Bulls vs. Mavericks

Daaa Bulls pull off a very solid win at home vs. Dallas. Rose makes a calm and controlled return. Deng and Rip stepped up as great scoring options. Yeah. It was a good day.

Derrick Rose made yet another return to the line up, and honestly, this was the perfect game to do it. Dallas was resting two of its stars in Jason Kidd and Jason Terry, this was probably the reason why Thibs allowed Rose to play. Kidd makes the Mavs' offense flow smoothly while Terry adds speed and a devastating 3 point shot, and with these guys not playing, basically all they had to do was contain Dirk Nowitzki, make their rotations, and rebound. Thats exactly what the Bulls did.

 First lets talk about D. Rose, he played perfectly. Many would say that he was very rusty after looking at his stats, but those people are not seeing the big picture. Rose ended the night with 11 points on 5/9 shooting. He also had 8 assists and 1 turnover. You could tell he was just focussed on the speed of the game, and keeping his assist/turnover ratio down. He did what was needed of him, and in this game, we didnt need him to go into beast mode and drive the lane every other play (actually he only did that a handful of times).

 Most of the night he was slowing down the game and running set plays, and trying to avoid the explosive bursts in his transition game. But that didn't stop the bulls from scoring in transition, the rest of the guys got out there and ran for some easy buckets, many of which came from some spot on bullet passes down court care of D. Rose. It was like the rest of the team knew that he needed to take it easy, so they came in and played hard and fast the way he normally does.

It was aside from the giant lead after the 1st quarter, the Bulls outscoring the Mavs 21-8, it ended up being a pretty close game. That's because in the 2nd the Bulls' offense was a bit stagnant, and they seemed to get a little cocky and stop playing defense giving up 30 points in that quarter. It wasn't until the end of the 3rd quarter that they (mostly Deng) started getting serious and making big shots including a sweet buzzer beater to end the 3rd with a little confidence. Then the offensive rebounding showed up (the Mavs were actually winning the battle of the boards until the 4th) and the Bulls started playing like the rough gritty Bulls we know and love, better late than never.

Stats that ensured the victory

                 

                 Bulls    Mavs

Assists:        29   -   12

Turnovers:  10    -   12

3 pointers:  9/20  - 4/15

Overall, it was a great team win for the Bulls, Deng had 22 points, Rip had 19, and Noah, who really turned it on in the 4th ended the night with 8 points, 14 rebounds (4 offensive), and 8 assists. He needs to continue to play at this level for the Bulls to be successful in the playoffs, especially if they are to get past the Miami Heat (whose big men are not good passers or rebounders).

With the win against Dallas, and the Heat's loss to Washington, the Bulls now have a 2 game lead for 1st place in the conference. There's only 2 games left in the regular season for Chicago, Wednesday @ Indiana, and Thursday vs. Cleveland.