The Chicago Bulls are 27-17 and they currently own the third-best record in the Eastern Conference. That’s without Derrick Rose.
Be scared, NBA, be very scared.
Chicago center Joakim
Noah is an all-star this season, and so is small forward Luol
Deng
. Those two have already accomplished a superb individual accomplishment without their teams’ best player and one of the NBA’s best floor generals.
They’ve stepped up to the challenge. Rose has been sidelined with an ACL tear since the beginning of last year’s playoffs. When he went down, so did Chicago’s title hopes.
Now, the Rose-less Bulls have held down the fort, and then some, while their leader rehabs. They are ten games over .500. Nate Robinson came in and is putting up 11.2 points and 3.6 assists per game, even if he does sometimes act as if his Bulls’ jersey has a 23 on the back of it, and not just a 2.
Chicago dealt former Bulls’ “Bench Mob” member Kyle Korver
to Atlanta to get Kirk Hinrich
back from the Hawks. It seems to have worked out well for both parties. Hinrich
is averaging a solid 7.1 points and 5.1 assists per game; he’s teamed up with Robinson to plug the hole that Rose’s injury left in Chicago’s proverbial dam.
Boozer is playing better, not quite up to his max contract status, but better. He’s averaging 15.8 points and 9.7 rebounds per game. Joakim
Noah is the arguable defensive player of the year thus far and has succeeded in serving his critics a nice, hearty plate of "look at me now."
Luol
Deng
is averaging about two more points per game this year without Rose than he did last year with him, and he’s a big reason why they’re succeeding. Even second-year man Jimmy Butler has blossomed into someone who can average a useful 20 minutes per game.
The real credit for Chicago’s success goes to head coach Tom Thibodeau
, though. He brought a blue-collar, down-and-dirty style of winning to the Midwest’s hardest working city. He’s coaching a Bulls team that defines smart and self-less play. They do all the fundamentals. They held the Hawks to 58 total points in a home game in Atlanta last week. Marco Belinelli
even seems to have found his stroke, good things are happening.
Then, an interesting twist to this already interesting Bulls’ season occurred when Rondo went down for the season on Sunday. That’s one less competitor, theoretically, in the East. The Celtics aren’t much of a threat anymore in most peoples’ eyes. Chicago's only real challenges seem to be Miami and New York at this point. Thibodeau
told reporters on Monday that Rose is “very close” to returning to full contact practice. That makes a return before the playoffs, at the latest, quite probable.
Logically, we now come to this: how good will the Bulls be when Rose returns? Or, more importantly, how good will Derrick Rose be when he returns?
If Rose comes back at even 80 percent of what he was last season, which he likely will, Chicago has a good chance to win the East. If Rose pulls an Adrian Peterson and comes back even better than he was last season, just hand the Bulls the Eastern Conference Championship. That scenario is unlikely, but not impossible to imagine.
The Bulls are already 3-0 against the Knicks and 1-0 against the Heat this season. They are very capable of beating either of those teams in a playoff series, especially with Rose. The Bulls can win the East. Beating the Thunder in The Finals, however, doesn’t seem possible.
Chicago’s fate rests in the hands of the “Red Knight,” he’s the hero Chicago needs. While the villains lurk in red and blue jerseys, Rose and the Bulls now have the opportunity to expose some potential jokers and reclaim what Jordan conquered.
jm296009@ohiou.edu
