Sometimes your stars perform and give you the win. Sometimes one of the role players steps up and and surprises everyone. For the Bulls earlier tonight, it was both.
Derrick Rose stopped settling for jumpers and attacked the rim to hang onto the lead. Luol Deng, a guy that had been 1-7 from the floor before hitting two huge 3's late.
Jeff van Gundy said in the broadcast earlier that Ronnie Brewer is primarily a defensive guy and doesn't really provide much shooting. Then Ronnie Brewer scored 6 straight points in the 4th to keep the lead going.
Great win for the Bulls. Some guys stepped up, but it was by no means easy. Only 2 starters (Jo and DRose) scored in double figures until it came down to fouls. Lu, Boozer, and Rip combined for 8-29 from the floor and just 20 total points. Rip and Boozer were benched for most of the 4th quarter in favor of Brewer and Taj Gibson, respectively. These were the 2 guys who are supposed to take the load off Derrick Rose when the going gets tough. This can't happen again. This team is too good to succumb to those kind of pitfalls.
With 2:44 left in the 1st quarter, Bulls fans saw their season flash before their eyes with Rose clutching his knee after an incidental collision with Tony Parker. Who stepped up? None other than CJ Watson. I don't know if that speaks to the depth the Bulls bring to the table or to the fact that the bigger scorers (more specifically Boozer and Hamilton) couldn't pick up the slack. It might be both.
One way or another, Chicago went into super-hot San Antonio and came away with a win against a team that had only one home loss on the season prior. Some games can be chalked up to just being another regular season game. This was not one of them. There were too many trends, both scary and encouraging to write this off. The Bulls showed that they can beat one of the best teams in the league despite lackluster performances from their stars. They'll need to win this kind of game in the playoffs, should they be on the horizon.
I'll give Hamilton an out for this game. It was only his second game back from injury (and he started both) and the Bulls brass said specifically that they would be bringing him along slowly to make sure his conditioning was right. It's the better move, in my opinion; Hamilton being on the floor during a regular season game, even a measuring-stick game like this (regardless of Thibs' reluctance to refer to it that way), is drastically less important than having him stretched out and ready to go in the playoffs, when it really matters. I'm with you on the disappointment in Boozer, though; see my earlier comment from the 2/28 game against New Orleans.
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