Will anyone be watching the Cavs tonight with the tourney in high gear? The Cavs game starts tonight at 8:00 PM? Who knows? I will be watching the Cavs until the Buckeyes come on at 9:35 when they gear up to face Jim Rome’s Gauchos of UC Santa Barbara. Anyway, the Cavs game has the potential to be a real laugher tonight. The Bulls never fired Scott Baio Vinny Del Negro around the holidays when those rumors were hot and heavy. Around that time, the Bulls were hovering just under the 0.500 mark. Now, the Bulls find themselves back under that mark with a record of 31-35. But that includes this recent streak of 9 losses in a row including injuries to Derrick Rose, Luol Deng and Joakim Noah. The Bulls will be without all three tonight against the Cavs.
In Chicago’s last game, the starters were Taj Gibson, James Johnson, Brad Miller, Kirk Hinrich and Jannero Pargo, with Hakim Warrick, Flip Murray, Acie Law and Chris Richard logging minutes off the bench. It might not seem like much, but they managed to put up 106 points in Dallas in losing to the Mavericks.
The Cavs are carrying a five game winning streak into tonight’s game including winning 11 out of their last 12 since going on that three game losing streak. The Cavs have seemingly adjusted every single time there was anything that they needed to address. They will certainly have to step up their efforts in defensive rebounding and free throws sometime soon. The Cavs gave up 6 offensive rebounds to Indiana in the prior game, and 10 to the Pistons before that. Meanwhile, the Cavs shot 70% from the free throw line, which was an improvement over the 66.7% against Detroit. The Cavs are winning games, but they are leaving points on the floor and allowing teams more hope in the fourth quarter than I prefer.
Hopefully the Cavaliers won’t look at the injury report and overlook this Bulls team tonight.
