bukie

That was actually Cleveland's most lopsided win of the season.

A. Albert Pujols B. Adrian Gonzalez, Ryan Howard C. Carlos Pena, Hanley Ramirez, Ryan Zimmerman D. Kevin Youkilis, Justin Upton, Jason Heyward, Pedro Alvarez, Buster Posey WC: Will be PM'ed

In the money league I do, instead of picking brackets, 16 entrants get 4 teams each, one from each quadrant (one 1-4 seed, one 5-8 seed, one 9-12 seed, one 13-16 seed). Biggest reward is for the winner, but there are bonuses for having the team from each quadrant that goes the farthest, as well as final four bonuses. One of the entrants this year had Kentucky, Butler, and VCU. I had Louisville, Georgetown, Tennessee, and UNC-Asheville.

On the plus side, Rose is going to know he played like hot ass tonight, and he'll probably take it personally.

Not sure what it is about the Bulls and the Atlantic division. 2 losses to the Celtics, 2 to the Knicks, 2 to the Sixers, 1 to the Nets, 1 to the Raptors. Half their losses for the year.

The weirdest part of tonight is how bad they've been rebounding. Usually the rebounding makes up for deficiencies elsewhere, but it's really been lacking tonight.

Im not sure about point diff, but I read something the other day saying the Bulls had scored more 4th quarter points than any team in the NBA and it was by a wide margin. Bulls have outscored their opponents by 201 in the 4th quarter. No other NBA team has outscored their opponents by more than 100.

It's Chicago's fourth game in 6 days, two of which were extremely narrow, hard-won victories. And now they're playing a pretty well-coached, athletic team. 82 games, it happens. It's not like the Bulls are some unstoppable juggernaut. I think most people's disgust stems from the fact that it's been a long time since they were behind in a game by more than 20. Granted, they were down 20 last week, but even then that was the only time they've been down that far since the beginning of December.

The last 4 minutes of the Derrick Rose...err, Bulls game Saturday:

LMAO! The tournament is completely insane now. 2 of 5.9Mil picked the Final 4 right, and those 2 must have had 1900 entries each. No way anybody with 1 bracket picked these 4 teams to make it. One of the two brackets was absolutely terrible and still picked the FF correctly (along with picking UNC-Asheville over Pittsburgh). Looks like basically a set of coin flips. The other bracket, the one in the lead at ESPN, was the guy's only bracket, which is unfathomable.

Well, Calipari is off to his first Final Four for the third time.

Looking at the Spurs' remaining schedule, it's gone from "one in a million" to "realistic possibility" that the Bulls catch them for best record overall.

Bulls close the game on a 12-0 run to win a game they never led until that run.

Not a bang-up start to the third quarter here.

From Hollinger's article today, he mentioned what could be one of the more interesting races of the last 10 games: home court advantage in the NBA Finals among the Bulls/Celtics/Heat and Lakers/Mavs. Basically, here is the tiebreaker order: 1) Record in games against each other 2) Record in games against the other's conference 3) Random drawing Now, since the Bulls swept the Mavs, and the Mavs swept the Celtics and Heat, those tiebreakers are pretty straightforward. Also, since Miami swept the Lakers, that one is also straightforward. However, the Lakers split with the Celtics and Bulls, so it goes to the second tiebreaker. Record vs. other conference: Lakers 21-9 (done), Bulls 20-7 (MEM,PHO,@MIN), Celtics 17-11 (@MIN,@SA). Since the Lakers are done with the East and have fewer losses than the Celtics, the Lakers win the tiebreaker against Boston. So, all that's yet to be decided is the Bulls-Lakers tiebreaker. If the Bulls win at least 2 of their 3 West games remaining, they get it. If the Bulls lose all 3 West games, the Lakers get it. If, though, the Bulls lose 2 of 3, then the tiebreaker for home court advantage in the Finals would go to a random drawing. Considering that the likeliest teams to make the Finals at this juncture are the Bulls and Lakers, this could become kind of a big deal.

They'll fill those holes. With what? Aren't they up against the cap? That leaves the draft and trades besides James, Wade and Bosh what do they have to trade? Of course, everything now depends on the new CBA, but under the current rules even teams over the cap get a mid-level exception every year to use on adding a player.

That would be impressive. NCAA, of course.

That very last FT miss by Wisconsin prevented them from finishing the year with the best FT shooting percentage in NBA history.

Anaheim just tied Dallas at 3 with 6 seconds to play to force OT, so each of them gets a point. I hate the OT system.

The big difference right now in the East standings is how well the teams have performed against the tough Southwest division. The Celtics are just 3-6 against those teams, with a game remaining in San Antonio (and they did beat SA for one of the wins). Miami is 4-5 with a game vs. Houston remaining. Orlando is 5-5, Atlanta 2-6 (HOU/SA), Philly 3-6 (HOU), Pacers 2-7 (NO), the Knicks 5-5. The Bulls? 8-1, with a game vs. Memphis remaining.

The Bulls won't have the tiebreaker over the Celts, but if the Bulls win the head to head, that gives them now a one-game cushion for the other 11 games.

Celtics lost to Memphis tonight, so the Bulls now have a 1 game lead for the top seed. Miami about to beat Detroit, though, so they'll remain 2.5 back. Could feasibly sneak into the 2 seed at this point.

Last night's game, they ran the last 5-6 minutes of the second quarter with Rose-Korver-Deng-Boozer-Noah, and absolutely destroyed the Hawks. With that lineup, for the year, the Bulls' offensive rating is 121, about 10 points higher than the best offensive team in the NBA. Defensively, they struggle, but when they can take advantage of a matchup where Korver can guard an offensive non-factor, that is a scary go-to lineup.

And then @ Detroit and a home game at Toronto after that. Yeah, they'd have to lay an egg to lose any of their next 6 (not that they haven't done that before). Last 6 will be interesting (home vs. Phoenix/Boston, @Cleveland/Orlando/NY Knicks, vs. NJ), but if 3-3 gets them to 60 wins, they should be able to reach it. Question is, will 60 wins be enough to win the East?

Just to tie all the conversations together...I think the Bulls would have definitely beaten the 90-91 Bulls last night.