The Chicago Bulls are currently on a four-game winning streak. Then why does it feel like they are a team in turmoil for some reason? Well, there are a lot of aspects to this that I’ll touch on quickly before writing about Wednesday night’s win against Memphis.
It has been a strange run for the Bulls so far under new head coach Fred Hoiberg. Derrick Rose talked about looking forward to being a free agent again in the preseason even though that doesn’t happen until two years from now. Also, the guys on PTI (a fantastic show by the way) brought up the possibility that Chicago should consider bringing Derrick off the bench due to his shooting woes. Jimmy Butler aggressively campaigned to become the team leader. Joakim Noah is putting up crazy assist and rebound numbers despite coming off the bench and probably not being too happy about that. Pau Gasol has said he will opt out of his contract in the summer, and the Bulls in general haven’t grasped what Hoiberg wants from them on the offensive end of the floor. From a strategic standpoint, wanting a new offense was the whole reason why Tom Thibodeau was shown the door, and yet Chicago doesn’t look completely comfortable on that end quite yet.
Okay, so, bearing in mind all of that dysfunction, let’s move on to the Bulls win over the Memphis Grizzlies.
Rose dropped 19 points against them in a 98-85 victory for Chicago and started the game strongly with 10 points in the first quarter. He was only shooting 34.7 percent on shots eight feet or closer to the rim before Wednesday’s game (stats via ESPN Stats & Information), and that is not typical for him. Derrick flipped the script against Memphis though.
“He was great,” coach Hoiberg said to ESPN. “You could tell on the first possession that he had pop, he had explosiveness. I saw it in shootaround this morning. I actually sent him a message at about 1 this afternoon and told him how much I loved his energy in shootaround, I loved his pop. He sent me back something that said, ‘I’m going to have a great game tonight.’ But it was fun to see. You could see the explosiveness. He was getting into the paint, he was finishing, there were a couple others that he would have loved to finish that I’m confident he will finish moving forward. But he just set the tone for our team with his aggressive drives to the basket.”
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The key to the Bulls winning was the combination of Rose and Butler. Jimmy finished with 24 points, and the Bulls also got 17 points from Doug McDermott on an excellent shooting night from him. Gasol was great as well in recording another double-double (10 points and 14 rebounds) during his 22nd game against younger brother Marc, and it was thanks to Pau that we have the amazing headline photo above. If you missed the game, then you can check out the highlights below.
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The Bulls will next face the Detroit Pistons at the UC on Friday, and this will be a great opportunity for Chicago to keep this winning streak alive. If they can continue racking up wins despite all the noise off the court, then that is a great sign for their chances in the playoffs.