Home court advantage is worth ~7 points. Trade for Stephenson looking like a good idea. Mirotic only 7 minutes.
K.C. Johnson @KCJHoop Bulls locker room still closed 20 minutes after buzzer. Guessing the D and 2-5 home mark topics de jour.
Rose looking passive. As Thibs said after the game, he has to GO. He's not earning his paycheck. Hinrich getting abused in the 4th. He should not be closing out big games when he's playing like that. Noah is gimping around as well. He looks like a shell of what he was last year at times. Gasol and Butler are carrying this squad. The guys earning the big checks should be doing that. If they start performing, look out. Gibson was a bit loose with the ball but looked strong enough in his return. Thibs sticks with his guys, sometimes to a fault. Noah and Hinrich probably should not be closing out the last 5 minutes of this game.
K.C. Johnson @KCJHoop · 8h 8 hours ago Bulls have allowed 10 opponents to score 100 or more points. That didn't happen last season until Jan. 24. True. Offense is not our problem, even with a passive Rose. He does not attack like he did in the past, and when he does, he avoids contact. The thing is, when he was hurt both times in the past, it was not because of contact. Defense is our problem.
The Warriors are a younger squad and as deep as we are. They mostly went 8 deep, with 9th man Barbosa only getting 5 minutes of time. They are the hottest team in the NBA - we faced them at a time they have won 11 (now 12) in a row. The Warriors pushed the pace as much as they could while we tried to slow things down when we had the ball. I wouldn't say it's defense that's our problem when it comes to giving up 100 points, it's just playing at a faster pace than we're used to when we didn't have good offensive players. On defense we held Curry and Thompson to 5-14 (1-5 3pt) and 9-23 (.391, 2-8 3pt) shooting. That's excellent defense. It was Draymond Green who killed us - the 13.5 PPG scorer managed 30 points against us. If anything, the Warriors are able to exploit our inability to close out on numerous 3pt shooters on the court at the same time. We're just too old anymore to chase those guys around and protect the paint like Thibs' system is designed.
Seemed like the Bulls were throwing a number of cross court passes that were getting picked off. A combo of poor execution and good scouting. Hinrich was getting abused on D down the stretch and was pretty ineffective on offense. He was quite frustrated. Rose was just passive. In crunch time last night our guards just flat out sucked. The Warriors were getting plenty of open 3s .... lack of closing out for sure... also lots of unimpeded saunters to the rim. They do a good job of using one of their guys in the lane to screen out the helper... and just general slowness. Pau is a frustrating player to watch on defense some times, and NOah is spending lots of time out of the lane this season. Gasol has been good but I have to wonder if his addition and the need to play him so much with Noah has thrown off the team dynamics. Gibson is a guy you tend to want on the floor the last 5 minutes of a game and Niko should be getting more than 8 minutes a game. But, with Noah and Gasol ahead of them... well... the roster is created in a way that causes trouble.
It was however, a bad game for Rose to completely suck. Didn't know that forays into political activism makes you shoot crooked.
