bullsheet: d. rose pulled an mj & disgruntledness from losses to nj and philly.

maybe this’ll help me feel better after tonight’s bad, bad, BAD loss against the fucking new jersey nets:

mind you, the nets are 9-25 on the season thus far. and yet, when reading my bulls game notes email today, this is how it starts off:

Trying for a rare victory in New Jersey….Though the Bulls have won four of five on the road overall, they’ve dropped two straight and 18 of 20 at New Jersey.”

i don’t know what it is about new jersey, especially PLAYING in nj, but we’re cursed. simply cursed.

in the long run, this game won’t matter that much. what really pisses me off is thibs right now. sure, part of the reason for the loss has to be attributed to the low-energy we’ve been displaying in games. but when thibs does shit like this:

1. play deng 40 minutes last night, even though the game was pretty much wrapped up with a win by the end of the third quarter. deng played until there were two minutes left in the fourth. mind you, deng has a history of injuries. so of course it makes perfect sense to play him more than is necessary!
2. play deng another 40+ minutes tonight. let me remind you that tonight was the second night of a back to back. and the bulls flew to nj from chicago.
3. continues to start bogans who is CLEARLY not starting material, plays okay defense but doesn’t add anything to the offense. his stat line is usually a whole bunch of zeroes. opposing players don’t even bother guarding him. seriously.
4. refuses to play james johnson. this goes back to points 1 and 2. i don’t know what it is about thibs but he just REFUSES to play jj at all. jj played some in the beginning and did alright but made a few boneheaded mistakes and has been pretty much benched ever since except for garbage time. this has led to deng playing a ton of minutes. i read a stat somewhere that said something like, we have the most starters in the top ten of starters who play the most minutes or something like that. yeah. awesome. but what  makes me even more mad is that since jj has been benched, he really hasn’t had much opportunity to develop, work out some of those kinks in his game. by continuing to bench him, jj’s growth as a player stagnates. how do you expect him not to fuck up if you don’t ever let him play and learn?! he has so many dnp’s and he’s such a young player……if anything, just fucking send him to the d-league so he’ll actually see some playing time and maybe even develop. it’s not like you’re really using him at all anyway. this REALLY pisses me off. it kinda breaks my basketball heart when i see jj still remaining upbeat and cheering on his teammates when he’s on the bench but knows that thibs doesn’t trust him enough to play him.
5. benches boozer, one of the superstars on this team and our huge off-season acquisition, for the last 14 minutes of the game. yes, he fucked up during the game. but wouldn’t you want one of your best players in at the end of the game to help get a win? to try and redeem himself?
6. NOT PUTTING IN TAJ, OMER OR BOOZER , SOME OF OUR BEST REBOUNDERS, AT THE END TO GET A FUCKING REBOUND which then led to vujacic cinching the game.
7. not owning up to his mistakes in post-game interviews. he comes off as a complete douchebag, tbh.

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so i wrote the above after the painful loss to the nets on wednesday. ugly, ugly loss. and then we lost to the sixers tonight. not as upset about this loss. but man, where did our defense go? we’re known in the league as one of the teams with one of the best defenses and yet tonight, we let the sixers go off on us. wtf. defense wins championships, people. we had a pretty good shooting night [for once] but the lack of defense killed us. the substitutions at the end were shifty too. WHY WERE WE NOT GRABBING REBOUNDS?! one of the last possessions, i think we were only down 3, maybe 30 seconds or so left on the clock, sixers miss and GRAB THE REOUND. WHAT. not all of our best defenders/rebounders were in the game for some strange reason and well, look what happened. fuck.

it’s just basically, a lot of our bad habits are coming back and biting us in the ass. low-energy. missed free throws. etc. we got away with it for a bit but not anymore. although, the ‘low-energy’ bit most likely has to do with jo no out. but at the same time, if thibs would be fucking willing to even TWEAK the line-ups/rotations, this might actually help us out. but no. he remains a stubborn assclown as usual.