Schuster: Bulls Are Almost In No Man's land
By David Schuster
Just not good enough. That's the perfect way to describe what happened to the Bulls on Sunday night. The final score was Heat 96 and Bulls 85 and all the team's weaknesses are starting to get exposed.
First off, the vaunted defense did not live up to it's billing in game 3. Miami shot over 50% and when a team does that vs. the Bulls they aren't able to get any running game going. Tom Thibodeau preached for the last 48 hours the need to get easy baskets but they definitely didn't have any in this contest. The Heat were able to set up their half court defense and the Bulls looked anemic.
Derrick Rose had a pedestrian game with just 20 points and though Carlos Boozer had 26 points and 17 rebounds he still missed a bunch of shots at the rim. Throw in the fact that Luol Deng only had 13 points and Joakim Noah and Keith Bogans combined for just 5 and you can see that the Bulls just dont have enough scoring options. And it's further compounded when Kyle Korver adds just about nothing.
So game 4 is critical for the Bulls who definitely dont want to be down 3-1 vs the Heat. And prior to game 3 Joakim Noah will be fined heavily by the NBA for his homophobic slur towards a fan. Noah didn't hide from it after the game. He admitted and apologized but that wont save him from the NBA's punishment.
