Tough physical game against a tough physical opponent who gave no quarter. That's a rock solid win, and the sort of testing you need to become a good team confident against anybody. Now one last hellish roadtrip, starting with a winnable one, and then moving through test after test again. Then we come home, and stay home for a remarkable stretch all the way through mid Jan. Hang tough a little longer, and then we finally get a break, having survived the season's meat grinder with bluer skies ahead.
Boxscore
Stats: 35min 20pts (7-11, 1-1, 5-5) 7reb 3ast 0stl 0blk 2TO
Gay ( B ) -- Rudy actually got off to a very quiet start to this one being very actively denied by Jimmy Butler, who has turned into a complete pain in the ass in this early season, and who the Bulls oddly decided to use to check Rudy instead of Ben. When he finally did get a postup attempt halfway through the 1st, Butler completely smothered it, stripped him twice, and he ended up trying to drive in for a heavily contested flip which did not go. In the early going in fact it was basically everyone except our two stars who were playing well. Cuz was missing everything, and Rudy was just invisible. But Rudy finally got a nice athletic finish on the baseline as he and Cuz were paired again in the mid 2nd, and after that he rapidly heated up, starting working the post and getting tough shots to fall inside, and capped things by draining a three. In fact despite the invisible start he ended up leading us in points at halftime with 13. He resumed his invisibility practice in the third, was beat by Butler to start the half, and was having the smaller man board over him inside in what turned out to be an equally matched physical battle in there. He was back for the stretch run, and made a major contribution to our winning this one, in particular after we lost Cuz to his 5th foul. Rudy grabbed an offensive board, got fouled, and hit both FTs at the 6min mark. He added a technical FT for an illegal defense, and then followed that with a nice drive as we pushed the lead back out again after the Bulls were getting it within striking range. This was a solid efficient performance. Rudy didn't get many shots, but he hit what he took, and his points were timely, contributing to our key 2nd quarter, and then helping to tide us over in the 4th until Cuz returned again. What backed me off a "+" here was that for much of the night he and Jimmy Butler were matched, and Butler was a real pain scoring and boarding inside at a high enough rate to basically neutralize Rudy's own numbers.
Stats: 29min 3pts (1-5, 0-0, 1-2) 4reb 1ast 0stl 1blk 0TO
Thompson ( C ) -- you would have a heck of a time looking at the statline above and seeing the contribution, and yet there was probably one made. Not that there was anything to write home about. In fact in the early going there wasn't anything to take notes about at all. And yet somehow it just felt like Cuz had some support out there inside in the very physical old school Eastern Conference type battle inside. You couldn't find it tangibly, but there just seemed to be another set of long arms in there on plays, rotations were being made, lanes cut off. Still, whatever subtle contributions were being made, I had two whole lines of notes on JT's first half, the first of which just said "quiet nothing early in the battle with Gibson", and the second which got added in the final minute of the first half when JT got a key foul on Noah while fighting with him on the boards, and got sent to the line to split a pair because of it. The third quarter was where the intangible and the tangible met as Jason started off the quarter with a strong boxout and board, and came up with a great block on Gibson to trigger a fastbreak. And once Cuz had pulled the inhibitor chip out of the Noah bot and watched it spazz all over the court and to the bench, our two big guys waded inside and dominated the middle for the next few minutes. JT would resume just playing out the string, just helping keep a lid on things thereafter, but somehow someway this wasn't a negative effort despite the 1-5 for 3pts statline.
Cousins ( B+ ) -- well this a big fugly battling wrestleball game, and we just happen to have the biggest bully on the block. Actually I was considerably alarmed when somehow Boogie got called for an offensive foul on our very first offensive possession and was wondering if the refs were just going to entirely take him out of the game with no attempt at disguise. But this is the new DeMarcus and like the honeybadger, DeMarcus don't care. He smirked, went down the other way, and played some at times alarmingly engaged defense, blocking a Noah shot to provide Sportscenter with its highlight and taking a real chance and hopping in front of Butler for a charge all the way up near the 3pt line. On the other end of the floor things were also scrappy, but in a different way. The Bulls were soing something they rarely do, and doubling Cuz hard, which is a nice sign of respect from Thibs. And Cuz took a while to figure out what to do about that. Things would have gone a lot smoother if his jumper was on, but he clanked them from all quarters until later I the game he once again just said uh uh, and starting putting the ball on the floor and forcing everything inside rather than clank anymore from the perimeter. He still got a spectacular move through Noah for his first hit, and made a perfect textbook pass out of the double to nail Ben for an open three. The end result was a 1-7 start to the game, which s something we haven't seen much of this year. But I couldn't have told you he was playing badly overall. He was working on defense, aggressive on the glass. Just getting swarmed on the other end and the jumper wasn't falling. He came back and took another charge after returning in the 2nd, this one on Gibson. One more time his teammates seemed to somehow miss the fact he was being guarded by smaller people at times, but for the most part he settled back, drew Bulls attention, but quit trying to force the action through and let Rudy take the lead until halftime. At half he only had 6pts and 5reb, which of course means that after half he really cranked it up again. Started getting very physical in the third and muscling inside, and in the middle of the quarter chased Noah from the game, getting fouls 3 and 4 called on Noah's aggressive defense (earlier in the game he had victimized Noah's aggression by pulling the Durant whip my arms through yours gimmick). Then flat broke Noah mentally when he drew the 5th foul on Noah while wrestling the ball away from half the Bulls team along the defensive glass. Noah went ballistic, added a T to his 5th foul, and was out of the picture, at which point Cuz quickly pounced and began to dominate the smaller Chicago frontline. He grabbed a d-board and gunned it upcourt to Ben on the raceout to get us up 11. But disappointingly just when it felt like we might be able to knock them out, he picked up fouls 3 and 4 on a shaky offensive foul, and then possibly an unnecessary 4th foul on Brooks. He left us in very good shape, but still with the job not quite done, and as a result the Bulls hung in there until the end. Alarming again as he quickly picked up his 5th foul upon returning in the 4th, and we had to put him back on the bench and try to ride out the storm a little longer. But he was back in the game in the final 5min and carried our physical dominance on his back again. Came up with a tough high banker off the glass off a pass from Rudy, then after getting smacked in the nose on an uncalled foul on Gibson he muscled inside for another big board and finish. Back in the late 80s they used to call the Charles Barkley/Rick Mahorn pairing in Philadelphia "Bump n Thump". That's the personality that's rapidly emerging here for us. Not his best or most efficient game, but the unquestioned physical heart and soul of this effort. We met a very tough minded banging physical team, and beat them with an even more phsyical force the other way.
Stats: 30min 11pts (4-6, 3-4, 0-0) 1reb 0ast 1stl 0blk 2TO
McLemore ( B- ) -- this was a game where every single moment reflected in the boxscore is one that you immediately remember. The good of it being that everything statistical Ben did was memorable. The bad of it being that there was little of it enough done that everything he did was easy to remember. There were no accumulating "oh he added another" stats, no "oh I didn't realize he had so many" stats. Everything Ben did on this evening was front and center. He was freed for most of the night from the demoralizing experience of having Jimmy Butler pummel him by the decisions by the Bulls to cross match (kinda crossmatch -- Butler and Dunleavy are a little interchangeable) and have Butler stick Gay instead. He got some of his only scoring statistics within a minute of the start of the game as he scooped up a sloppy Dunleavy pass for a steal and then on the resulting break got the ball poked away from behind for a turnover. But he would knockdown a contested three in the mid quarter to give us a lead, and more importantly would finally knockdown a textbook spotup three on a perfect double team beating pass from Big Cuz inside. That's the shot he absolutely has to hit and that he has spent the last year and 1/4 demoralizing us by missing, and here there was hesitation and he just drained it. The other way he was sagging too much early as I really want to staple to these guys' heads a little 3x5 saying "thou shalt not leave thy shooter for ANY reason", but after Dunleavy dropped two triples on us in the first 6 minutes he never hit another and was never again a factor. Ben ended up playing the entire first quarter, and then sat out almost the entire second as Derrick Williams came from nowhere to give us a big lift, and we just let him play out the string in the second quarter against a team who's two SGs are both swingmen who play a lot of SF anyway. Ben was back for the final pay of the half, and then started the third quickly taking a kick from Collison on the break and knocking down his third three as we opened the lead up. Sure does take the pressure off when we find somebody, anybody, to knock down some jumpers on the night. Unfortunately he would get overexcited and force a one on swarming Bulls team fastbreak on the next possession and pick up an offensive foul for his 2nd turnover. And started having some issues stopping Dunleavy and Butler from backcutting through him and taking Noah passes for layups. Ben's final statistical play of the game was maybe his most memorable of all, as Cuz roughhoused his way to a ball and Ben raced out ahead of a pack of Bulls and at fullspeed took Cuz's football pass over the top for a catch and quick layup to cap our big third quarter run in spectacular fashion. And that was pretty much it for ben with about 3:30 left in the third. he played a little longer, left, returned in the mid 4th but contributed nothing but a missed jumper, and was invisible from there on out. But I think that's mostly a good thing. Aside from the couple o bad plays forcing things on the break, Ben's game was pretty much he hit 3 threes, which just makes things so much easier for us, and he got the raceout layup at a big moment. He did nothing else memorable, and a good spin on that is he did nothing else memorable on defense either. It was kind of 4 good moments on offense, solid barely noticed you were there effort on defense, helped some while doing little harm. I could almost have given this a B despite the lack of all around stats, but since I foolishly gave Rudy a B, and Ben was in no way as good as Rudy we'll just stick with B-. Solid, roleplayery effort, and good enough.
Stats: 40min 17pts (5-10, 0-1, 7-7) 6reb 12ast 1stl 1blk 1TO
Collison ( A- ) -- came right out down to his spot on the left side and drained the first hoop of the game for us, and added another a few minutes later when he put Hinrich on the ground with a crossover and then shot over his prone opponent. But really, I don't think he had a great first half. I think those were his only two hits, maybe at most one more. And defensively he was not locking guys up. Hinrich hit several shots over him, and Aaron Brooks' quickness was causing him problems as well, as Brooks Is quickly becoming an enemy of the state following his failed stint here and feud with Boogie. Started the 3rd a little shaky too as he forced a jumper, and then made a terrible turnover to Butler. But maybe that was the moment that turned things for him as that was his first and only turnover of the game and he said "poop!" (quite literally, I heard it) and raced back to get in front of Butler and take the charge before he could lay it in. He was active and involved from that point onward and while there were a few moments where I was thinking man, he's starting to gun too much rather than going inside, in the end his bursts of offensive activity were well times, and he "gunned" to the tune of 10 shots on the night. Meanwhile the more critical contribution was of course his steady hand running the team. We never had that selfishness lull this time. Even in the face of the Bulls pressure the ball kept moving, we notched 26 assists on the night and Collison had 12 of those. Brooks still got around him a few times on defense, but down the stretch Collison just ran an almost mistake free ship. A 12 to 1 assist ratio will get it done, and as a result the Bulls never got any freebies out in the open court.
Last edited:
