Bulls’ Bench Mobs Miami
Media have a responsibility to remain professional during games, and that means refraining from cheering when the home team does something awesome. Sometimes, though, even the calmest of reporters loses it in the presence of an unbelievable dunk or blocked shot or last-minute three-pointer, and that’s what happened in Game 1 of the Eastern Conference Finals when Taj Gibson dunked over Dwyane Wade with unbridled ferocity.
So you can imagine that if the media is getting giddy over something, a raucous United Center crowd would be out of their minds, on the edge of pandemonium. To see a non-starter do that to Miami’s best player helped jumpstart an impressive Game 1 victory for the Chicago Bulls, but Chicago’s bench has doing a whole lot of jump-starting all season long.
"Our second team is not intimidated by anybody in this league," Gibson said after scoring a huge 9 points and hauling in 7 rebounds in 23 minutes of action. "We’ve played against our starters all the time in practice, and a lot of our second team used to be starters on their previous team, plus Omer coming over from the Turkish team. We’ve just got a lot of confidence in our players, and that confidence builds in practice and late in games. It works out well for us."
Ronnie Brewer, who spent quite a bit of time in Game 1 frustrating Dwyane Wade, said the key to the Chicago bench’s success comes from their ability to do the dirty work so many players aren’t always interested in doing.
"We pride ourselves on defense," he said. "We’re a help defense team, and whenever they drive we try to help. It’s going to be a team effort against those guys. Chris Bosh had a huge game, and we have to focus on him a little better. LeBron didn’t make the shots he usually makes—same thing with D-Wade. So we’ve got to take them on with the mentality that we’re going to shut them down. We don’t want them to have a let-up when the starters are subbed."
And that’s the thing about this series—yes, the Bulls bench is better than Miami’s, but what does that matter when Miami so rarely plays their bench? The Chicago second unit is going to spend a lot of time against the Miami first unit, and that could prove a daunting task for a lot of benches in the league. But not Chicago’s.
{AUTHOR_BOX}"That’s what we’ve done all year," Kyle Korver, the second unit’s resident offensive specialist, said. "We haven’t changed the way we’ve played since the first game in the season. Our rotations are basically the same, the minutes are basically the same, and Coach has shown faith in the second unit all year. Now he’s doing it here in the playoffs, too, and that means a lot to us."
"We don’t want to be that group that comes into the game and loses the game or has teams always scoring on us," C.J. Watson added. "We just have to keep playing aggressive. When everyone comes off the bench aggressive, looking for their shots and playing hard defense, that’s when we’re at our best."
Few teams go ten guys deep this late in the postseason, but the Bulls do, and some would argue that those second five are the best defensive lineup Chicago’s got. They call themselves the Bench Mob, and it’s something that’s caught on all over the city the last couple of months. With the play of Gibson, and the defense of Brewer and Omer Asik, and the sharp-shooting of Korver, it’s probable that their popularity continues to grow. From Korver’s perspective, that’s just a result of everybody knowing their place on the team and working together for the common good.
"That’s been one of our strengths all year," he said. "The second unit plays with a chip on their shoulder. We’re not real flashy. Obviously it’s a second unit, so there’s no superstars, but we have great chemistry, and that second unit plays really hard. Taj obviously had a great night tonight, and Omer’s defense just changes the game when he’s in there. We all just kind of play our roles."
Those roles played a huge part of Chicago’s Game 1 victory, and must continue to remain important the rest of the series if the Bulls are to make it back to the Finals for the first time since 1998. If that happens, we Chicago media will throw all professionalism out the window, at least inwardly, as we watch in excited silence while the United Center crowd slips into collective insanity.
How many other benches remaining in this year’s playoffs can do that to a building?
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