Chicago Bulls Fire on All Pistons, Beat Detroit, 92-68
After their worst game of the season the Chicago Bulls rebounded nicely, blowing out the Detroit Pistons 92-68 tonight in just their third game this season at the United Center.
Carlos Boozer had his best shooting night of the year, hitting on 9-of-13 from the field, scoring 23 points and grabbing eight rebounds. Derrick Rose added 22 on 8-of-16 shooting.
While it was good to see the 1-2 punch punching the way it should, what was even better was to see the defense regrouped and playing together after the catastrophe in Atlanta.
The Bulls held the Pistons to 28-of-71 shooting and forced 18 turnovers and outscored the Pistons 18-6 in fast-break points.
The other encouraging thing about this game was that the Bulls were able to pull away in the fourth quarter, outscoring Detroit 24-9. That enabled the Bulls to rest their starters. Rose played just 32:42. Deng played just 33:48. For the second game in a row, they were able to cut their minutes down.
Jimmy Butler got some work in again tonight, and once again played great defense and made his only shot attempt.
That came on an assist from the White Mamba himself, the great Brian Scalabrine who entered the game to a roar of the crowd worthy of the Roman Coliseum.
One other play of note was when Kyle Korver played tenacious defense on Ben Gordon. No, that's not a joke. Early in the fourth Gordon put every move that he had in his arsenal on Korver, and he could not shake him.
Korver's defense has really improved. His defensive rating is down to 97 from 104 last year. Even when you account for league scoring being down, that's a significant improvement. His opponent PER is down from 14.1 to 10.0. His Synergy numbers are down too, from .85 to .83.
He worked on his defense in the offseason, and it's visible both in terms of the naked eye and the stats. With Richard Hamilton missing time, the combination of Ronnie Brewer improving his offense (who incidentally scored 12 points on 6-of-9 shooting) and Korver on defense has been invaluable.
The Bulls will play in Minnesota tomorrow night before heading back to the United Center on Wednesday. So far they've only played in the same city in back to back games one time. They won't do that again until Jan. 21.
