The Chicago Bulls are 11-8, and half a game above the Orlando Magic for the 8th seed in the Eastern conference. Wednesday night in Boston they lost to the Celtics 105-100; Chicago’s third loss in a row. Here’s the Bulls.com Blog reporting:
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Instead, it’s almost a collective shrug now as lineup and rotations have changed all season with Taj Gibson Wednesday getting his first start as Nikola Mirotic went to the bench. Hoiberg said he wanted to change up to help Mirotic get more aggressive and provide some second unit perimeter shooting. It did help produce one of the Bulls’ better starts of late, leading 8-2 and 15-7 before first quarter substitutions led to Boston pulling even at 24 after one quarter.
Gibson finished with eight points and seven rebounds, but played just 35 seconds on the fourth quarter. Tony Snell was scoreless again in 22 minutes while Joakim Noah had a tough minus-18 when he was on the floor. Pau Gasol had 16 points and 15 rebounds and Derrick Rose had 12 points and six assists, though at five of 11 shooting Rose still has not had a 50 percent shooting game this season.
“I wish I could (identify the team’s issue), but I really can’t right now,” said Rose. “This is our first time (with this group) ever really going through it. We’ve been together for a long time and we’re just trying to figure things out. I don’t think it has anything to do with fighting the system or anything. I’m gonna try my hardest to push the ball, even on dead balls just to get up quicker so we have a couple of more seconds for our offense. We’re just trying to figure it out, seeing the lineups, seeing who’s out the there at certain times; just trying to figure it all out.”
