Imrem: Bulls' rout restores order in East playoffs
The Bulls finally restored order in the NBA East on Thursday night at Milwaukee.
Looking like they're supposed to look, the Bulls crushed the Bucks 120-66 to win their first-round playoff series in six games.
"As a team," Bulls head coach Tom Thibodeau said, "we played very hard and smart and unselfishly."
From the very beginning, the Bulls' scorers scored, rebounders rebounded, defenders defended, dishers dished, coaches coached … and all of them did at least a bit of everything else, too.
"We did everything we wanted to do," Bulls forward Mike Dunleavy said.
Once the Bulls' lead went from 20 to 30 and 30 to 40, all that remained was to keep the frustrated Bucks from inflicting any bodily harm.
Mission accomplished, so now the conference is back to where it started with the Bulls advancing to play the Cavaliers in the playoffs.
"We have to bring the same approach (as tonight) to the next series," Bulls forward Pau Gasol said.
A season filled with continuity and chemistry issues for both teams rendered Bulls-Cavs a semifinal series instead of the East finals, but the winner likely will be favored to advance to the NBA Finals.
How ironic it is that after years of playing without Derrick Rose and other injured players in the playoffs, the Bulls will face a Cavaliers team beset by adversity.
The Cavs lost Kevin Love to injury for the rest of the postseason and J.R. Smith to suspension for the first two games of the Bulls' series.
Without two valuable starters, the Cavaliers still have LeBron James, the world's best player, and Kyrie Irving, an emerging superstar.
But can Cleveland expect James to continue his playoff dominance of the Bulls under these circumstances?
"LeBron is the type of guy who can make you pay for a lot of things," Thibodeau said.
Imagine the Bulls of the 1990s playing the first two games of a postseason series with Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen but without Horace Grant and John Paxson or without Dennis Rodman and Ron Harper.
We'll never know whether the assignment would have been too much even for Jordan, but we're about to find out whether it's too much for James.
(Sure, sure, you're thinking the Bulls could have lost four starters and played 1-on-4 and Jordan still would have prevailed.)
The Bulls must be thinking that Cleveland's predicament is some sort of cosmic payback for the pain and suffering they have experienced.
Rose missed all but one game of the past three postseasons as he endured multiple knee injuries and surgeries. This regular season alone, Rose endured another knee surgery and most other core Bulls missed games with a variety of injuries.
Now, though, the Bulls are as healthy as they have been for a long while, without a single player on the injury list.
Now for Monday's series opener it'll be the Cavaliers reeling from Love's injury and Smith's suspension.
All that said, nobody is about to count out the Cavs as long as they have James and Irving.
To beat Cleveland, the Bulls still will have to play as well as they did in Game 6 against the Bucks rather than how they played in the previous three games of the series.
"They're a great team," Bulls guard Derrick Rose said of the Cavaliers. "It should be a fun series."
It really will be fun for the Bulls if the old order restored against the Bucks leads to a new order against LeBron James.