Atlanta Hawks 109 – Bulls 96

Wow. Just … wow! The Bulls performance tonight in Atlanta was, to say the least, lackluster. When I said the Bulls would need to take advantage of the Hawks’ fatigue in order to beat them, I wasn’t expecting the Bulls to come out fatigued and the Hawks to play like they just had a bye week.

What went right for the Bulls? Not a whole lot. I can’t really put any sort of positive spin on this game except the Bench Mob played a pretty solid game. Lucas III scored 16 points, Korver had 13 and Gibson got 11. Let’s not forget to talk about our rookie, Jimmy Butler. He scored 12 points in 12 minutes on 3 out of 3 shooting and 2 out of 2 free throws. This guy has a high basketball IQ and I think will play some good basketball if given more minutes. Maybe even try giving Brewer’s minutes to Butler? Just a thought.

What went wrong for the Bulls? They came out with little to no energy and weren’t shooting very well. They fell behind early, and stayed there. There wasn’t no magic comeback like Tuesday night. The Hawks ran on them, and they weren’t able to get up. Derrick Rose didn’t really post Derrick Rose numbers, scoring 8 points with 6 assists. Boozer dropped 12, while Noah only had ONE point and FOUR rebounds. Rip Hamilton was still hurt, so Brewer got to start again, and played a mediocre game. And Deng also played a quiet game, only scoring 8 points. Overall, the starters played like they were tiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiired and just couldn’t match up against Atlanta’s energy. And the turnovers… I don’t even want to talk about how poorly the Bulls handled the ball during this game.

What went right for the Hawks? Apparently the Hawks took their 5 Hour Energy before the game. Basically everything went right for them this game. Josh Smith scored 25 points and Joe Johnson was able to put up 17. I don’t want to forget Josh Smith’s 6 blocks. What the hell. Who does that?! Teague and Horford played well too, combining for 26. Vladimir Radmanovic came off the bench when Marvin Harrison suffered a grade 1 ankle sprain and scored 17 points, going 5 for 5 behind the three point line.

What went wrong for the Hawks? Ummm… hold on… let me try to find something that went wrong for them… OH! Jerry Stackhouse shot an air-ball. Seriously though, Marvin Harrison’s injury will have him benched at least until Monday, but Radmanovic is a damn dead-eye, so it won’t be too bad for them. Not much else went wrong for Atlanta.

On to the next one: The Bulls start their back to back to back on Monday with the Detroit Pistons. The Knicks went to town on the Pistons tonight and let’s not forget the Bulls beat down on them pretty bad on Wednesday night. The Bulls bench played most of the loss against Atlanta, so HOPEFULLY the starters will be a little more well rested. It would also be nice to see Rip come back soon. We could use his offense. And, is it just me, or is anyone else a little mad Rip played with an injury in Detroit (just so he could play against his old team in Detroit) and got hurt even more? Something about that isn’t right. Oh well, get better soon Rip’s groin.