With 80 games down and two to play, and despite everything that's come before this, the Bulls
control their own playoff destiny. Sunday's 104-88 win in Toronto assured that.
However, the picture is not as rosy as you might think. After the Raptors surprisingly-easy 111-97 win in Detroit on Monday, the Playoff Odds are not in the Bulls' favor. And they're not even close, really. ESPN.com's John Hollinger gives Chicago just a 28.5% of edging the Raptors, which falls between Basketball-Reference.com's odds (29.5%) and CoolStandings.com's (28.2%).
I believe the Bulls' chances are, in reality, slightly better than that. For starters, their final opponent, Charlotte, has its playoff seeding locked in, and with nothing left to play for is likely to rest its regulars, regardless of any claims to the contrary. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said of tonight's opponent, Boston. The Celtics still have an outside shot at grabbing the Eastern Conference's 3-seed -- they need to win their final two and Atlanta would have to lose to a Cavaliers team that only cares about staying healthy. Plus, after last year's hard-fought and sometimes acrimonious first-round playoff series, I'm sure Boston would love to knock the Bulls out of the postseason yet again.
Meanwhile, the Raptors play the Knicks at home, a game everyone (but me) is talking about as a gimme. I actually think New York will win. I have a few reasons, other than it's what I'm hoping will happen: 1) The Knicks' style is very similar to Toronto's, only they do it better. 2) While the Raptors are working on a sweep of the season series, they've won the games by eight, six, and two points, and all but one of those was with the injured Chris Bosh playing. 3) Mike D'Antoni is so superior as a coach to Jay Triano that I really think he'll have his guys amped up for the game, and the Knicks will treat it like their playoffs, while the Raptors will think they can just skate to the win.
Having said that, the Bulls can't count on getting any help, and have to assume that they need to win both games to get in. They can't do anything about the winnable games that they've dropped down the stretch; they have to look forward and do whatever it takes to come out on top in these last two. Here's a helpful list of things they can do to ensure they walk away with the eight seed:
1. Limit the turnovers
The Bulls have won four of their last six. In the losses to Milwaukee and New Jersey, they had 16 and 17 turnovers, respectively. In the four wins, they've been remarkably consistent, turning the ball over 10 times twice and 11 times in the other two. That's a difference of six turnovers per game between the wins and the losses. Keep the turnovers to 13 or less, and the Bulls will have a very good chance of winning both games.
2. Play Joakim Noah in crunch time
Look, most of these are going to fall into the Duh category. But the more I watch, the more that it's clear to me that this is not Derrick Rose's team -- it's Noah's. Noah is the leader, it's Noah's energy the team feeds off of, and it's Noah who's their best crunch-time performer.
So he needs to be out there. None of this ridiculous offense/defense thing at the end of games with Brad Miller. Sorry, but Noah is the more productive offensive player. Sure, Miller might be the better shooter, but Noah does so much more offensively, most notably crashing the boards for tip-ins. At this point, Noah is the superior player on both ends.
Besides, Noah is about the only guy on the team that doesn't wither in the clutch, making him one of the players I'd trust most with late-game free throws. And at .754 overall from the line, he basically shoots the same as Rose (.761), Luol Deng (.766), and Kirk Hinrich (.750) even when there's no pressure on.
3. Use newly-signed Rob Kurz to pull a Gillooly on Jannero Pargo
I don't know how many times I've said that Pargo needs to stop playing, but he continues to get his 15 minutes a game. So if horrible shot selection and all-around ghastly play can't take Pargo out of the lineup, maybe a lead pipe to the shins will.
4. Stop focusing on the officiating
The Bulls veteran "leaders" -- I'm thinking of Hinrich and Miller -- are two of the biggest whiners in the league. According to them, they've never committed a foul, and every whistle against them is an injustice of the highest order. When they're not arguing the calls made against them, they're badgering the refs for non-calls on their missed shots / turnovers.
Unfortunately, this attitude has rubbed off on the rest of the team. Especially Rose.
Yes, the questionable calls in the Nets game hurt, but a bigger reason for the loss -- and the Bulls blowing a 7-point lead in the final minute of the first overtime -- was that they allowed their focus to be overcome by the officiating. Instead of putting any no-calls behind them, the Bulls allowed them to fester, and in the process lost track of the important thing -- doing whatever it took to come away with the win.
5. When Derrick Rose gets frustrated, take him out of the game
More than anyone else, Rose clearly let the way the game was officiated get to him. It started with his foul-plus-flagrant early in the fourth, and continued more or less until the moment he fouled out.
I understand that he's still a kid, and prone to getting frustrated. Shit, if I were him, I'd be frustrated too. One of the great mysteries to me is how Rose can go to the hole so often, and yet draw so few fouls. Last year, I would've chalked it up to him being a rookie, except the Thunder's Russell Westbrook got to the line with nearly twice the frequency: 428 attempts in 2668 minutes (0.160 FTA/min) for Westbrook, versus 250 attempts in 3000 minutes (0.083 FTA/min) for Rose. I have no idea what it is, because they also have pretty much the same body type; all I know is that I see Rose take a ton of contact and not get the whistle.
And in the Nets game, a number of questionable calls were made -- or not made, as the case may be -- against Rose, especially on his back-to-back turnovers in the first overtime. But while his frustration is understandable, it doesn't mean that he should stay on the court when he's clearly overwhelmed by it. He's still young. Pull him out of the game briefly, talk to him, get his mind right, and put him back in there.
You know, coach him.
6. Play like champions
Just kidding. But they need to at least play like a playoff team, as opposed to one that chokes at home to the Andrew Bogut-less Bucks, loses to New Jersey (twice), and blows a 35-point lead against the Kings.
7. When a lineup isn't working, change it
In a perfect world, I wouldn't even have to say this. But in the loss to the Nets, Vinny Del Negro stubbornly kept the lineup of Rose, Hinrich, Deng, Miller, and Taj Gibson out there for basically the entire first overtime -- Noah came in for defense for all of 13 seconds -- and beginning of the second, until Rose fouled out. This was despite the fact that from the final minute of OT until that point, the lineup was outscored 11-0.
Even if Del Negro thought Noah was unavailable, he needed to make a move. Miller, who had completely expended himself in helping the Bulls come back from a 12-point, fourth-quarter deficit, had clearly run out of gas -- he missed badly on a pair of 3s in the first OT, either of which would have sealed the win -- and could have used the rest. Del Negro either should have gone small with Flip Murray or brought in Hakim Warrick. Or he could have pulled Gibson (3-of-10 shooting, plus-minus of -16) for either of them.
The point is, he shouldn't have just done nothing when the game was starting to get away from them. And he can't afford any similar inaction the rest of the way.
8. Seriously, don't play Jannero Pargo
I can't emphasize this enough.
Let's take the story -- the original one, not the transparent subterfuge the Bulls PR department has apparently planted in response -- as true on its face; that is, that Paxson was angry that Del Negro again went over the medically-prescribed minute limits for Joakim Noah.
And I actually enjoyed Miller's antics as a player. But he should not be in a nationally-televised broadcasting role. He adds absolutely nothing; instead he merely enrages me when I'm forced to listen to him instead of hearing some actual insight / witty banter between Albert and Fratello. That TNT thought there was something wrong with the Marv-Czar pairing is inexplicable. Those guys don't need a third man, and TNT's execs have failed to heed one of sports' most inviolable precepts: If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
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