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« Avoiding the record books and righting the ship Basketball is King This Weekend »

Bulls Wed Mar 18 2009

Bulls Continue Dominant Run at the United Center

A statistical lesson for all of you NBA general managers-in-training, +/- as a metric for who did what well and what wrong in one game is incredibly inaccurate, see, Marbury's stat line from last night's Celtics-Bulls tilt as evidence. Granted, +2 isn't anything too spectacular, but it is strange that the losing team's backup point guard/"reason the Celts lost to the Bulls," would be in the positive at all. To wit, Boston's coach, Doc Rivers, kept Marbury in for the majority of the fourth quarter in lieu of the disruptive and much taller and larger, Kendrick Perkins; and the Bulls feasted on Marbury's awful defense, attacking at will, the lane and making easy layup after easy layup. With the small Boston lineup --for cereals, the 6'7" Paul Pierce was the tallest Boston player on the floor for most of the fourth-- even the man child/coach, Vinny Del Negro, knew what to do: attack the rim, rinse and repeat.


And it was a shame too that the game had to be decided by Rivers' coaching ineptitude [Honestly, dude, is the worst head coach to win a ring-ed.], because up to the 3:00 mark in the fourth, Paul Pierce and John Salmons were dueling and embarrassing the other squad's defense on a regular basis. Salmons dropped a sexy 38 points on 14/20 shooting, tying a career-high. And Pierce? He was his all-Universe self, giving his shoulders a good workout by carrying the Cs offense on his back; while Marbury was doing his absolute, Shakespearean best to foil the Truth's efforts in a game that had much more of a playoff intensity than it probably should have. And if the Bulls make it up to the 7th seed (dudes are in the 8th slot as of this morning) and Boston holds onto the 2nd seed we're looking at a very compelling first round match-up. Granted, if Kevin Garnett returns back from his injury at full-strength the Celtics war machine will be rumbling on all cylinders and they'll have a very focused and angry Garnett leading them into the playoffs to behead the Bulls (or you know, whoever gets the 7 seed) and pillage Chicago.

What's with Chicago Beating These Awesome Teams at Home?

The Bulls have now won 8 of their last 9 home games with the only setback being a two-point loss to Miami, and at the same time the teams they have been beating have not been the dregs of the league, but instead the vanguards: New Orleans, Houston, Orlando, Denver and now Boston; while on the road they've been stumbling against the likes of Washington and Indiana and okay, yeah good teams like Miami and Orlando as well. So what gives? How exactly are the Bulls beating good teams at home and losing to crap-tacular teams on the road? It's simple: points. Chicago has been scoring way more points at the United Center in the past month and half than their season-average, and, conversely, scoring way fewer points on the road against inferior defenses no less. Truly a head scratcher.

 
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