and I was thinking about losing this game if Heat playing without James and a win with James... Sad, that I was right about the first part...
Bulls lose, 93-79 Noah, Gibson 20 Dunleavy 13 Hinrich 10 Noah 15 rebounds Gibson 10 We shot 35.8% Bosh 28 Wade 23 Chalmers 12 Allen 10
K.C. Johnson@KCJHoop· Noah: "When we play the Heat, our intensity has to be high the whole time. They ended our seasons a lot. You gotta hate playing these guys."
On one hand, I thought we played a lot better than the score suggested. Our defense was tight, and I actually thought we moved the ball pretty well. For 40 minutes the game was a dead draw. Augustin, Snell, and Dunleavy missed a ton of shots they can usually make. On the other hand, the outcome of the game illustrated differences between the two teams. We played it close for 40 minutes, but we're a team that's inherently prone to droughts because we struggle to get our own shot. We seemed to miss a lot of open threes, but maybe the constant trapping and activity of the Heat defense throws off the rhythm of our shooters, and we're unable to stretch their defense. We moved the ball well, but still ended up with 7(!) shot clock violations because we don't have the finishers to close out plays. Ultimately, I think a lot of the patterns we saw in this game would repeat themselves in a 7 game series, which is why I think I'd rather play the Pacers in the second round of the playoffs.
