Bulls Game No. 32: Seven-game winning streak snapped in ugly loss to Brooklyn
24. 96. 147. Final. 82
The Chicago Bulls are now 22-10 in the first 32 games of the 2014-2015 season. Of those 10 losses, Tuesday night’s 14-point defeat at the hands of the Brooklyn Nets may have been the ugliest loss of the season — so far.
The recipe for disaster: Your starting backcourt shoots 5-for-27 from the floor, your backup point guard gets ejected for arguing with officials in the second quarter, the other team’s best player shoots 13-for-21 for 29 points and your best player plays 37 minutes in the second game of a back-to-back.
Tuesday night was an ugly end to the longest winning streak of the season for the Bulls.
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After surviving an awful fourth quarter in Indianapolis on Monday night against the Indiana Pacers, where the Bulls scored just 11 points in the final quarter, the ugliness and lack of effort carried over to Tuesday’s loss.
Believe it or not, the Bulls were focused early on.
Mike Dunleavy got off to a blazing start in the opening quarter by scoring 12 points and the Bulls led after one, 31-24.
After that 31-point quarter, the Bulls scored just 51 points over the final three quarters, while shooting just 38 percent from the field.
"“It doesn’t take much to throw you off, and the important thing is we have to play with more of an edge. And overall I think we’re making good progress but things weren’t going our way tonight, and so when they don’t go our way we have to do other things to help ourselves to win.”-Tom Thibodeau on his team’s effort, CSNChicago.com"
Things definitely didn’t go the Bulls’ way on Tuesday.
Derrick Rose shot just 2-for-15, including an abysmal 0-for-5 from long range. Rose was extremely content on settling for contested mid-range jumpers and lacked an aggressive streak all night long.
Jimmy Butler, the hero of Monday’s game, shot just 3-for-12, including 0-for-3 from three-point territory.
Monday continued to show a trend when it comes to Butler and the second games of back-to-backs:
On 0 days rest this season, Butler is averaging 18/6/3 while shooting 43% overall and 25% from 3 and taking less than 6 free throws per game
— Jason Patt (@Bulls_Jay) December 31, 2014
Not only did the Bulls backcourt struggle, backup point guard Aaron Brooks was ejected for arguing with officials during the second quarter, where Brooklyn made a quick push to snag a one-point lead.
To make matters worse, the Bulls bench — minus Brooks — scored just 21 points on Monday night.
Thoughts + what’s next for the Bulls
Simply put, Tuesday was easily the worst loss of the season for the Bulls.
Sure, the Bulls had some ugly losses to Boston, Indiana and Portland earlier in the year, but this was the first bad loss with the Bulls (almost) at full strength.
(Kirk Hinrich missed his fifth straight game with a hamstring strain on Tuesday.)
It’s never a good sign when your backcourt not only struggles shooting from the floor together, but they only attempted three free throws combined? Not good.
A couple good takeaways from Tuesday was Mike Dunleavy finding his shot again and Joakim Noah looking like his old self. Dunleavy was 5-for-9 from long range and Noah racked up 12 points, 12 rebounds and dished out three assists in the loss.
The controversy after the game was of course, Derrick Rose.
Rose: "I'm not going to stop shooting."
— K.C. Johnson (@KCJHoop) December 31, 2014
OK, Derrick … let’s talk for a second.
You’re a career 30.5 percent shooter from deep and you’re shooting just 26.3 percent from beyond the arc this season.
There’s nothing wrong with being aggressive and trying to get yourself going offensively. But, for the Bulls to be successful, you have to take good shots within the flow of the game.
Since his return from an illness on December 22nd vs. Toronto, Rose is 6-for-29 from deep, which is just under 21 percent.
Once again, not good.
The Bulls (22-10) end 2014 on a bad note, but they’ll head into 2015 with a 3.5 game lead in the Central Division over the Cleveland Cavaliers and a New Year’s Day meeting with the Denver Nuggets (13-19) on Thursday night.
Tip-off from the United Center is scheduled for 7:00 PM CT.
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