PLAYOFFS Game Three Open Thread Overflow3: Bulls vs. Boston Celtics

The Bulls actually won the offensive rebounding battle grabbing 34.1% of their misses, the C’s grabbed just 21.1% of their misses. The problem was that the Bulls had a lot more misses. Bulls eFG% was a terrible 43.1% to the Celtics 55.7%.

The Bulls got to the line 27 times, but missed 10 FTs, so they only made 17. The C’s only got to the line 24 times, but they made 19 of theirs.

But if the story in Game 2 was the Bulls getting pounded on the glass, tonight the story of the game was Bulls inability to hang onto the damned ball. 23.4% of the Bulls’ possessions ended in turnovers, to just 13.8% for the Celtics. All those turnovers led to easy buckets for the Celtics, which in turn made it so the Bulls couldn’t get out and run themselves, which is the only way they stand a chance against this Celtics team. They have to run them off the floor at every chance – you can’t do that if you can’t get stops.

The reason that the Bulls need to run to win is because their half-court offense is just terrible. Tons and tons of playground 1 on 1 basketball. Salmons was a really bad culprit for selfish one on one ball, Kirk has some bad shots as well [some of which went in]. Ben’s jumper was ice cold in the first half – he was a little better in the second half, but when he has a bad shooting night, it really kills the Bulls because he offers so little in the rest of the game. Rose had a ridiculous number of turnovers, he turned it over more than I can ever remember him turning it over in any game this year (7 in the game). Salmons was the next biggest TO culprit with 4 and then came Brad who had 3 TOs in just 18 minutes(!) He’s been really bad this series, especially because his jumper has been largely MIA.

Noah was only charged with 1 turnover, but I distinctly remember him having butter fingers on several different plays that resulted in the C’s gaining possession, so maybe some of Derrick’s TOs were really chargeable to Noah.

Pretty much everything went wrong for the Bulls, and all three of the Celtics most important players (Pierce, Allen, and Rondo played well). Not to mention guys like Marbury and Big Baby were playing well, just bad times all the way around.

Also, someone needs to send John Salmons the memo to stop jumping on all of Pierce’s upfakes. His defense was horrible. People were crediting Salmons for slowing Pierce in game one, but as tyger suggested (I agreed with him), Pierce’s play was more Pierce just being in a funk than anything Salmons was doing. Pierce got it going today and Salmons was exposed.

Tyrus did not do much to help his case for minutes over Brad tonight. He lost his cool and shoved Davis, and just looked rattled pretty much all game – aside from his monstrous dunk to start the game. He did hit the boards, though, which is a little encouraging (8 boards in 27 minutes).

…..
:-(