Kyle Korver admits Rose and Noah injuries have slowed down the Chicago Bulls offense – NBA Update
When Derrick Rose tore his ACL late in game-1 of the first round playoffs series against the Philadelphia 76ers, the alarm bells started sounding for the Chicago Bulls. They lost the next game at home, and then surrendered two
more in Philadelphia, with centre Joakim Noah hurting his ankle badly in the first of those games.
The Bulls finally managed to win one on Monday night and keep the series alive, but ever since Rose has left, the fragility of Chicago offense has been quite visible.
Kyle Korver, the reserve Bulls shooting guard recently admitted to that fact;
"Derrick and Jo (Joakim Noah) are two of the guys that get the ball and we go out and run (with them)," Kyle Korver said. "Jo gets the ball and he goes out and runs.
"Derrick obviously with his speed ... and we're not getting fast-break points. We're not getting into our sets very quickly, so we're having to take a lot tougher shots and (Philadelphia's) defense is set, and they have a good
defense, they really do.
"So I think that's where we miss them. We miss them in a lot of ways, but I think we miss them a lot in our ability to run. We got a deep team; we've got a lot of bodies. One of our strengths all year has been getting out and running,
and we haven't been able to do that this series."
With Rose out for the season, Bulls haven’t quite been able to get things moving on the offense. A big reason for that has been the shortage of a consistent scorer and playmaker. Even in the last win against the Sixers, it was
the defence that won the game for Chicago. The Bulls were all over the Sixers in that one, reducing them to a franchise worst first half tally in playoffs, at 25 points.
The worrying part for the Bulls however is that they managed to score only 77 points themselves, with 24 of them coming from Luol Deng and 19 from Carlos Boozer. None of the other Chicago players managed to get above 8 and they
would already have been out of the playoffs, if even one of the Sixers would have had a good shooting night.
The biggest disappointment for the Bulls so far has been Richard Hamilton. The veteran shooting guard was brought into the franchise this season as a second scoring option alongside Rose. But, in the 4 games with the star point
guard, Rip has only managed 40 points on a 14-of-43 shooting from the floor. In the one game alongside Derrick, Hamilton dropped 19 points on 6-for-7.
Chicago will play the Game 6 against the Sixers on Thursday night and the good thing for them is that Noah is expected to return. He is sure to beef up the already intimidating defense, but the thing Bulls need the most is for
somebody to stand up and control the offense.
Tags: