| Shawne Williams is going to need to hit his open looks from 3-point range tonight |
The Nets look to snap a 2-game losing streak against the team with the best record in the Eastern Conference, the Chicago Bulls. After recently getting small forward Luol Deng back from injury, Chicago is basically back at full strength unlike the Nets who will only have 9 players available for the game tonight. Anthony Morrow (death in family), Marshon Brooks (toe), Mehmet Okur (back), DeShawn Stevenson (knee), and Brook Lopez (foot) are all out which means that many of the Nets back-ups (like Johan Petro, uh oh) will have to play a lot minutes tonight.
Background on Chicago
The Bulls are the class of the Eastern Conference and the NBA in total as they have all of the major components of a championship-contending team in a star point guard (Rose), knockdown shooters (Korver and Hamilton), post-scorer (Boozer), rebounding and shot-blocking center (Noah), extremely talented glue guy (Luol Deng), and bench players/complementary players who do the rest (Brewer, Asik, Watson). These assets make the Bulls very hard to beat as they can produce points from many different sources instead of just from star point guard Derrick Rose.
Previous Game
The Bulls crushed a banged-up Milwaukee Bucks in their last game on Saturday night by the score of 113-90. The Bucks, without center Andrew Bogut and guard Stephen Jackson for the game, just didn't have enough scoring to keep up with the strong and deep Chicago team that hit 14 3-pointers in the game. Derrick Rose had a monster game with 26 points and 13 assists while Luol Deng scored 21 points and grabbed nine rebounds in his return from a prolonged injury.
The last game for the Nets resulted in a very tough loss to the divisional rival New York Knicks. Reserve point guard Jeremy Lin roughed up the Nets' defense for 25 points which was by and far a career-high for the recent graduate of Stanford. The Nets actually led for a good chunk of the game but faltered late, especially offensively. Deron Williams scored 21 points but only shot 7-19 from the field but other than Deron, Jordan Farmar, and Kris Humphries, no other players really provided much else for the Nets. The loss was the 5th-straight for New Jersey against the Knicks.
Probable Lineups
CHI- Rose (PG), Brewer (SG), Deng (SF), Boozer (PF), Noah (C)
NJN- D.Williams (PG), Farmar (SG), Shawne Williams (SF), Humphries (PF), Shelden Williams (C)
Three Keys to a Nets Victory
1.Cover the perimeter- The Bulls don't have many intimidating 3-point shooters but the two they do have, Kyle Korver and Richard Hamilton, are very efficient and can rack up points really quickly when left open. If the Nets are to even remain close with the Bulls throughout this one, they must contest Hamilton and Korver when they are behind the 3-point line.
2. Keep going to the paint- Last game against the Knicks, the Nets were abysmal from 3-point range and only hit 10 of their 26 attempts. However, they were able to drive to the hoop and drew early fouls on Stoudamire and Iman Shumpert and were able to make them non-factors due to their foul trouble. By doing this, the Nets killed two birds with one stone, scored easy points on lay-ups and free throws resulting from the paint-driving and also took two of the Knicks better players out of the game. This same situation must happen tonight against the Bulls.
3. Move the ball on offense- The Bulls are one of, if not the best, defensive teams in the NBA. This means that against a inconsistent offense like the Nets, the Bulls will pressure and try to deny D-Will before anyone else on the team. Due to this, another Net is going to have to step up and hit shots tonight for the Nets to stay in the game. For said surprise player to get open, the Nets will have to demonstrate one thing that has been lacking from the offense the whole season, ball movement. Ball movement will be the key for the Nets to score against Chicago and without it, the offense will be as ineffective as it has been in some losses from earlier this season.
The Bulls are good, the Nets aren't. The Bulls are healthy, the Nets aren't. The Bulls are good on the road, the Nets aren't good at home. I predict a 107-92 Bulls win. By the way, congrats to the Giants for the Super Bowl victory. I'm a Jets fan but its still nice to see Belichick and Brady lose the way they did.
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