Warriors Retreat

Normally, when I present a shot from the United Center seats, it means I was at the game.  In this case however, the photo on the left was taken by fellow Tribune agate editor Luis Medina.  As it turned out, he picked a good game to attend.  The Bulls put on one of their best performances of the season to beat the Golden State Warriors 103-83.

After trailing by three following the first quarter, the Bulls outscored Golden State in the next two frames by a collective 24 points.  Not one Warriors starter reached double figures, which Tom Thibodeau would like to see against every opponent in a perfect world.  Hopefully, he'll settle for a one-night defensive performance in that regard and his team's seventh win in their last eight games.

Taj Gibson came off the bench to lead all scorers with 21 points.  Jimmy Butler returned after missing two games due to injury and scored 16.  Mike Dunleavy shared his 15-point total with Carlos Boozer, whose latest double-double included 13 rebounds.  Joakim Noah continued to make a case for one of the best all-around centers in the league, featuring a line of eight points, 17 rebounds and seven assists.  Anyone would be crazy to not consider he just might be breaking out into superstardom, although another top scorer on this team would do wonders.

This is where I analyze what the game means, but I'm going to try and get in Luis' shoes tonight.  When Derrick Rose's season ended, Luis was on board with the tanking-for-the-draft crowd.  As he put it, it was "lose today for a better tomorrow".  Tonight was his first game in person this season.  He was getting out of that tanking boat recently, but hopefully, this dominating win put away any remaining doubt in his mind that these Bulls will continue to play as hard as their play will take them.  That's the case with the entire organization and whether it will benefit them long-term or not, it should always be relaxing to see great basketball on any given night.

There are nights when it's hard for people to see that and they'll easily point out that having less talent than they did at the start of the season will eventually do them in.  Sunday's Miami loss was one example.  Lately however, such games are outliers to the high quality of play we've seen from the Bulls since the calendar flipped to 2014.  Thibodeau is going to force his guys to keep this up and they'll be more than happy to oblige.  "Quit" is not a word familiar to the Bulls, nor will it be.  If they can't win a championship, they can least go down swinging like a dwarf trying to fight a giant.

The merriment will hopefully continue Friday when they play the Dallas Mavericks in Texas.  End February on a high note and the confidence will continue to grow.  At the moment, it's not known how high it can go, but I'd say the sky's the limit for them.