The Bulls won their fourth straight game tonight, and against a very good team too. They defeated the Los Angeles Lakers 88-84 tonight at home, pushing their record to 13-8, and a surprising 10-4 against the Western Conference, which in past years has been the dominant conference. Not surprisingly, this four game winning streak has coincided with the return of Carlos Boozer to the lineup. His presence on the floor gives the Bulls a legitimate second scoring option, and also spaces the floor for the Bulls' shooters, who have improved tremendously since Boozer's return.
I talk about this all the time now, but Derrick Rose is the man. If he wasn't being talked about as an MVP candidate, he should be after tonight's performance. Rose put up 29 points, 9 assists, and 5 rebounds in the win. He outplayed Kobe Bryant, who has been considered the game's best closer for the past several seasons. Rose also severely outplayed any of the Laker point guards, who couldn't do anything to stop him, and also could not get anything going on the offensive end. Rose's numbers look good, but his timing and clutch performance was fantastic, and has been unbelievable all season long. Rose made a fade away, long distance two point shot coming out of an inbounds pass with 3 seconds on the shot clock, right in front of the Lakers' bench. He also nailed a mid-range jumper to put the Bulls up by 5 with 25 seconds to go in the game. He has been fantastic all season long, and is only showing signs of getting better. It should be exciting to watch him continue to improve, and hopefully he can lead this team to a big win total this season.
This was a very important game for the Bulls because they were on a three game win streak coming in, and have 12 of their next 13 games against teams currently under .500. If they continue to play as well as they have over the first 21 games, they can run off alot of wins during this stretch. They need to win at least 10 games during that stretch. The elite teams in the league take care of business against the weaker teams in the league. Are they going to win every game? No. However, they need to beat the teams they are supposed to beat a vast majority of the time. Not only that, but I think it would do wonders for the Bulls' confidence (which is not lacking at all right now) if they could blow out a few of these weaker teams. Winning games by alot of points gets the whole team involved, excited, and it also allows the starters to get rest in the fourth quarter. The Bulls have only really blown out two teams so far this season (Portland and Golden State). Hopefully they can win big tomorrow against the T-Wolves, and keep this winning streak going.
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