Sometimes Bulls fans don’t appreciate just how good of a basketball player Derrick Rose is. Sure, Rose has missed an awful lot of time in the past 3 years, and it’s robbed a player on a HOF trajectory of some prime years. That sucks. When Rose is even close to healthy, though, he can drastically change the trajectory of a game.
Rose suited up last night and led the Bulls to an easy 102-91 victory against a Pistons team that is better than they have been in a long time. Rose cut the Pistons up, both in transition and with some great passing. Simply put, Rose played like the Rose of 3 years ago, and it’s probably the first time we’ve seen that since then.
The game isn’t all roses. Coach Thibs clearly isn’t impressed with either McDermott or Mirotic, playing them each 5 minutes in a game tailor-made for them to soak up minutes. The Bulls are clearly going with an 8-man rotation to start this year, and Thibs has more-or-less decided that Jimmy Butler, Mike Dunleavy, and Pau Gasol are going to be rode into dust by the end of the year. This is the strategy that has perpetually robbed the Bulls of the top gear in the playoffs, and to my dying day I’ll maintain that it’s the incorrect plan. When the league’s best coach (Gregg Popovich, no question) does the literal opposite of what you do, it’s probably time to examine whether or not you are doing the right thing.
The combo of Gasol and Noah couldn’t really work much better. Having the two of them controlling the low post has allowed the other 3 players on the floor to attack more on defense – their share of rebounds on the their end might not be appreciably higher than league average, but their size and willingness to attack the ballhandler will result in one of the lower eFG% rates in the league.
An interesting subplot to this season has been how the second unit really has underperformed this year. After the first game of the year, I speculated idly that the Bench Mob of 2010-2011 was going to be back in force, but ever since then they’ve been outplayed routinely. What’s more, they’ve been eaten up defensively. I’m not particularly worried, seeing as it’s both a) early and b) coached by the best defensive mind in the game, but it is something to note. As electric as Aaron Brooks has looked in spurts, neither he nor Mirotic nor McDermott have shown any capability to play NBA defense.
The Pistons are an average team, probably the 7 or 8 seed at the end of the year. However, the Bulls are clearly the class of the East (alongside the Cavs), and they showed it yesterday.