What a Win!

In the unpredictability that is the NBA, you get some of the weirdest possible stat lines in basketball.  I don't know what Derrick Rose thought when he saw his from Tuesday's game against the Golden State Warriors, but I'm guessing it was something along the lines of "How?"  Especially because he was the primary reason the Bulls snapped the Warriors' 19-game home winning streak 113-111 in overtime.

Near the end of regulation, Rose was saddled with a career-high 11 turnovers and not one assist.  He finally found a dime after a late Stephen Curry turnover allowed him to dish out to Kirk Hinrich for a go-ahead three.  Draymond Green had the tying putback on the next possession, ultimately setting Rose's game-winning bucket with seven seconds left in overtime.  After Klay Thompson missed a floater at the buzzer, Rose's totals were as follows:  30 points, seven rebounds, one assist and 11 turnovers.

Playing without Jimmy Butler or Mike Dunleavy, the Bulls somehow found themselves in an offensive duel with the systematic Warriors.  To be fair, the home squad was missing Andrew Bogut, but Klay Thompson and Stephen Curry still had a collective 51 points and David Lee caught fire for 24 off the bench.  Even so, they gave up a lot of second chance points and an overtime shooting slump didn't help.  In a way, the Bulls are lucky they caught the best team in the NBA on an off night.

Back to Rose's line, let's put it in perspective.  This was the first 11-turnover game this NBA season and sixth since 2009-10.  It's the eighth game with at least 30 points, seven rebounds and 11 turnovers since 1990 and first since Kevin Durant on Jan. 22 last year.  All four aforementioned stats are the first to happen exactly as listed in basketball-reference.com's database, which goes back to 1985-86.

No Dunleavy or Butler meant more chances for the remaining Bulls to score.  Pau Gasol and Joakim Noah had respective double-doubles of 18 and 16, followed by 18 and 15.  Taj Gibson was one rebound short of a double-double, but still scored 10.  Aaron Brooks also had 10 and Nikola Mirotic totaled 12.

It's frustrating to see the Bulls playing down to their level of competition and yet, so satisfying to see them come away with wins such as this.  I don't know what goes on behind closed doors, but it would be nice for someone to say they need to have these efforts with everybody, not just the league's elite.  Championship teams almost always take of business no matter how good or bad their opponent on a given night is.  Hopefully, the second half of the season can get some consistency going.

Thursday will be a nationally televised tilt with the Los Angeles Lakers.  No Kobe Bryant means a bad purple-and-gold team becomes worse going forward, but we can't chalk this up as a Bulls win yet.  We've seen so-called easy games turn into disappointments more often than we'd like this season.  Stop letting that happen and run the terrible clubs out of the building no matter where you are (especially at home, but we'll talk about that after this road trip).