Bulls were getting killed and then Hinrich came in for Rose and the Bulls are up by one! Erased a 13 point lead. Deng and Gray really banging the offensive glass.
The Hawks stuck Joe Johnson on Gordon for a good stretch of the fourth quarter keeping the ball out of his hands, all the while nobody seemed to be guarding Mike Bibby (bulls were playing zone tho). It was fun watching Kirk and Deng clank shots that were needed to counter Bibby's hot shooting (and from 3pt range, too). Take Gordon out and Johnson gets to guard someone else. Not that he particularly needed to tonight.
Not sure what the strategy was. Glad that Ben finally decided to just take the game over himself late in the third. He scored 15 points in the final 14 minutes. Vinny needs to call Ben's number more. Like yay, Hinrich's back, but in going away from Gordon since Hinrich came back, the Bulls are only 2-4 (.333) while being 16-21 (.432) in the games prior to Hinrich's return. Go back to Gordon. The Bulls, over the past 5 years, have been good when Gordon's been good.
Too many players were crowding the lane which left Mike Bibby wide opened which ultimately led to our loss. Vinny needs to demand more Man to Man defense and then when the opposition gets into the lane call for help defense from a big. We have a decent offensive flow, but we have too many shooters to miss as many shots as we do.
The strategy appeared to be to play zone for an extended period of time against an NBA team, and demonstrated that even forgettable NBA players like Zaza Pachulia and Mike Bibby can go off for their season highs playing against a zone. Of course, guys pretty routinely set season and career highs against the Bulls, so I guess the zone isn't completely to blame. But still.
Atlanta's offense against the zone was smart. They got Bibby the ball in the corners a lot where one of our Fs had to come out and challenge him. I don't have a problem with the Bulls playing zone, they just don't play it a lot and need more practice. It's also good to be able to switch to zone and to man to change things up and put pressure on the other team.
Oh, another thing that unhappily reared its head again in this game was Kirk's pre/early season habit ignoring Rose, who was obviously hanging back and asking for the ball, and then initiating the offense and running the point himself. Not going to develop the kid (well) allowing that to happen.
