Hoops4theSoul

Oct

9

NBA Preseason Basketball: Chicago Bulls versus Milwaukee Bucks

Filed Under Previews & Reviews, NBA, Chicago Bulls

The Chicago Bulls and the Milwaukee Bucks will kick off their respective pre-seasons in Lacrosse, Wisconsin in less than 30 minutes.

Yi Jianlian Makes His Debut with the Milwaukee Bucks TonightFor Chicago, this is a make-or-break season, as the Bulls enter the fourth and possibly last season of the Kirk Hinrich, Ben Gordon and Luol Deng era. Chicago does hold the rights to Gordon and Deng for two more years, but both players are going to demand a lot of money, possibly more than the Bulls are willing to spend. And if the Bulls don’t break through this season and reach the NBA Finals, especially with Ben Wallace a year older, will Chicago ever do so with this team?

If that’s not reason enough to be urgent, the Eastern Conference is much improved with the Boston Celtics picking up Kevin Garnett and even the Knicks trading for a difficult match-up in Zach Randolph. Chicago is one of the best teams in the conference because of its team attitude, unselfishness and commitment on defense; the Bulls will need to hang their hats on these attributes once again while hoping that Gordon and Deng both emerge as 20-22 point scorers a game.

After missing the playoffs last season, the Bucks will be looking to get back on track with Michael Redd leading the way once again. Milwaukee also brought back a familiar face, athletic small forward Desmond Mason, who will be competing with Bobby Simmons for a starting position. With that said, all eyes are on the Bucks’ first round pick, Yi Jianlian of China. The Bucks took a gamble on Yi, whose camp didn’t want him to go to a small market like Milwaukee. Yi finally arrived and has been dodging questions about his age.

And yet Milwaukee fans should be excited to see Yi get going here in the preseason. Bucks GM Larry Harris took a big risk, and the gain, in time, could be huge with Jianlian, who along with Chicago rookie Joakim Noah, are the players to watch tonight.

By Chris Maynard, chris@hoops4thesoul.com

Share and Enjoy


These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.
  • Digg
  • del.icio.us
  • Netvouz
  • DZone
  • ThisNext
  • MisterWong
  • Wists


Related Posts


Comments

Leave a Reply




*
To prove you're a person (not a spam script), type the security word shown in the picture. Click on the picture to hear an audio file of the word.
Click to hear an audio file of the anti-spam word