Come fourth quarter of Friday’s game against the Celtics, Bulls fans witnessed somewhat of a rarity, at least by this early season’s standards. About 90 seconds into the final quarter at the TD Garden, when the Celtics had slashed a 20-point deficit down to four, coach Tom Thibodeau looked to his bench and summoned two players we haven’t seen much of in fourth quarters this season, starters Joakim Noah and Carlos Boozer. Welcome back to crunch time, fellas. Noah and Boozer played as
So, let’s go right ahead and get a little carried away over what went down during the fourth quarter in Chicago last night. We now know who the leading candidate is for MVP. It’s the same guy who won it last year, Derrick Rose, who knocked down three 3-pointers in the final period to bring Chicago back from a 12-point deficit. We now know who is the leading candidate for Coach of the Year, Tom Thibodeau, who has drilled his team every
CHICAGO — I tried to not get caught up in all the hype surrounding the first week of the NBA season because, well, it’s the first week of a 66-game season. No matter how frantic the pace – four games in six nights for the Bulls – there’s still plenty of basketball to be played, and much more to be revealed. The first four games for Chicago, and the rest of the league for that matter, were more like an exercise
BARCELONA — In prison movies, when a freshly incarcerated inmate wants respect, he drops his tray, strolls up to the baddest dude in the cafeteria and knocks him in the jaw. Real Madrid’s Nikola Mirotic picked out one of the biggest, baddest dudes in Euroleague and dunked on him. The 220-pound Montenegran let out a yell as he threw the ball through the net and off the head of 350-pound Sofoklis Schortsanitis. Mirotic landed, shot a searing gaze at Big Sofo and