The Bulls travel to San Antonio tonight on a back to back to take on Eva Longoria-less Tony Parker and the Spurs. The Bulls went 2-0 against the Spurs last year winning on opening night 92-85 behind 17/9 from Luol Deng. The Bulls also won in San Antonio later in the year when they went on a West Coast tear winning six in a row in games including all .500 teams.
This year, the Spurs look very good early on as they are 8-1 and currently on a 7 game win streak. Manu Ginobili is averaging 21 points per game on 46.5% shooting. Tony Parker is averaging 18 points per game and 8 assists per game on 51.2% shooting. Tim Duncan hasn't been as impressive as usual early on averaging 13.4 points per game and 9 rebounds per game in 30 minutes per game.
The starting lineups will look like this:
PG: Derrick Rose (Bulls) vs Tony Parker (Spurs)
Should be an easy matchup win for Rose. Rose has struggled in his career against the Spurs though averaging only 15.5 points per game on 43.3% shooting and 7 assists per game in 4 career games against the Spurs.
SG: Keith Bogans (Bulls) vs Manu Ginobili (Spurs)
Former San Antonio Spur Keith Bogans takes on his former team. Should be an easy match-up win for the Spurs here. Keith Bogans has to defend the 3 point line well and not let Manu take easy 3's.
SF: Luol Deng (Bulls) vs Richard Jefferson (Spurs)
Jefferson has had a pretty impressive season thus far. I'd label this matchup as a slight win for the Spurs although it's very close between these two.
PF: Taj Gibson (Bulls) vs Tim Duncan (Spurs)
Easy matchup win for the Spurs. Taj Gibson needs to play much better than he did last night (1-9 shooting) if the Bulls want to take a win tonight. Tim Duncan absolutely owned the Bulls in both games last year making every bank shot he took.
C: Joakim Noah (Bulls) vs DeJuan Blair (Spurs)
The guy I wanted to draft instead of Taj Gibson is playing just abysmal this year. Blair is a fantastic rebounder (7.9 rebounds per game in 23 minutes per game) but he's only shooting 30% from the field this year which is beyond horrendous for a Center. This is an easy matchup win for Joakim. Hopefully he abuses a pretty good defender in Blair.
Bench: Kyle Korver, Ronnie Brewer, CJ Watson, Omer Asik (Bulls) vs George Hill, Matt Bonner, Antonio McDyess, Gary Neal
Looks like an edge for the Bulls especially if the Bulls bench plays as well as they did last night. Look out for George Hill who seems to always play well against the Bulls.
Coaching: Tom Thibodeau (Bulls) vs Greg Popovich (Spurs)
Obvious win for the best coach in the NBA.
Prediction:
I think the Bulls stumble on the 2nd half of a back to back. Should be a close game and I wouldn't be surprised if the Bulls do end up taking this one. Spurs are tough to beat though when they aren't on back to backs.
Bulls 93 Spurs 101
No comments:
Post a Comment