Perdue: Bulls must win at least 1 of first 2 at Cleveland
Bulls analyst Will Perdue took a few questions about the second-round series against the Cleveland Cavaliers, which begins Monday.
Q: What stands out to you as being more important in this series?
A: I think you've got to look at it in blocks. So obviously, the first block is Games 1 and 2 in Cleveland. No Kevin Love, no J.R. Smith. The Bulls don't have to win Game 1, but they've got to win one of the two. You have to get homecourt advantage.
Go back and look at the numbers when Love's not playing and it's significant as far as their offensive efficiency and stuff like that. The one game the Bulls did win in the rgular season, Love was out with the eye injury. You start adding all that up, there's no doubt in my mind that the Bulls players feel they should win this series. But without Love, without Smith, if you don't win one of those first two games, some doubt might start creeping in. Then that makes things even more difficult, because the rim gets smaller, mistakes are magnified.
So winning one of those two games in Cleveland is important. The Bulls could definitely make their life easier by winning Game 1, but we know that's not always how they operate.
Q: What do you think the Cavs will do differently without Love and Smith?
A: I think they'll run a lot more screen-and-rolls with Kyrie Irving, first and foremost. Whoever Pau Gasol is guarding, that's who will set the screen, because we know Pau is hesitant to come out of the paint. I'm sure the Cavs have watched film and all six games against Milwaukee. The part of the defense where the Bulls struggle most is screen-roll. So I think now the Cavs are going to run it a lot more. If it starts working, they'll keep going to it and going to it until the Bulls prove they can stop it.
If they try to run screen-and-roll with LeBron, then you can double, force him to give up the ball and that's what the Bulls want, to make somebody else beat them. So you run it wirth Kyrie all the time.
Q: For the Bulls to win, which player do they need to have a great series?
A: I'm going to go just off the numbers. The numbers say Derrick doesn't play well with one day rest. He's just not as productive and the first six games in this series are every other day. So if we're going to go by the numbers and expect Derrick not to have a great series, then what? In my opinion, that puts a lot more pressure on Jimmy Butler to carry the load, both offensively and defensively. I think Derrick's more of a wild card because you're playing every other day. I'm not saying he can't play well, I'm just strictly going off the numbers; what he's done with one day rest, compared to two days rest.
Q: Any X-factor that could be significant?
A: You cannot let Tristan Thompson get offensive rebounds. That just can't happen. You play good, solid defense, make them take a tough shot, then they get an offensive rebound -- that's just demoralizing. That's how you start breaking teams down. You look at the first game the Bulls and Cavs played this season, Thompson got 13 rebounds, 12 of them offensive. Someone is going to have to sacrifce their numbers and put a body on him and keep him off the boards. Let someone else get rebound.
It doesn't matter if we say after a game, "Oh look, Jo only had 2 rebounds." I'm going to look and see how many rebounds Thompson had. If he only had 5 or 6, then Jo did a heck of a job and sacrificed his numbers to keep Thompson off the boards. I saw Duncan do that, literally face-guard DeAndre Jordan to take him off the boards. Duncan sacrificed his own numbers because Tony Parker camre running in and picked the rebound off the floor.
Q: What's your pick?
A: I think the Bulls should win in six. Actually, let me put it this way: I think they are good enough to win in six games. We'll see what happens.