The Bulls major problem in the series has been at the end of games an in clutch time, when the team is reliant on Derrick Rose the most. Something that actually didn't come up often without him in the season! A team like Philly, a great defensive team, is especially good at shutting down a system offense in crunch time, when the pressure of the situation alone already makes a complicated series of actions more difficult to pull off, than just going to your superstar.
The Bulls have actually been competitive overall through 3 quarters even in the games they lost. To me none of this is a surprise and exactly what I would expect, and actually predicted. That the Bulls defense and rebounding can keep them in games without Rose, but failure of execution in crunch time against a top defense has done them in.
In the three games the Bulls have lost, Philly is +23 in the three 4th quarters, while only being +6 through the other 9 quarters in those games.
Here is a post I made on the Bulls board, after Game 1 when Derrick Rose first went down, when Bulls fans were still in uber confident mode due to what the team had done during the season without Rose, and many thinking they had a great chance to advance to play Miami in the ECF:
Rerisen wrote:The biggest hurdle is going to be closing games, not staying in them. Most playoff games, especially once you get to the 2nd round and beyond, are close, and come down to what happens in the final couple minutes. We saw this last year in the ECF even with Rose, but there just was not enough help around him to keep Miami's defense guessing.
The Bulls will have similar, but even greater problems without Derrick closing games against great teams this year. OKC will go to Durant, or Westbrook, SA to Manu or Parker, and Miami to LeBron or Wade. The Bulls will go to... who? Try to run their system offense? Very few teams can win with system offense late in big games, when its superstar time.
Note no mention of Philly. Noah was not hurt at the time, and I expected the Bulls still had a fair chance to win that series with him, despite the specific concerns therein, Philly being a team similarly prone to late game struggles. But without Jo, these specific problems have come even more to the fore making it far more dicey.
But that any model is going to predict a 'close' series between a Rose-less Bulls and Philly, and land in the ballpark is piffle. Any casual fan of the NBA could do the same, without even having watched either team during the year. Understanding the deciding points and where the games are turning on is a bit different.
Sidenote: Not sure to what exactness any of this has to do with Luol Deng. If we wanted to know about Loul Deng, we would look at Luol Deng as an individual in the series, not the whole Bulls team in which other players could be making the difference instead. In a way the thread always seemed more about Rose's value from the beginning.
Deng has mostly been stinking it up offensively it in the series (12.2 PER), as he and Iggy lock each other up. He finally stepped up in Game 5 and the Bulls won. He will have to continue to step up in similar ways I would expect for the Bulls to win the series.
