Final Score: Bulls win 99-96
Bulls lead series 2-1
I have to say, the officiating wasn't that great in this game. LeBron fouled Butler on that 3. Butler traveled on the reverse layup. LeBron fouled Derrick Rose with about 4 seconds left as he knocked it out of bounds. But the ending was great. I saw Derrick Rose put up the last shot. Then I exploded. "OH MY GOODNESS!" I yelled about 23 times. I'm sure the whole neighborhood was all like, "what's happening over at Aaron's place." "someone probably dunked it." Yeah, well guess what. That wasn't a dunk people. That was a game winning shot. But the game winner wasn't the only thing that won that game. It was everything that the Bulls did leading up to that. Let's take a look at what the Bulls did to have that game tied to those last 3 seconds.
Well, Derrick Rose got to the free throw line and he had a great game overall. He scored. Jimmy Butler did great too. Also, Derrick Rose kept Kyrie Irving to 11 points and 3-13 shooting. That is great. Joakim Noah didn't score or shoot well, but he did great on rebounding and defense. That's all you can ask from him. The whole team did a great job of limiting the Cavs to 39% shooting from the floor. Nikola Mirotic had a great game as he had 12 points and 8 rebounds but his defense was the biggest thing. He had a defnsive rating of 88.4. That is great. Aaron Brooks is still struggling and he really needs to pick it up on offense. He shot 1-7 from the field and 0-4 from 3-point range. They also controled the rebounds as they had 54 while the Cavs had 39.
The Cavaliers have a lot to change. With Kevin Love gone, they don't have a big to really spread the floor. Tristan Thompson and Timofey Mozgov seem to clog up the paint and it becomes harder for guys like Kyrie Irving and LeBron James to make shots in there. They obviously could use Love right now. Especially against a match-up like Pau Gasol. LeBron needs to calm down a bit and stop taking too many shots. He was just 1-7 from 3 point range. And let's face it, LeBron isn't the best 3-point shooter. He just needs to get his teammates involved more. Not to mention, LeBron had 7 tunrovers. J.R. Smith had a great game. He shot 4-8 from 3-point range and 2 of those were in the last 2 minutes. Clutch. One thing that the Cavs did great was forcing the Bulls to shoot contested shots. The Bulls shot a total of 63 contested shots! They only had 27 uncontested. That is great contesting by the Cavs. The Cavaliers need Love. If this team even beats the Bulls, they need him for the next round, because without him, they will have lots of troubles.
No comments:
Post a Comment