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It was a different night, but the same results for the Bulls in Game 2 in their best-of-seven series against the Detroit Pistons. The Pistons jumped out to another early lead and never looked back, pounding the Bulls once again 108-87.
The Bulls were outplayed in every aspect of the game yet again. The Bulls still couldn't shoot; a 34% overall shooting percentage just won't cut it. Kirk Hinrich was 0 for 7 from the field, while Ben Gordon, Luol Deng and Andres Nocioni combined to hit just 11 of 29 shot attempts. In fact, rookie Tyrus Thomas led the team in scoring with 18, but most of that came in garbage time.
Detroit also outhustled the Bulls, outrebounded the Bulls, and generally played like the Bulls typically do. Against a better team, those are the things that allow the Bulls to win. But getting outrebounded by 21 certainly will not help. Neither does early foul trouble for a number of starters. Ben Gordon and P.J. Brown both saw their action limited by early fouls.
The series shifts back to Chicago on Thursday, where the Bulls have been pretty tough. They had the best home record in the Eastern Conference at 31-10 during the regular season. But will their home court be enough to get back into this series?
Ultimately, a loss is a loss whether by one point or 20 points, and all Detroit did was hold their home court advantage in the series. All the Bulls would need to do is win one game on Detroit's court to move on. Is that realistic? We'll have a better idea of which direction this series is headed after the next game. Chicagoist has spent the past two games sitting in about the same pose as Kirk Hinrich ... we certainly hope we're not like that again on Thursday!
Photo via AP Photo/Duane Burleson.
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$15 Million a year for Ben Wallace will get worse each year as his skills slowly decline. The refs were so biased in favor of the Bulls last night it was like when the NBA marketing machine ensured Jordan would win the championship every year, and they still lost by twenty.
Yeah, those two losses were totally Ben's fault, seeing as he spiked the team's gatorade with Valium so they all came out like zombies to start the game, and the way he kept rattling his own basket so that his teammates' shots wouldn't fall was also very counterproductive.
And of course every single one of those six championships the Jordan Era Bulls won were because of the ref's bias in their favor; just ask any of the bitter title-deprived fans of their vanquished opponents, Mr. Obviously From Detroit Trollypants.
Bottom line is that the Pistons gave the Bulls a graduate level seminar in championship level basketball, and the Bulls were overwhelmed by the curriculum.
They are going to have to lay a serious whuppin' on Detroit tonight if they are to get back in this series psychologically, but I doubt if it will happen because the Pistons know they could be in for a long hard series if they don't put the Bulls away now (plus the scent of blood is in the water). In a weird way, we should be flattered that the Pistons took the Bulls seriously enough to come out with so much intensity.
If the Bulls don't make a series of it, they can thank Detroit for showing them exactly what they need to do to reach the next level; come out with full intensity, eliminate mistakes, value every possession, and hit the freakin' weight room and put on some more muscle mass (the two Bens excepted from that last item).