Open Game Thread # 58: Bulls vs. Washington Wizards

The Wiz however, are hanging on by a thread.  They are 6th right now, but they are going to finish 9th or 10th.  The Bulls only have to be slightly better than awful to catch them.  

If Washington bombs and we outplay the Hawks, its Bulls time.

Looks like Hughes is strting in place of Thabo

But more importantly than that, haywood was beasting us and Gray is now BEASTING him. Which is good, Gray is doing some GREAT things for us. Keep him in there and have Noah rotate in for him, with Tyrus rotating in for Deng and Gooden with Nocioni.

This is good stuff..... plus Hughes, Gordon, Kirk and Thabo doing very well in the backcourt... The bulls are playing very good right now, and i love them after this trade.

NICE!

Haywood was getting our bigs into foul trouble, he was a mismatch for us and he was really kind of hurting us.

Gray has really neutralized that and its helping take advantage of our strengths in Gooden, Tyrus and Noah. Very nice, good job Gray.

Lovely

THEY REALLY ARE THAT MUCH BETTER FROM A WEEK AGO!

MAN OH MAN!!!!!

IM lOVING THE ATtITUDE FROM THE BENCH, LOOKInG LIKE HOW A WINNING TEAMS BENCH LOOKS. LIKE HOW THE CELTICS BENCH LOOKs, INTO THE GAME, ACTIVE, ROUTING ON THEIR TEAMMATES.

Very nice, our game is so much more versatile now. An option in the post, a good pick/roll option, a slasher, more inside play opening up for our great perimeter talent (and midrange talent: deng), getting to the foul line much more (HUGE), having no more size mismatches on defense.......

EVERYTHING!

Maybe he's learning on the job.  We'll see.  

But yeah....... I think the Bulls and Hawks are also much better after their trades making a playoff run.

Wow.

If we had nothing under Skiles, what was this?

We have 3 guys who can play the post.  We played one of them 8 minutes.  Gooden played terrible all game, but wasn't pulled, he got to foul out.  When TT got regular minutes after the trade, he was excellent.  I'm beyond furious.  

Boylan couldnt figure out to put two bigs in the game at the same time when we're going up against a frontline of 2 7footers and a 20/10 allstar power forward???!??????????!!!!!???

Wow. Just wow.

Gooden is Power Forward. Not a Center.

And Boylan has him out there as center with a lineup of 2 pg-sized guards, a 2guard, and a swingman around him.....

And this is going against a frontline of two 7 footers at all times and a 20/10 power forward (allstar) playing the Small forward.

So yeah, I'd say boylan screwed that up BAD. Same thing with even Noah being the only big in. Screwed up bad.

There is a reason we blew the game open when Gray was in with another big and there is a reason why we got killed with that small-ball BS against a monster-sized frontline.

Gray was +15 in 8 minutes. Seriously....... at least put Noah and Gooden in there, not just one of them with 3 guards plus Deng or Noc.

Boylans got to go.

I wish we made this trade before the season started, Skiles would still be here right now and we would be fighting for the 4 seed.

But god damn if you watched that game you know its ALOT more than that. The 1st half had me so excited. For real, we played so great. So enthusiastic, beating them down like we should when theyre without thier 2 best players and we have all this talent on a very well-rounded team.

Everything was looking good. For real.

The wheels fell off in the 3rd quarter, and Boylan contributed with his stupid small-ball lineups more than anything.......

Damn.

IM PRAYING TO GOD THAT we gET IT TOGETHER AND BEAT CLEVELAND ON SuNDAY. AND THEN GO ON A WARRIOR-LIKE TEAR (Golden State was 25-36 last season before going on a tear to finish 42-40, the tear started about 10 games after trading for Al Harrington and Stephen Jackson).......

Please god let it happen. Atlanta and New Jersey i have a feeling arent going to be easy to pass to get a playoff spot, both made trades of their own and are alot better after making them.

So he called a timeout, yelled at his team to play harder, and then stormed off?  No wonder the Bulls looked so confused on the court - Boylan didn't bother to draw up a play for them!  Seriously, though, how obvious is it that he's lost this team?

Now if only he would apologize for playing Tyrus Thomas 9 freakin' minutes, maybe we'd be getting somewhere.  You got what you deserved too, Jimmy.

And here's my favorite part . . .

I was wondering what that delay of game call was for.  In fairness, Duhon probably started drinking an hour before the game, so it's hard to blame him.  I have no idea why you not play a guy for three straight games, and then put him on the court in the 4th quarter of a close game.  That's probably only about the 20th dumbest thing Boylan did tonight , though, so I won't complain that much about it.

I don't care what you think of Noc, when any one player is providing such a spark at the end of a tight game, you have to keep him in! He goes to the bench, and next thing you know we're down six.

And yeah, I agree that TT deserved much more court time tonight.

Boylan is definitely Skiles' son as each plays the worst lineups known to man.  His benching of Tyrus boggles my mind.  Along those lines, the Chicago beat writers should each be punched in the face for not asking Boylan why he sat him down.

On a positive note, I was concerned that I was going to have to stop updating http://www.BenchDuhon.com so I thank Boylan for giving me new life.

Look for all of my Bulls' season tix on eBay!  Less than face!  Ugh.