Bulls eliminate Bucks with historic 54-point beatdown, move on to face Cavs

http://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/nba-ball-dont-lie/bulls-eliminate-bucks-with-historic-54-point-beatdown--move-on-to-face-cavs-032833197.html

Coming off two straight losses that turned an expected sweep into a surprisingly tense affair, we wondered how the Chicago Bulls would respond in Thursday's Game 6. Would they continue to struggle with the Milwaukee Bucks' length, athleticism and grit? Or would they stop messing around and take Jason Kidd's young Bucks to school?

Our answer came quickly, as the Bulls made their first three shots to jump out to an 8-0 lead after just 68 seconds. It came decisively, as Chicago opened up an 11-point lead less than five minutes into the game, and led by 18 after the first quarter.

It came repeatedly, as Chicago unleashed the full force of its fury on the stunned and outgunned Bucks. The Bulls never trailed Thursday, leading by at least 20 points for the final 33 minutes and 52 seconds of game time en route to a 120-66 annihilation that gave the Bulls a 4-2 win in their best-of-seven series. After ending the Bucks' season with extreme prejudice, Chicago now advances to a long-awaited second-round meeting with LeBron James, Kyrie Irving and the Cleveland Cavaliers.

Chicago's 54-point win marks the largest margin of victory in a series-clinching victory in NBA playoff history, and the third-largest margin of victory in any playoff game. It is the second-biggest blowout win in Bulls history, trailing only a 56-point pasting of the Portland Trail Blazers back in 1976.

It is the most lopsided loss the Bucks have ever suffered, topping a pair of 48-point defeats. Their 66 points were a franchise playoff low. And somehow, that's not even the worst of it:

Jon Hartzell  ‎@hartzellNBA  

Bucks are first team in NBA playoff history to not have a single player score at least 10 points, per Elias.

Oh, man. That just hurts your heart.

This performance represented something close to the platonic ideal of the 2014-15 Bulls — the sort of two-way thrashing that, purely in a theoretical sense, we suspected Tom Thibodeau's full squad might be capable of laying down on an unsuspecting opponent.

They haven't done this type of thing often, due in part to multiple injuries resulting in the Bulls' preferred starting lineup — Pau Gasol, Joakim Noah, Mike Dunleavy, Jimmy Butler and Derrick Rose — making only 21 appearances for just 353 regular-season minutes. Chicago went 16-5 in those games, with that five-man unit scoring at a top-five level of offensive efficiency and topping its opposition by a strong 3.7 points per 100 possessions, the same amount the Cavs managed over the course of the full season.

So, yeah, the Bulls have been good when they've had all their guys. But this? This was something else.

 Nick Friedell
✔  ‎@NickFriedell  
Total domination from the Bulls. Most complete game they've played all year.

All 13 Bulls who suited up scored, led by Dunleavy, who scored 20 points on 5-for-7 shooting, including a 4-for-6 mark from 3-point land, to go with five assists, four rebounds and a steal in 28 minutes of work. Dunleavy also helped set an early physical tone, getting away with what appeared to be a cheap shot on a Michael Carter-Williams layup that sent Milwaukee's Game 5 star to the locker room for much of the first quarter. Later, Dunleavy got away with another shove to the neck of Giannis Antetokounmpo, which led the 20-year-old "Greek Freak" to freak out in retaliation, running down Dunleavy on a 3-point shot and getting himself ejected in the process.

Dunleavy wasn't the only Bull nailing triples, as Chicago tied a season-high with 15 3-pointers on 30 tries, a major-league regression to the mean after shooting just 4-for-22 from distance in Game 5 for a club that ranked 15th in long-balls made per game and 10th in 3-point accuracy during the regular season. The Bulls also pounded Milwaukee on the interior, generating 22 second-chance points off 10 offensive rebounds, and hounded the tight-as-a-drum Bucks into 18 turnovers that led to 23 Bulls points.

Pau Gasol took it to Milwaukee on the interior, scoring 19 points on 8-for-12 shooting with eight rebounds. Joakim Noah, hobbled all year and at times taken out of this series by the smaller Jared Dudley, worked his way to 11 points, 10 rebounds and two assists alongside high-energy defensive play, earning some rare in-game emoting from Thibs.

After combining to shoot 10-for-31 from the field in Game 5, Butler and Rose chipped in 31 points on 13-for-28 shooting in Game 6, combining for 12 of Chicago's 31 assists (the Bulls' third-highest helper total of the season) on 46 made baskets. After Butler called himself out for not guarding "a soul" in this series, he snagged four steals and helped hold Bucks shooter Khris Middleton to six points on 2-for-7 shooting.

Everybody moved, everybody moved the ball, and everybody contested everything, holding the Bucks to just 32.9 percent shooting and a 4-for-19 mark from 3-point range. As a result, this game was over nearly as soon as it started.

It was definitely over late in the second quarter, when the Bulls pushed the lead past the 30-point mark. It was definitely over midway through the third, when the Bulls held an 82-38 lead and Carter-Williams took a retaliatory swipe at Dunleavy after yet another under-the-radar high, hard one from the vet.

So, naturally, Thibs kept his top guys going for another few minutes, not officially calling off the dogs until pulling Noah and Taj Gibson with Chicago leading 101-61 and 6:42 remaining in the fourth.



This was about as bad an ending as imaginable for the Bucks, especially after scrapping so hard to come from 0-3 down to have a chance to force a Game 7. But it doesn't undercut the significant strides that they made during a season that saw them rise from a league-worst 15 wins to a 41-41 record.

Milwaukee established a swarming defensive identity in its first year under coach Jason Kidd, ranking second in the league in points allowed per possession behind the all-encompassing length of Middleton, Antetokounmpo and John Henson, and backstopped by the smarts of veterans Pachulia and Dudley. Their offense fell off a cliff after shipping out scoring guard Brandon Knight in a deal that imported the younger, longer-limbed, more traditional point-man Carter-Williams, But these Bucks grew exponentially in an incredibly short period of time, earning respect around the league while developing a culture, a defense and young players worth watching.

Those young players have gained reps and experience, and Milwaukee will welcome back No. 2 overall pick Jabari Parker after rehabilitating his torn left ACL. The Bucks' future remains bright, even if their present tense was some Darkest Timeline stuff on Thursday night.

For Chicago, on the other hand, things are looking very bright right flippin' now. After five tough games against the Bucks' elite defense, they'll take on a Cleveland team that finished 20th in the NBA in points allowed per possession this season; even in their post-mid-January rampage to the No. 2 seed in the East, the Cavs ranked a comparatively middling 13th in defensive efficiency. And while Cleveland will boast the series' best two players in LeBron and Kyrie, the Cavs will be without the injured Kevin Love for the duration of the conference semifinals, and without starter J.R. Smith for the first two games.

The Bulls, in an odd reversal of fortunes, look like the healthier, more settled squad. Butler put up just under 25 points, 5.5 rebounds and four assists per game against Milwaukee, and seemed to get some of his defensive snarl back in Game 6. Rose averaged 19 points and 6.5 assists in 36.7 minutes per game in this series, and showed he could still go off in the playoffs. Chicago has depth, a better defense and — for the first time in four years — an honest-to-God chance of knocking off an elite opponent in a postseason series.

It's enough to make you so excited that you don't even mind your destination.


 K.C. Johnson  ‎@KCJHoop  

Noah: "I never thought I'd say this but I'm excited to go to Cleveland."

And we can't wait to see you get there, Joakim. Monday can't come soon enough.

So, which is worse?  Getting swept in 4 competitive games or winning 2 games (one of them on a buzzer beater) but get beat down in absolutely epic proportions?  It was obvious to me the key difference in last night's game, which I watched, is that the Bulls played like veterans who executed and the fact that this was a big game didn't matter to them and the Bucks, who had the pressure of needing to win or go home (or stay home, since the game was in Milwaukee) did not. The Greek Freak lost his mind, OJ Mayo disappeared, nobody on that team played like they belonged in the NBA.

Which would you rather have had, if you were a Bucks fan?  A series like ours, where the competition was there but we were short of talent, or winning two games (one on a broken defensive play) and then a game like this one?  Or would you rather have not made the playoffs, again, and went into the lottery, again?

I can't do a poll on this thread since gyso didn't create one, but I'm interested in the opinions of the board.


bob

The Bucks don't need more draft picks.
They need to start winning which they did this season.
They have a very nice young base of players in Carter-Williams, Parker, Henson, Antetokounmpo and Middleton.
Yes, last night was embarrassing but they had a very good year.
They went from 15 to 41 wins and did much of that without their starting center (Sanders) and Jabari Parker.

I could see where the Celtics could have used one more year in the lottery to potentially increase their talent as Milwaukee has done over the last few years.

Losing in such an epic beatdown could have a lasting psychological impact on Milwaukee. It's far worse than losing the way the Celtics did.

I cannot fathom how a team could allow that to happen.

On the other side, this stood out:

So, naturally, Thibs kept his top guys going for another few minutes, not officially calling off the dogs until pulling Noah and Taj Gibson with Chicago leading 101-61 and 6:42 remaining in the fourth.

Thibodeou is a very good coach in many ways, but man, he runs his players into the ground. Why on earth would anyone other than scrubs play the fourth quarter when they had a 39-point lead entering the fourth?

bobh,

Here is your poll.

gyso

Pretty much an academic, hypothetical choice.  I'd rather win the championship.  So I'd choose neither, although I'm extremely happy that the Celtics made the playoffs.

Sam