Will Bulls' best show up against Celtics?
The enormity of Thursday's game against Boston is obvious.
A victory by the Bulls will effectively wrap up first place in the Eastern Conference. Their magic number would drop to 1 with four games to play. The Bulls could clinch the top seed by winning Friday in Cleveland.
That's the sort of accomplishment the Bulls have pulled off only in championship seasons.
But Luol Deng has suggested another benefit to the showdown with the Celtics. Since back-to-back mega-blowouts over Sacramento and Atlanta two weeks ago, five of the six Bulls' victories have been closely contested in the fourth quarter. And only one of those wins (Memphis) came against a potential playoff team.
“With the way we've been playing, teams like Boston, Miami, those are games that should bring out your best the whole game, to play with a lot of intensity,” Deng said following Wednesday's practice at the Berto Center. “We need that right now.
“Beginning of the year, we didn't get any credit and we played a lot harder than we are right now and we have to get back to that.”
With all that can be gained on Thursday, the Bulls can't forget that the Celtics will likely stomp into the United Center looking to make an aggressive final stand. Besides staying in the race for the top seed, Boston is also trying to beat out Miami for second place.
“They're the defending Eastern Conference champions,” said Bulls coach Tom Thibodeau, a Celtics assistant the previous three seasons. “Until someone can knock them off, you've got to be ready to compete with them.”
These teams haven't met since Jan. 8 when the Bulls beat Boston 90-79 at the United Center behind 36 points by Derrick Rose. Neither team was at full strength, with the Celtics missing Kevin Garnett and the Bulls without Joakim Noah.
Both sides should be relatively healthy this time. Aging center Shaquille O'Neal is unlikely to play for Boston, but he's appeared in just one game since Feb. 1.
“It's going to be exciting,” Noah said. “We realize it could be an opponent we see down the road. I'm just excited for the game.”
The Bulls lost at Boston twice early in the season. On Nov. 5, the Bulls had the ball with a chance to win at the end of the fourth quarter, but Rose had the ball knocked away by Rajon Rondo, and the Celtics won in overtime 110-105.
The next visit to Boston on Dec. 3 was the Bulls' second game with Carlos Boozer in the lineup. They lost 104-92 and the game wasn't very competitive.
“We've got to be ready to play,” Thibodeau said. “They're a very talented team. They're well-coached. There's not anything that we're doing that they don't know. There's not anything they're doing that we don't know. It will come down to how well we can execute and how well they can execute.”
Before these teams played on Jan. 8, the Bulls trailed Boston by 5 games in the standings. Since then, the Bulls have gone 34-8, compared to 26-16 for the Celtics.
One obvious problem since that date is Boston has gone 1-7 in the second leg of back-to-back games. Age is an issue with the Celtics, considering Ray Allen is 35, Garnett 34 and Paul Pierce 33.
But this game falls after an off-day for both teams, and there are no back-to-backs in the playoffs. So writing off the Celtics, Eastern Conference champs in two of the last three season, would be premature.
“It's that time of the year when all the little things we're not doing right, we've got to fix that,” Deng added. “It's time to really lock in. We know what comes after (Boston), but we're not really trying to look that far ahead. With the season we've had, we want to win every game. We want to have the best record possible.”