Will the real MVP please stand up?

Okay, I get it. Derrick Rose is the nicest most humble MVP ever. He gave a great speech and thanked his mom. It was all very heartfelt and he said all the right things. That being said, none of that matters anymore. Rose and his teammates lost convincingly to a team that they previously gave a thrashing to the last time they met. The Bulls got off to a very slow start going down by 10 points early during a DRose shooting stretch of 0-for-7. Honestly, I didn't think the Bulls would relinquish the lead once they got it in the 3rd quarter. But they were unable to do the same things they did against this team during the regular season. Derrick had ZERO attempts from the charity stripe and the Bulls couldn't control the glass. Another thing was that the Hawks (and especially Teague) executed a decent defensive game plan against Derrick. The Hawks were sagging off the pick-and-roll and not allowing The One to attack the basket aggressively, daring him to hit shots from the outside. DRose had no problem during the regular season proving his critics wrong about his outside game, but he wasn't able to keep the Hawks defense honest by shooting 2-for-7 from the land of plenty. When he was actually able to get to the rim, DRose was only able to hit 4-of-9 and somehow was never fouled on any of those attempts. Maybe the refs were waiting for him to actually get the MVP trophy. Was his ankle hampering him from playing his usual game? I couldn't tell you because he's been practicing every day so it doesn't seem like it. The cherry on top of this sundae of brutality is that JJ and JCraw were making EVERYTHING. Their quickness and sharp shooting was absolutely killing the Bulls and Thibs had no answer. Most of those jumpers were of the "ill-advised-fade-away-with-a-hand-in-your-face" variety. This was just one of those nights where they were making everything (JJ was 5-for-5 from behind the arc), and the Bulls were mediocre. JJ is good, but not good enough to put up 34 points every night. For some reason Thibs refused to double him. They need to get the ball out of his hands and into the those of his less talented teammates. Deng was our best player offensively, but even he couldn't keep JJ from filling up the stat sheet. Boozer played better than he had been recently (not hard seeing what he was playing like a couple days ago) and scored 3 straight baskets during a Bulls run. The bench mob surprisingly saw a lot of time together in game 1. They initially began the Bulls comeback in the 1st half and played a bit in the 2nd half. It was good to see them perform well, but Thibs may have rode them a little too long.

I'm not hating on DRose because he is obviously THE reason that the Bulls are in this position in the first place. But If the Bulls are gonna win this series, he needs to be the best player in the series. We'll see tonight if the Bulls are able to get out of this rut of slow starts and get Derrick going early. It's obvious he needs to be more aggressive and get to the rim or get fouled on his way there, the question is if his ankle will allow him to. His decision making needs to be on point on the pick-and-roll and he needs to be able to knock down the outside jumpers. I hope JJ doesn't have another night where he is making everything from everywhere, but you never know. The Bulls let one slip after Thibs got his individual trophy, hopefully the same thing doesn't happen now that DRose has his.