Blame Game: Bulls-Nets

The Bulls are now 18-2 against teams below .500. Let's get right to this. Can you guess where I'm going to start?

TT- 60%
It bothers me to no end that TT is going to get credit for leaving his bench in for the end of this game. "What a savvy move, leaving Asik and Watson in the game at the end" and whatnot. Allow me to go all-caps Drew Magary style and make this simple:

THERE WOULD BE NO NEED FOR THE BULLS TO COME BACK AGAINST A TEAM LIKE THE NETS IF BOGANS AND THOMAS WEREN'T SUCKING IT UP FOR A COMBINED 39 MINUTES!

What does Taj Gibson need to do to get in the starting lineup? Kurt Thomas played 25 minutes of -13 ball tonight. Taj had 16 and 14 yesterday, not to mention much better help defense. Bogans managed an impressive -14 in 14 minutes. And that's mainly because he played some incredibly shitty defense, both on the ball and on rotations. Ronnie Brewer is better in every aspect of the game at this point. I feel like TT insists on playing Bogans entirely to not admit he made a mistake.

Two more beefs with TT tonight: Lu played 9 and half unnecessary minutes last night, then played 43 minutes tonight. I wonder why he might have missed 2 clutch free throws at the end of the game?

And putting Kurt back in the game for the last 11 seconds directly led to Sasha's layup. I've watched the play a dozen times. Kurt is caught napping on Lopez, and once Sasha set's the backpick, he's too slow to recover. CJ makes a great defensive play, but Kurt is just getting back to where he's supposed to be, making Sasha wide open.

Derrick Rose- 25%

I hate to do this, but Derrick was -14. I don't want to hold the 3 good starters too accountable for their +/-, since it's very affected by playing 3-on-5 all the time, but he wasn't great tonight. And if you're going to take a game winning 3, Derrick, take it the first time in rhythm, or pass it to someone set. We could have gotten a much better look there, which is partially TT's fault for being out of freaking timeouts again...

Kurt Thomas-10%

Stop being so slow.

Our inability to hit clutch free throws- 5%

There were many more problems than those last two free throws, but this problem does seem to keep coming back to bite us in the ass at inopportune times.

Absolved-

CJ Watson, Omer Asik, Kyle Korver, Taj Gibson.

Maybe if you all played more, this game wouldn't have been close. Alas.