The Cavs vs Bulls Series

[ajz20]

Jeez both teams sweep and you still have to wait a week for game 1.

Has to do with TV slots...
You start this series 5 days early and you would end up having a ton of off days.
The earliest a second round series can start is Saturday. But As stated earlier ABC has first dibs to fill their Sunday slots, and they will jump on Cavs Bulls

 

[Binkster]

i dont get why you guys are confident against the bulls.. the way the cavs are allowing penetration to guys like thomas and turner are making me nervous.. if the cavs cant contain dribble drives by players less talented and athletic than drose then the cavs are in a lot of trouble.. kyrie can score but his defense is sub par especially on pick n rolls.. im officially concerned with the bulls..

 

[Kevin Ollie]

i dont get why you guys are confident against the bulls.. the way the cavs are allowing penetration to guys like thomas and turner are making me nervous.. if the cavs cant contain dribble drives by players less talented and athletic than drose then the cavs are in a lot of trouble.. kyrie can score but his defense is sub par especially on pick n rolls.. im officially concerned with the bulls..

One difference that immediately jumps to mind is that the Bulls don't play in the space that the Celtics do. Some of these possessions Boston is playing in five-out sets with even guys like Sullinger out past the three-point line. Gasol/Noah/Gibson don't provide quite as much spacing.
Not saying there is no concern, just that you can do different things to mitigate their advantage. Also, right now Rose is shooting 45% from three, that's what's making him unstoppable, going under on screens is killing the Bucks, which shouldn't be the case historically against him.

 

[Walter White]

Glad we are playing the Bulls instead of the Raptors. Raptors would have been a cake walk and wouldn't have given us the experience we desperately need with this young team. No way we would be prepared after running through the Raptors. If we can't beat the Bulls, we wouldn't be able to win the Finals anyway so I'm glad we got the team that will make us better.

Celtics have put up a good fight and have been a good introduction to the playoffs for our first timers, but the Bulls are going to show us what the playoffs are really about, and we need that.

 

[Kizzle]

John Wall is shitting on Lowry holding him to 6 PPG.

But he should've started over Kyrie in the ASG right?

 

[CHIMOCHIS]

Lowry is injured plus you add the fact he's a scrub doesn't help

He was in because of Canadians

Anyways

This series will go 7.
Winning at Chicago is hard because they will play physical and refs


I want the cavs to be more physical and actually defend

They haven't defended at championship level yet

 

[iamacavalier]

i dont get why you guys are confident against the bulls.. the way the cavs are allowing penetration to guys like thomas and turner are making me nervous.. if the cavs cant contain dribble drives by players less talented and athletic than drose then the cavs are in a lot of trouble.. kyrie can score but his defense is sub par especially on pick n rolls.. im officially concerned with the bulls..

Really they only gave up the dribble drive to Thomas and did you watch last game? Thomas was a non factor. Mid range jump shots kept them in the game which is what you want. They struggled with stopping him but adjusted the D and shut him down. I agree with @Kevin Ollie that the Cavs will not be nearly as stretched out on D with gasol and Noah.

Now I don't think the series will be easy but I don't see the Cavs losing in a best of 7. I say it goes to 6

 

[*L-Train*]

Chicago has a deep team and i don't like that they can throw the Gibson/Noah combo at us late in the game. i'm not sure if there's a better PF/C combo league wide when it comes to defending the pick&roll (our main set). we certainly gotta be more consistent from 3 in this series, JR Smith going 1-8 on mostly open 3s might work against the Celtics but Chicago would probably beat us if that happens (Shump has been in a shooting slump as well unfortunately)...

i picked this series to go 7 games before the playoffs, now Rose looks good which elevates Chicago, they could now realistically beat us if we don't play at our highest level imo. something to monitor will be how Rose plays with only one day of rest, Pelton brought this up, he had by far his worst game of the series against the Bucks when he only had one day to rest his knees and that's gonna be the case in most (if not all) games in the upcoming series.

on a side note: fuck the Hawks, they knew damn well Chicago might be the 2nd best team in the East when it's all said and done, so (during their last regular season game) up 2 going into the 4th quarter they decided to play the end of the bench and gave a close game away so that the Bulls would make the 3rd seed.

 

[secund2nun]

The hardest part of the series will be the refs, but this Cleveland squad is definitely a better team than Chicago. I think Irving will show the progress he made on defense in this series.

Gasol at this point is an awful defender and when he and Noah start and share the court together it really hurts their post offense because neither of them provide any spacing. Both Noah and Gasol are shooting in the 30% range against the Bucks. Rose won't keep this hot shooting up. He is even shooting near 50% from downtown in their series so far. He shot near 40% in the regular season.

 

[secund2nun]

Rose is taking 7.3 three pointers per game in the series so far. That is a recipe for failure. By random fluke chance he is happening to hit 3.3 of them (45%), but he is a poor three point shooter (28% this season, career 30%)

 

[Pioneer10]

Bulls have a good players but they have two issues which would make it surprising if they beat us. One is Lebron: losing Deng hurts him here a lot IMO as ive stated.

The other is that outside of Butler and on occasion Rose they dont have a two way players. Noah is great on defense and while he is AV like on offense defenses exploit the spacing issues with him. Gasol has not been good in defense. Mirotic at SF would be a joke against Lebron. Dunleavy is not much better against Lebron on defense

 

[morgwon]

The bulls don't scare me. We are a far better team than Milwaukee on both sides of the court. I think the Boston game has been very physical which is the hardest team for use to beat. Boston has a lot of young players, which are roughly equivalent on the court. Thomas vs Bradley, there just is not that much different net.. Rose vs Hinrich, that is a different story. Gasol vs Nazr, Butler vs Snell. The Chicago series will not be a platoon of hard fouls from Chicago, because they dont have the personnel to do it.

The Cavs are definitely not anywhere near the defensive team that the Bucks are.

 

[morgwon]

Bulls have a good players but they have two issues which would make it surprising if they beat us. One is Lebron: losing Deng hurts him here a lot IMO as ive stated.

The other is that outside of Butler and on occasion Rose they dont have a two way players. Noah is great on defense and while he is AV like on offense defenses exploit the spacing issues with him. Gasol has not been good in defense. Mirotic at SF would be a joke against Lebron. Dunleavy is not much better against Lebron on defense

Mirotic would not be guarding Lebron. Neither would Dunleavy. Its pretty much going to be on Buckets and Snell to make him work on the offensive end. To me this series hinges on how the Bulls use Gasol. If they use him as low post threat then I think the Bulls are in trouble. I hope they use Gasol for high screens this series instead of Noah. Noah presents absolutely no threat in the perimeter and he tries to thread the needle way too much to cutters. If Gasol can consistently hit the midrange then Mosgov will be pulled away from the basket. If he tries to post up then he has no chance.

So if Gasol is effective then the Bulls have a good chance. If not its going to be very difficult.

 

[Bulls_fan]

Not to quote everybody, but a few thoughts after reading the last few pages:

-A large majority of 3 pointers that Rose is taking is within the flow of the offense. He needs to take those. Imagine if teams are sagging way off Lebron, you'd want him to take those 3s, right? If he makes them, the more 3s within the flow of the offense you want him to take. They're falling for Rose, so he's taking them. When the defense respects the shot, it opens up driving lanes.

-Mirotic won't be guarding Lebron without significant help. Pretty sure he'll play SF whenever Lebron gets a quick breather. If not I can see Snell playing a bigger role in that series.

-Butler can defend Lebron, much better than Deng. Lebron will still do damage, but Butler plays him about as good as you can hope. Don't use this regular season as an indicator, his defense was pretty bad, but he's back to playing elite defense in the playoffs.

-The Boston series is not a reason to worry about the next round. The same reason the Bulls should not be concerned that the Bucks are playing them tight. It's the playoffs, it's expected.

-Isn't it a good thing Lowry started instead of Irving? I believe there is some rule in the CBA where if Irving started, his max salary would have increased. Probably not by much, but you never know if it could impact a future decision.

 

[scopedog]

snip

I don't disagree with much of that but I'll just say LeBron is gonna dominate either way. As has been said, he doesn't lose to the Bulls. And I highly doubt Butler can do much against him as long as LBJ is keeping the turnover rate tight.

Its a very rare man in the league who can truly slow LBJ down at all in the playoffs.

So what I'm saying is, while LeBron doesn't lose to the Bulls, the key to beating us as a team would be to focus on stopping Kyrie and Love, and hoping JR doesn't shoot well and some other things.

Unfortunately for you, I'm betting Noah or someone is gonna piss LeBron off once again and that's only gonna make it harder. But its like I said, this series is far from being decided either way. Bulls are our only real Eastern competition and I'm personally happy we have to go through 'em.