Bulls Game No. 61: Nice of you to not back up your talk, Nene

There are certain things you just don’t say in sports. One of those many things is mentioning how much you “hate” a city/team on the day you play that said team. Washington Wizards forward Nene found that out the hard way on Tuesday night.

One of the kryptonites of the Chicago Bulls is playing the Washington Wizards — more specifically — playing the Wizards inside the United Center. A big reason why the Wiz have won five straight against the Bulls in Chicago is the intimidating presence of Nene.

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The 12-year veteran from Brazil has punished the Bulls frontcourt in every game since last year’s first round meeting between the Wizards and Bulls, won by Washington in five games.

Nene was suspended for Game 4 of last year’s series with the Bulls after an altercation with Jimmy Butler, but his aggressiveness and intensity was a big reason why the Wiz were able to advance past the Bulls last season.

Before Tuesday’s game, Nene has some interesting words about the Bulls:

There’s a thing called “bulletin board material” in sports and Nene gave the Bulls that and a whole lot more in Chicago’s five-point victory.

Joakim Noah — one who was heavily (and wrongly) criticized for his performance against Washington last season — was fantastic in over 33 minutes of action on Tuesday. Noah scored 14 points, grabbed 12 rebounds and dished out five assists for the Bulls.

"“He’s getting back on top of his game. He’s getting healthier, he’s getting his confidence back, feeling really good about himself and leading us out there. His energy and emotions tonight were huge and was a big part of our win,” said Mike Dunleavy. “He just brings the energy and it rubs off on everybody else. It’s a great form of leadership.”-Mike Dunleavy on Joakim Noah, CSNChicago.com"

Noah tortured Nene all night long, along with contributing to Nene’s flagrant foul in the final quarter. After the hard foul, Noah expressed his frustrations with the play to Nene … and I don’t think I need to explain what was said from Noah.

Noah — just like everyone else watching Tuesday’s game — knew that the foul was out of utter frustration. For the first time in 787 career games, Nene was held scoreless and fouled out with 5:28 left in the game and the Bulls leading, 84-77.

Of course, #BullsTwitter decided to have some fun with Nene’s “shutout”:

Good work, Mr. JMS7 in the Blog a Bull comments section.

Game notes from Tuesday’s win:

• The Bulls have officially split with the Wizards (2-2) on the year. If it came down to a tiebreak with the two teams, the Bulls currently have a better Eastern Conference record than Washington (22-13 compared to 23-17).

• The race may be over for NBA Rookie of the Year (yeah, Andrew Wiggins is that good), but Nikola Mirotic is earning his place in the NBA. Mirotic was awesome again on Tuesday night, scoring 23 points on 6-of-13 shooting and grabbed eight rebounds.

• Doug McDermott‘s alive! Sure, he was 0-for-5 from the field, but McDermott played over 15 minutes on Tuesday; something he hadn’t done since Nov. 21 against Portland.

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Next: Without Butler, Gibson and Rose, the final stretch only gets tougher for the Bulls