Tom Thibodeau Should Rest the Chicago Bulls on Sunday

After reeling off six straight wins, the Chicago Bulls finally had their streak snapped by the Atlanta Hawks, 109-94.

The Bulls hardly looked like the team fans have been used to seeing since Christmas. Their vaunted defense gave up 63 first-half points. Their MVP point guard failed to score more than eight points and gave the ball away five times (the team had 19 turnovers). And Chicago never held the lead.

This was a far cry from the first meeting of these two teams where Chicago stormed from 19 down in the second half to pull out the win.

The culprit was evident; Chicago was tired. They have played four games in five days, and after Sunday, they have three opponents on consecutive nights.

Coach Thibodeau has a well-earned reputation for working hard and expecting his players to do the same. Being the consummate sage that he is, Thibodeau will be pouring over film seeing what went wrong and how to prevent it from happening again.

I’m sure that he will want to get his team together and work out the many kinks that kept them from rolling when they cut the Hawks lead to single digits in the second quarter. He’ll want to work on defensive rotation, closing in on open shooters and cutting off lanes to basket.

He’ll want to do a lot of things, but he shouldn’t.

Thibodeau should give his guys the day off this Sunday.

Coach Thibs has to know that his players are feeling the effects of this rapidly moving season. No matter what high the team is riding during any stretch of play, they are bound to hit a wall and hit it hard. Chicago did just that in Atlanta.

Thibodeau needs to call his players in, go through a film session, talk about some adjustments that need to be made and call it a day.

The entire Bulls roster trusts Tom Thibodeau wholly, and he expressed nothing but absolute confidence in his players.

He needs to reward their trust and show that he's truly confident in them by letting them rest up before their second matchup with the Detroit Pistons. He has the day leading up to the game to handle the X’s and O’s.

Even though this season is set up to be a sprint, pacing is still crucial. Chicago won’t be able reach their intended NBA Finals destination if they burn out their engines before the postseason.