D.J. Augustin wasn't a theater major at Texas, but he put on a performance that Denzel Washington would be jealous of with a sudden fall to the ground after attempting a 3-pointer down 91-94 against the Chicago Bulls Tuesday night.
While the shot fell 3-feet short, the officials awarded the rookie a foul on the shot, to which the Bulls' bench exploded in protest. Bernie Bickerstaff looked like someone had told him a bad Your-Momma-So-Fat joke, nearly picking up technical foul.
He eventually hit all three free throws and marched to a 110-101 overtime victory.
Sour grapes?
A little.
Bad basketball? You bet.
The Bulls have classic underachievers written all over them. They're good enough to compete, bad enough to fold when it matters. Good enough to steal a victory from a solid team, bad enough to lose to the Bobcats, Philadelphia 76ers and Memphis Grizzlies.
And thus the 11-13 record.
Derrick Rose had his worst game as pro, forcing shots, trying to dribble-penetrate when trapped, taking bad angles on defense, leaving his feet thus forcing bad passes and throwing up shots at a closing Emeka Okafor who made three key blocks--one, a potential game-winner.
It happens. He's 20. He was at prom only 19 months ago.
Kendell Gill made an interesting and valid point on Comcast's postgame show about Rose. He said that stars tend to have 60 good games a season. That leaves about 20 or so where they are pedestrian or less than stellar.
Rose was less than stellar on a less than stellar team.
Luol Deng was battling the flu and cramps, Ben Gordon was effective, Dwight Gooden was bad and Andres Nocioni was equally bad.
Nocioni didn't look happy about being pulled for Larry Hughes with 19 seconds to go in regulation. Hughes, also battling a flu, was not shooting well either going one for seven from the field.
But Vinny DelNegro opted for Hughes, has been a valuable player in the clutch.
They tried to isolate Rose, who had struggled all game against the Bobcats' defense. Rose ran into Okafor while Gooden waited below the hoop. No doubt the rookie got the call after the timeout, but they could have probably ran a screen play for Gordon who was shooting well.
It's interesting that the Bulls run so much high pick-and-roll and are awful at defending it. Sure, we're likely to give Rose a pass given that is only his second month in the league, but the help defense is usually slow or late.
Meanwhile Tyrus Thomas turned in his second strong performance with 22 points. As the cliche goes: once is chance, twice is a coincidence, three times is a pattern.
I'll wait for game No. 3 to get excited about the third-year forward, who has amassed an underachieving career with spurts of excellence and terrible bouts of play.
We all get excited thinking Thomas will develop into a player, and he is only 22, so there's no rush to give up on him. But these are one of those points in the season that we'll start to believe he can be a legitimate NBA player.
He took his patented bad 16-foot shot, which clanked off the rim, down the stretch off a pick and roll with Gordon. He should have been streaking toward the rim.
Has anyone on the coaching staff ever pointed why he's so open from beyond 16-feet all the time?
This was a bad loss for the Bulls if they want to make the playoffs. It's an important thing to consider. This team is in no-man's land and, like the rest of the league, we're probably going to have to bank on the 2010 free-agent sweepstakes.
The lottery is not the answer in this weak NCAA class. Beyond Blake Griffin there's no special player in the class. Which means that the playoffs are crucial for Rose's development and its reputation for incoming free agents.
We can only get so many lottery balls to bounce our way.
2 comments:
This was one of the worst losses in a few years. You cannot tell me that the ref blew that call at the end of the game. If this team wants to do anything about it, they should have been arguing with the refs into overtime.
If Tyrus Thoma plays like that consistently we're going to be in business. He's the x factor and Rose only had one bad game. We need to get some Tyson Chandler, Chris Paul action going.
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