The Chicago Bulls will take a shot at closing out the Atlanta Hawks tonight in Atlanta. Chicago leads the series 3-2 and will look to build on arguably their best effort yet in the series when they pulled off the game five victory in Chicago 95 – 83.
It’s safe to say that The Bulls would prefer to close this one out tonight. Yes, game seven is in Chicago, and yes the Bulls boast the best player on the court, but they are vulnerable to monotony and prone to streakiness – two qualities that could certainly lead to their demise.
That being said, The Bulls made some major improvements on Tuesday. First of all, Derrick Rose got to the free throw line. He was 10-13 from the line in the culmination of a steady increase in trips since game one.
Second, Rose didn’t have to score all of Chicago’s points. The Bulls jumped out to an impressive lead to start the game behind a multi-faceted offensive attack – the lack thereof arguably being their Achilles heel in games past. Luol Deng had 23 points in the win and Boozer also contributed early, but finished with only 11 points.
Chicago outscored the Hawks 32 – 21 in the first quarter and it looked like we were finally seeing the Chicago Bulls who clinched the best record in the Association during the regular season.
But consistency is not Chicago’s forte. The Hawks went on to hold the Bulls to just 16 points in the second quarter and 21 in the third as Atlanta made a push in the middle section of the contest.
Tonight, the Hawks are going to be pushing Chicago to the limit down in Georgia, and in order to close it out this evening and avoid a game seven, Chicago, as a team, is going to have to show up for all 48 minutes.
Atlanta, on the other hand, has a different problem – they don’t play up to their potential. It’s easy to forget that the Hawks have a two All-Star team (with Horford and Johnson), and with Josh Smith and Jeff Teague also playing well, it should be much easier to imagine a scenario where the Hawks pull off a big upset and head to the Conference Finals.
They have the 48 minute problem, too, however. The key for Atlanta is stringing together four quarters of teamwork. When they are moving the ball, and moving without the ball, Atlanta looks like they can beat anyone. But they seem prone to fall into isolation which, time after time, makes the Bulls job much easier.
The Hawks also need their stars to play like stars. Horford needs to go for 20 and 10 rather than the 12 and 10 of game 5, and Joe Johnson, who is apparently the Hawks franchise player after that enormous contract he signed, has got to score more than 15 points as he did on Tuesday night. Without these two guys pulling their offensive weight, the Hawks won’t make it past 9:30pm tonight, home court or not.
Atlanta can’t count on 21 points and seven assists every night from Jeff Teague, nor should they. They are built around Johnson and Horford, two skilled finishers who don’t work well in isolation. They need to move the ball around, and continue their consistently tenacious defense against a Bulls team that can be stopped.
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