The Blame Game: Bulls-Clippers

So when I said before that I wasn't too worried about not having Noah for a few months, I was working off the assumption that we'd have Taj in his place. No Taj or Noah means, unfortunately, we are not very good defensively inside, and the Clippers took advantage of that (despite Baron Davis' best efforts.) However, that doesn't mean we could have won this game, but for...

Kurt Thomas/TT for playing Kurt Thomas 16 minutes, and the clutch minutes in the 4th)- 45%

Yes, Kurt Thomas did some good things. He set a few solid screens, drew a nice charge on Blake Griffin, got another foul on a pump fake under the basket. But I thought we got Kurt Thomas to play defense and get rebounds. 3 rebounds in 16 minutes is guard numbers, and it wasn't like it was Blake Griffin beasting him, which would be understandable. There was a key play in the 4th where Eric Gordon got position on Thomas and put the ball back up on him.

Defensively it wasn't much better. He played 6 feet off Griffin out of necessity, but still wasn't quick enough to help stop Baron Davis on the drive. The on-ball defense wasn't much better. My question for TT is, if Kurt isn't going to do anything on the defensive end, why not play Scalabrine and at least open the post up for Boozer? Or go small with James Johnson and push the pace? (OK, Griffin probably would have made the Bulls pay for putting JJ or Luol on him, but still, it would have been better than what happened.)

TT's ability to manage the clock/timeouts- 20%
30 seconds left, down 2. If you don't foul, they can use the entire shot clock get a shot up at the end, by the time you have the rebound, you need to go down the floor for a final shot in 4 or 5 seconds. And that's assuming they don't make the shot or get an offensive rebound, which both basically end the game. If you foul, worst case you're down 4, but have the ball with 27-28 seconds, and can look for a 3 or and-1 to try to make it a 1 possession game next time you foul.

Of course, if you have a timeout, you can count on getting a rebound and calling a timeout, moving the ball up to halfcourt and drawing up a play. But you don't have timeouts left at the end of the game when you use them all with 2-4 minutes left to draw up fadeaway 3s for a guy that's 1-4 and hasn't shot since the 2nd quarter. For the love of god, save timeouts for the end of the game, TT.

Omer Asik-10%
We also aren't going to survive without Noah if Asik doesn't play better than that. 3 points, 6 rebounds won't cut it in 22 minutes. Come on, Asik, at least play well enough to make yourself a decent trade chip.

Kyle Korver- 10%
Hit open shots, Korver. That's pretty much your only job.

CJ Watson- 5%
I need to stop doing this, but I analyzed CJ's plus/minus in an email instead of on the blog this week. I can't find a website with CJ's +/- broken down by game, but I bet there's a high correlation between the Bulls winning "CJ time" (the time Derrick's out and CJ is in at the point) and winning the game. CJ was -11 tonight.

Keith Bogans- 5%
Asik's line was bad, but Bogans' was worse. 0 points, 1 rebound in 14 minutes. And again, I didn't see the defense making up for it. But there somehow aren't any minutes for JJ...

The "wait-for-Derrick-to-bail-us-out" mentality- 5%
Something you notice about great teams: they aren't afraid to have role players take key shots (Robert Horry, Derek Fisher, etc.) The Bulls still sometimes pull open shots down to pass back to Derrick (Boozer does this at about the 2 minute mark, then Derrick misses a tough running shot with his left. Boozer had an open 12-footer he'd been hitting all game.)

Absolved:

Derrick Rose- Would have been nice to have that 2nd free throw, but Derrick shouldn't have to bail out the Bulls every time they try to blow one at the end.
Luol Deng- Missed some key shots, but again, good offense and solid defense (although Ryan Gomes/Rasual Bulter is not the toughest matchup for Deng this year.)
Carlos Boozer- 25 on 12-20 from the field. Maybe we should have run some plays for him in the 4th quarter?
Baron Davis- Some of those plays at the end of the game were ridiculous. Donald Sterling is a despicable human being, but if I was Davis' owner I would heckle him, too.

Vent in the comments. And remember the Bulls-Wizards liveblog is Wednesday night.