Ok, technically it was 31 minutes and 26 seconds.
The Bulls improved to 5-0 in the preseason last night following a 103-98 dub over divisional “rival” Indiana. The quotation marks are around rival because Derrick Rose made a few headlines yesterday by noting while the Pacers are a good team, the only squad he truly views as a hated foe (i.e. rival) is the one down in South Beach.
The Pacers may have taken some offense to that given how physical last night’s game was. “That was crazy — cheap shots, trash talking,” Taj Gibson said. “I forgot it was a preseason game.” All of the extracurricular activites seemed to fuel D-Rose however. The hometown kid dropped 32 points and added nine assists on 4-7 from the land of triples.
The Bulls played without Joakim Noah who’s sidelined for a week with a groin injury and Jimmy Butler who missed his second consecutive game thanks to a bruised left knee. Here’s to Tom Thibodeau finding a way not to run his starters into the ground with massive minutes this season.
Photo: USA Today