Chicago Bulls: 5 Lessons From The Season Opener

The Chicago Bulls fell to the defending champion Miami Heat 107-95 Tuesday night in Derrick Rose‘s first game back in more than a year. It was an ugly affair for most of the game, until Chicago made a late fourth quarter run to make things semi-interesting. Rose’s return was disappointing to many, as were the Bulls as a whole for everyone who had them pegged as an Eastern Conference contender coming into the season. But before we all overreact and abandon ship, here are the five most important lessons to take from the season opener:

5. The defense needs to improve:

A lot of this had to do with the Heat’s role players stepping up and playing a fantastic game. But Chicago’s defense looked uncharacteristically bad and it goes beyond the 107 points they surrendered. Simple miscommunication and mistakes like not knowing who everyone’s man was were uncomfortably common. These are problems that have typically never troubled Tom Thibodeau’s squad. The Bulls had never surrendered more than five corner 3s to Miami in a game over the last three seasons, but the Heat had four by halftime Tuesday night. Needless to say they exceeded that benchmark of five by the time the clock expired.

Part of the problem was Thibodeau’s big, potentially game-altering mistake(s) of leaving both Luol Deng AND Jimmy Butler on the floor early in the game with two fouls. When both had three fouls three minutes into the second quarter, Thibs had to resort to Tony Snell. I still believe Snell shows a lot of promise, but he couldn’t hit anything and understandably looked like a deer in the headlights guarding LeBron James. Even worse, in my opinion, was Mike Dunleavy, who played an all-around terrible game until heating up in the second half when it was too late. This brings us to our next point…

4. Depth could be a problem:

As soon as Deng and Butler sat down because of foul trouble, the entire dynamic of the game changed. Deng played the entire first quarter and picked up his third foul with four seconds left. Thibs probably left Deng in for so long because Butler had already picked up his second foul with eight minutes to go in the first quarter. Deng sat out the entire second quarter and Butler came out three minutes into the third quarter with his third foul. At that point, the league got a look at how deep the Bulls are on the wing. And it wasn’t pretty.

Snell missed three shots in a row on one possession and committed a turnover in just seven minutes of playing time. Dunleavy (someone I’m strongly campaigning to be referred to as “Mike’s Hard Lemonade” from now on) created an absurd amount of problems for Chicago’s team defense. He was caught helping when he didn’t need to and failed to get in Ray Allen‘s face for an easy 3 more than once. Granted, the amount of times I expect Butler and Deng to have three fouls each with nine minutes to go in the first half isn’t very high. But bad refereeing in the NBA is as rampant as mediocre LeBron James commercials these days, so in the event Chicago has to go to its bench, Snell and Dunleavy have to improve on both ends of the floor (which I think they will).

3. One hit, one miss:

The biggest question entering the new season was obviously, “How will Derrick Rose look coming back?” But the second biggest question of the offseason in Chicago was whether or not Jerry Reinsdorf would really pay the luxury tax for the second year in a row to keep this potential contender intact. The two biggest obstacles to the luxury tax are the huge contracts of Luol Deng and Carlos Boozer. One of those two played like he was worth keeping last night. Surprisingly, that player wasn’t Deng.

Boozer was one of the few bright spots of Chicago’s sort-of-blowout loss last night, putting up 31 points on 13-of-18 shooting to go with seven rebounds. Aside from the obvious foul trouble that changed the complexion of the game early on, Deng couldn’t get anything going. On back-to-back possessions he was worked in the post, first by Dwyane Wade and then by LeBron. He finished just four points on 2-for-8 shooting (0-for-5 from deep) and committed three turnovers. We’ll cover why this wasn’t a big deal in a bit, but suffice it to say this wasn’t the NBA season opener people were hoping for and Deng had a bigger part to do with that than Derrick Rose did. And until he turns things around, the Jimmy Butler replacement talk will continue.

2. Derrick Rose will be fine:

As for Derrick Rose, everyone should take a deep breath and relax. Did Rose’s long anticipated return live up to the hype of his impressive preseason and a ton of chill-inducing commercials? No. Rose went just 4-of-15 from the floor and finished with only 12 points and four assists. But from the overreactions of people watching the game (everyone’s a comedian on Twitter), you’d think Derrick Rose had looked like Kenny Smith running to do his halftime segment.

Rose’s first play was a turnover and he finished with an ugly five turnovers in the game. But his first basket was another awesome display of athleticism that almost forces you to conclude he’ll be just fine once he gets his rhythm back. Give Miami’s defense the credit it deserves; playing the Heat was not a kind welcome back game for a guy who missed more than a year. Rose didn’t look terrible, he’s not a completely changed player and for crying out loud, he was not crossed by Norris Cole (Watch the video again if you don’t believe me. It’s pretty clear he trips on Chris Andersen‘s foot, but people love broken ankles).

Rose clearly has a lot to work on, on both ends of the floor. It may have been opening night jitters. It may have been the difference between the preseason and the regular season. It definitely had a lot to do with Miami’s stellar defense. The truth is, it was probably a combination of all of these things. But Derrick Rose showed just enough flashes of athleticism and playmaking ability to convince me that he’ll be just fine as the season progresses.

1. It’s one game:

This is the most important point, not only for this particular opening night game, but for every opening night game. First my Twitter feed was filled with people saying the Chicago Bulls could never contend in the Eastern Conference. That was quickly replaced with delusional “WE GOIN’ TO THE SHIP!” Lakers tweets. Breathe, everyone. Just because we missed basketball so much over the summer doesn’t mean the first game of an 82-game season is the end-all, be-all. The Bulls are still very much a good team. And although it wasn’t the narrative people were hoping for in his first game back, Derrick Rose is still very much a great player. As long as Thibodeau realizes he doesn’t have to play his starters 45 minutes a night anymore and Rose continues to acclimate himself, Chicago will be just fine.

[slider_pro id=”5″]