Chicago Bulls defeat the Toronto Raptors in exhibition play
With solid perimeter defense, the Chicago Bulls (3-4) were able to overcome an early deficit against the Toronto Raptors (3-4), beating them 110-103 in a pre-season game last night at
the Air Canada Centre.
Toronto coach Jay Triano would love for his team to play defense like the Bulls did last night, forcing the Raptors to shoot just 2-14 from behind the three-point line. “They did a good
job of taking away our threes,” Triano said. “This team plays defense the way that we should. They get up on the three-point shooter.”
While Luol Deng led the Bulls in scoring with 22 points, Derrick Rose had the best all-around game with 20 points, eight rebounds, and nine assists. Brian Scalabrine and James Johnson
each finished with 14 points.
Surprisingly, after Triano was done praising the Bulls’ defense, Chicago coach Tom Thibodeau got busy criticizing it.
"Transition, pick-and-roll defense, challenging shots, not protecting the paint, from A to Z, it just wasn't there," said Thibodeau. "We've got to do a lot better job, and we're capable.
If we're just going to rely on our offense, we're going to be in trouble."
Luol Deng is getting used to his coach being somewhat of a perfectionist.
"That's coach," Deng said. "He expects excellence out of us and I'm glad that he does. It's just going to make us all better and it's going to make us better as a team."
Leandro Barbosa, coming off the bench, led Toronto in scoring with 22 points while Andrea Bargnani had a decent shooting night, going 7-14 from the field for 19 points. Second-year player
DeMar DeRozan finished with 15 points and seven rebounds while Reggie Evans pulled down a game-high 16 boards.
After being outscored 27-22 in the first quarter, the Raptors made a run in the second. Led by the speedy Barbosa, the home team was able to enter half-time with a 54-50 lead. But after
the Raptors built a 10-point lead in the third, the Bulls came all the way back, regaining the lead at 71-70 after a driving lay-up by Ronnie Brewer. In the fourth, Kurt Thomas hit a jumper with just over six minutes remaining to give the Bulls a 95-85 lead,
an advantage they wouldn’t relinquish.
"We showed a lot of fight tonight, coming back on a good, young team and coming out with a win," said Rose.
The Raptors clearly had a tough time containing last year’s NBA Rookie of the Year.
“Derrick Rose kind of got it going and his teammates kind of fed off his presence,” Evans said.
“I think they had a (15-2) run and we just couldn‘t get it back together after that,” said DeRozan “It‘s always tough to slow down D-Rose. He started getting his teammates involved and
he kept getting to the rim.”
The Bulls were missing two key players last night. Joakim Noah, suffering from flu-like symptoms, and Kyle Korver, who is recovering from an ankle injury, did not play.
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