The Chicago Bulls are in line to be the #1 seed in the Eastern Conference for second year in a row. The Bulls have been battling injuries from reigning MVP Derrick Rose and his sidekick Loul Deng but they still have a 46-15 record during the lockout shorten season. In one word Coach Thibs is a beast.
During the lockout shorten off-season the Bulls made one major move, that was signing former Detroit Piston Guard Richard “RIP” Hamilton. Even with Hamilton being a little long in the tooth this was a major improvement over last years starting shooting guard Keith Bogans. Much respect to the Bulls for making the Eastern Conference Finals with Bogans as a starter, I bet that was harder than it looked.
Hamilton has battled a lot of injuries this year hisself, which is the main reason he is only averaging 11.5 ppg this year, lowest since his rookie year. He has only played 23 games and counting. RIP is known as a great off the ball scorer which will come in handy during playoff time.
The Bulls have a solid team, if everybody is reasonably healthy during the playoffs, Hamilton will be the key to get them over the hump. RIP has been to the promise land before, which may help the Bulls.
The Bulls lost to the Heat in 5 games last year in the ECF partly because they had no help in the backcourt for Rose so the Heat were able to switch defenders at will on Rose. Why? Because nobody cares what Bogans or Brewer is doing on offense and if you want to play Korver at 2 guard they just abuse him on defense. This year if whoever has to play the Bulls won’t be able to tee off on the Rose because RIP will be in the fold relieving some of the pressure.
