No other Chicago starter scored in double digits, but it doesn’t really matter when your point guard drops 44 points on 16-for-27 shooting like Derrick Rose did in Game 3. Joakim Noah had the Rodman-esque line of two points, 15 rebounds and five blocks, while Carlos Boozer and his turf toe scored six points (on 3-of-6 shooting) in just 22 minutes. Taj Gibson picked up Boozer’s slack, posting 13 points and 11 rebounds off the bench.

Derrick Rose accepted the MVP award in a pregame ceremony and played like a MVP to help the Bulls win Game 2. He didn’t play great, mind you — 25 points on 10-of-27 shooting, 10 assists, six rebounds and eight assists — but he played like the Bulls’ most valuable player. Chicago needs him to score, so he scores. Right now, the Bulls aren’t getting the kind of production they need from Carlos Boozer, who should be an 18/10-type of guy, but is shooting 40% from the field and averaging under 11 points per game in the playoffs.

Joakim Noah was outstanding (19 points, 14 rebounds and three steals), but the Bulls aren’t going to get that kind of scoring production out of him on a nightly basis. Luol Deng (14 points, 12 rebounds) was his steady self, but he’s not good enough offensively to be the Bulls #2 option on that end of the floor.

Based on what I’ve seen of the Bulls this postseason, I don’t see them getting by the Heat in a potential matchup next round. Without solid production from Boozer, they are too dependent on Rose to score and he can’t pour in 30 points every night.

Per NBA.com…

Rose totaled 1,182 points including 113 first-place votes, from a panel of 120 sportswriters and broadcasters throughout the United States and Canada as well as an NBA MVP fan vote.

Rounding out the top five in voting are Orlando’s Dwight Howard (643 points, three first place), Miami’s LeBron James (522, four first-place votes), the Los Angeles Lakers’ Kobe Bryant (428, one first-place vote) and Oklahoma City’s Kevin Durant (190).

As I discussed back in early March, I agree with the selection of Rose since he led his team to the league’s best record after losing his team’s second and third best players for big chunks of the season.

I am a little surprised that Dirk Nowitzki didn’t crack the Top 5 in voting, though Kevin Durant is surely a rising star. It’s interesting that Dwight Howard beat out LeBron James and that Dwyane Wade didn’t make the Top 5 at all.

Danny Granger had some choice words for Joakim Noah after the Pacers were eliminated in Game 5, per ESPN.

“He pulled a cowardly move,” Granger said. “He cheap-shotted a couple of my teammates, and one gets thrown out …

“The refs never catch what he did … it’s cowardly. And I’m going to say something about it. I wanted to say something about it all the way to the game was over. I just don’t think the game should be played that way. You can play hard and fight and battle, but when you start cheap-shotting people it gets out of hand.”

For his part, Noah didn’t escalate the situation any further:

“I played dirty? OK. I’m just trying to win basketball games, man,” Noah said. “It’s the name of the game.

“I’m just out there trying to do what I gotta do. Like I said, I give a lot of credit to their team. They play hard as hell. They were competitive. I don’t have anything bad to say about them. Everybody saw what happened out there. Now you want to call me a dirty player? I don’t think I’ve ever been a dirty player. It is what it is. It’s OK.”

Josh McRoberts didn’t seem to take issue with Noah’s play.

“I’m not mad about it,” McRoberts said. “He got a good hit on me. They caught me trying to hit him back.

“It’s part of the game. I’m not going to say it’s dirty. That’s Game 5 of a playoff series. You can’t say it’s dirty, it’s part of basketball.”

Here’s the play in question. You’ll see at the 0:25 mark that Noah was standing still underneath the basket with his elbow raised and McRoberts initiated the contact. Noah does nothing wrong.

Noah is not a popular player outside of Chicago, but I like his game. He plays with great energy and has a terrific feel for the game, especially for a big man. He is the heart and soul of this Bulls team.

Watch as Rose turns the ball over, hustles back on defense and swats the shot away. Impressive.

After the Heat’s 87-86 loss to the Bulls on Sunday, which marks their fourth straight defeat, Ira Winderman of the South Florida Sun Sentinel reported the following:

In case you’re thinking that Spoelstra was misquoted, here’s the video of his post game presser.

On the surface, it appears that Spoelstra revealed that a couple of players were crying to illustrate his point that “it’s not a matter of want,” but there is some speculation that he was trying to call out his team for not being tough enough mentally.

I doubt he’s that nefarious. I suspect that he was trying to relay that his team is emotionally engaged and went too far with his words. In the video, you can see him pause before he mentioned the crying, almost wondering whether or not he should reveal that little tidbit.

So did he go too far? I’d say he did. A coach should have the trust of his players and vice versa. The locker room should be like Las Vegas — whatever happens there, stays there. He didn’t name names, but that might just make matters worse as every player on that roster might be guilty.

Guilty of what? It’s human to cry, right? Well, not so much. I cried once during my college basketball career and that was after my final game as a senior when we (surprisingly) lost a tournament game at home. The weight of the moment — that my days of competitive basketball player were over — reduced me to a blubbering idiot. I stuffed my face in a towel until I could get a hold of my emotions. It was an end of an era, my era, not some regular season loss. The Heat players shouldn’t be crying right now. They should be angry, and they should channel that anger into making sure that this four-game losing streak ends on Tuesday.

Maybe that was Spoelstra’s point. Or maybe he just lost whatever trust was left in that locker room.

The Miami Heat are in the midst of an 11-game run against teams with winning records, and so far they’ve dropped the first four. On Sunday, they lost to the Bulls 87-86, even though LeBron James, Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh combined for 69 points on 53% shooting from the field.

Derrick Rose staked his claim to be the league’s MVP (once again) with a 27-point, five-assist performance, leading the Bulls to a 3-0 season sweep against the Heat. Carlos Boozer struggled to 12 points and 10 boards, but Luol Deng had a very nice game with 18 points.

I think Chicago has established itself as at least the second-best team in the East. The Bulls’ defense is outstanding thanks to the arrival of longtime Celtics’ assistant Tom Thibodeau, and offensively, everything runs through Rose. They look like they know what they’re doing while Miami sometimes look confused and out of sorts.

The win is big for Chicago because neither team wants to play the Knicks in the first round. New York will likely finish in the #6 spot, which means whoever finishes #3 has to face the dangerous combination of Carmelo Anthony, Amare Stoudemire and Chauncey Billups. The Bulls are now two games ahead of the Heat in the loss column and hold the tiebraker, so they’re likely to face the Sixers in the first round, not the Knicks.

If the Heat have to face the Knicks in the first round and the Bulls in the semis, forget about making the Finals, they may have a tough time even winning a series or two.

Chris Bosh missed 17 of his 18 shot attempts last night in the Heat’s 93-89 loss in Chicago. His shooting performance was so bad that it got me wondering — historically speaking, just how bad was it?

Basketball-Reference has a ‘play finder’ that allows users to look up individual games or seasons based on a series of criteria. It only goes back to the 1986-87 season, but for our purposes, that’s probably far enough. I asked the site to generate a list of players that attempted 15 or more shots but had two or fewer makes, and list those results in order of ascending field goal percentage. The resulting list shows the very worst shooting nights over the last 25 years.

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GMs around the league were worried that there wouldn’t be much action leading up to Thursday’s trade deadline, but once the Carmelo Anthony trade went down, there has been a flurry of activity highlighted by the Nets’ acquisition of Deron Williams.

Here are five more trades that should happen, but probably won’t. They generally include one older player on a bad team that isn’t going anywhere.

Click on each trade’s headline to see it in the ESPN Trade Machine.

1. Steve Nash to Atlanta for Jamal Crawford and two first round picks
Free Steve Nash! The Hawks aren’t the ideal destination for Nash, but the Hawks really need a floor leader and the team has the defensive frontcourt (Josh Smith, Al Horford) to make up for Nash’s weakness on that end of the court. Smith and Horford would work well in Nash’s patented screen-and-roll and he would take the pressure off of Joe Johnson to create as the shot clock is winding down. The Suns aren’t going to get much out of this deal other than cap relief (Crawford’s deal is expiring) and a couple of first round picks, but Nash is 37 years old and deserves to play in the postseason. The Suns aren’t going anywhere anyway.

2. Rip Hamilton to Chicago for Kyle Korver and Ronnie Brewer
Rip can still play. He’s averaging 13.3 points per game and his shooting 40%+ from 3PT even though his minutes are sporadic. He works hard on defense and has kept himself in great shape throughout his career, so he should be able to contribute for the remainder of his contract. His spot up jumper would be a nice fit alongside Derrick Rose in the Chicago backcourt. The Pistons would be rid of the headache of keeping Rip on the roster without playing him and would get a couple of youngish wings in Korver and Brewer that could actually contribute.

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