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.

“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.

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.