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In a shocking turn of events, Thibs won COY. That’ll happen when you slap 21 wins on a team that finished 41-41 last year. He may want to thank DRose for his new piece of hardware. As Thibs will most likely say, this isn’t the piece of hardware that he is ultimately trying to obtain. It’s obvious that he and the rest of the team are gunning for the Larry O’Brien Trophy (worst trophy and worst trophy name in sports?), and the Atlanta Hawks now stand in their way. The Bulls played this team three times in the month of March and won the regular season series 2-1. The Hawks stole the first game by coming back from a 17-point deficit in the second half and the Bulls blew them out of the gym the last two games #HealthyAndConfidentCarlosBoozer. Lets break this series down.

Starting Five:

The latest word is that CaptainKirk is doubtful for the series with an injured hammy. Hinrich is by far the Hawks’ best perimeter defender and with him out, DRose will pretty much have free reign and will be able to do whatever he wants on the court. For Derrick, getting to the rim should be, as Stacey King would say, “easy cheese”. Deng has been a stalwart on both ends of the court all season and its good that both he and Derrick got these extra days of rest. Joakim is looking like he is back in form and is no longer plagued by injury. After a negative MRI, Boozy is still not practicing. Hopefully Carlos can get out of this funk and gain some confidence in this series. Hawks will throw JJ, Horford, Josh Smith, and Jason Collins at the Bulls. JJ has no problem filling it up and Horford has a good inside game. Look for JJ to take advantage and drop a bunch on the smaller Bogans, but the Bulls defense should be able to not let anyone else hurt them. We may even see JJ guard DRose a little as the Hawks try to throw a bigger guard at him. Advantage: Bulls

Bench:

The Hawks have last year’s 6^th man of the year Jamal Crawford at the Bulls off the bench. The guy could definitely deposit the ball in the hoop, but has more holes in his defensive game than a fishing net (could be worse than Boozer believe it or not). Besides J.Craw, the Hawks have Zaza Pachulia (the Jeff Foster of this series), Dominique Wilkins’ nephew Damien, and the former #2 overall draft pick Marvelous Marvin Williams will also come off the pine. Thibs proved in the Pacer series that he shorted up his bench rotations. HotSauce, TajMahal, and RonRonJuice will see most of the minutes. BigSexy and CJ will see some minutes due to foul trouble, but not many (although I would love to see Omerica and Zaza exchange Eastern European pleasantries #AsikAndDestroy). Korver is playing well and Taj came up huge in the last series, hopefully that will continue. Tough call here, but I’m giving the Bulls the slight edge because Zaza ,Marvin, and ‘Nique’s nephew are a pu-pu platter of stink. Advantage: Bulls

Coaching:

Both coaches are in their first year, but as everyone knows Thibs has been in the league for a lifetime. Larry Drew was able to develop a great game plan against D12 and the Magic, but I don’t think the same strategy will work for him against DRose. Plus Thibs just won COY, the man is on a roll. Advantage: Bulls

Intangibles:

The Bulls showed in the first series that they weren’t going to retaliate hard fouls with hard fouls of their own. The Hawks may take a page out of the Pacer playbook and make Zaza and Jason Collins their own goon squad and try to take Derrick out of his game. The Hawks’ roster isn’t filled with the same type of gritty, “blue-collar” players on Indy, and this plays into the Bulls hands as they lost the battle for those 50-50 balls against the Pacers. Advantage: Push

Prediction:

The Hawks’ plan against D12 was to play him straight up man-to-man. They were willing to let him score inside as long as they locked down their perimeter players. Implementing that strategy against DRose would be a mistake. Unless Hinrich comes back, Jeff Teague on an island by himself guarding Derrick would be an absolute nightmare. The Hawks offense is mainly isolation, which plays right into the Bulls hands. The Bulls D should be able to clamp down on that. Look for the Bulls to learn a lot from the first series by mainly not turning the ball over as much. Bulls in 5 if Boozer shows up, Bulls in 6 if CaptainKirk shows up.