Derrick Rose Scores 36, Beats Boston Celtics and Saves Tom Thibodeau's Job

Wednesday night, the Bulls lost to the New Jersey Nets in a game they should have won when Carlos Boozer was sat on the bench due to a lack of defensive effort. Friday night, the Bulls lost again in a game they should have won, but again awkward rotation choices were the reason for the loss. Or at least that's the way a panicked Bull's nation would have you think. 

The Internet was aflame with questions about whether head coach Tom Thibodeau had lost control of the team. Should the Bulls have signed Amar'e Stoudemire? When were they going to get a better shooting guard? Why is he starting Keith Bogans?

You could have thought the Bulls were struggling for a playoff spot, not firmly perched with an eight-game lead on top of the division, sitting very comfortably on the No. 4 seed in the Eastern Conference and realistically still very much in the chase for the overall No. 1 seed.

In fact, with a win tonight the Bulls stood to move within four games of the top Conference's top spot. This in spite of the fact that they had only played with their entire starting five only seven games this season, and in none of those games were their second and third most important players completely healthy. Joakim Noah was playing injured and Carlos Boozer was still coming back from injury. 

One would think with all but four of the players new to the team, a new head coach, and a new philosophy with it, that being in that position at this point in the season considering the aforementioned adversity the team had faced fans would be more forgiving. 

But not so. Coming into tonight's game, Bulls fans dreaded the potential fallout. The cold and miserable weather which greeted Chicago this morning only seemed to reinforce the pending gloom of the evening's game. That's when Derrick Rose decided to "save" the Bulls' season yet again. 

Derrick Rose played physical tonight. It's something that Thibodeau has been coaching him to do all season, telling him to "go harder" to the rim. After the game Rose explained that he's been learning to actually go a little bit slower to the rim as well. It paid off as Rose took a career-high 19 free throw attempts tonight. 

It seemed to be a big part of the game plan for the Bulls to force the ball into the paint. It paid off in a big way as the Bulls drew a total of 25 fouls all together, most of those being the result of Rose driving into the paint.

The issue of this was that Boston's bigs were in foul trouble. Shaquille O'Neal had only five points and four fouls in less than 20 minutes of play. Jermaine O'Neal had five fouls in just over 12 minutes. This enabled the Bulls to outperform the bigger Celtics 32-30 and out rebound them 48-27. 

During the latter part of the third quarter the Celtics had three shot clock violations, and were forced to take outside shots. Combined with only four offensive rebounds the entire game and .378 field goal percentage this allowed the Bulls to overcome 21 turnovers. 

Which does bring up the point that the Bulls are not yet perfect. Doc Rviers, in a pregame interview, said about the Bulls, "They're a hell of a team. And they're getting better. We don't even know how good they are going to be yet because they haven't been all together yet." 

Leave it to the other coach to put things in perspective. Settle down Bulls nation. We haven't won the title yet, and we haven't been knocked out of the playoffs. Tom Thibodeau is doing as much as anyone could have expected in a first season as a head coach.