opportunities until this year. And just because Gordon was turning the ball over early in the game, didn't mean he would continue doing so in the fourth. Hell, the guy made a living his rookie year of playing like crap for most of the game, and then exploding for a huge fourth quarter.
82games.com has quarter stats for five of the Bulls starters. Here are their standard deviations. Rose: 0.4163332 Gordon: 0.28867513 Deng: 0.82613558 Thomas: 0.15 Noah: 0.25819889 If you look at the standard deviation as a percentage of their average (to account for differences in volume), you end up with: Rose: 9.91% Gordon: 5.61% Deng: 23.44% Thomas: 5.22% Noah: 14.34% So Gordon is very consistent moving from quarter to quarter.
