Another baffling performance by Bulls

Boy, it’s tough to tell what to make of the Bulls’ massive comeback and narrow escape 83-81 victory over Milwaukee at the United Center on Tuesday.

From about the five-minute mark of the third quarter to almost blowing it in the final 1:20, the Bulls outscored the Bucks 44-19. They moved the ball well, made plenty of outside shots and used their defense to create fast-break opportunities – everything we expected to see when the season began.

Before Jannero Pargo got the comeback started by hitting a 3-pointer at the 5:19 mark of the third quarter, however, the Bulls were shooting 26 percent from the field in this game. They were also a robust 7 for 47 (14.9 percent) from 3-point range on the season.

As soon as Pargo hit that shot, everything changed. The Bulls hit 16 of 24 shots the rest of the way, including 5 of 7 from 3-point land.

Will this comeback give them the confidence to bring a little more juice to Cleveland on Thursday? I couldn't begin to predict.

TROUBLING SIGNS PERSIST
I’d say an appropriate comment by Scott Skiles after this game would have been to point out he did a heck of a coaching job, considering he had Charlie Bell and Carlos Delfino playing 30-plus minutes and Ersan Ilyasova taking the potential game-winning 3-pointer at the end. It fell about a foot short of the rim.

“We just didn’t come prepared to play,” Pargo said after the game. “Those guys were missing Michael Redd (knee) and Kurt Thomas. We kind of just took them for granted. A team that’s coached by Scott Skiles, you can’t do that because they’re going to play hard every game.”
Here are two more bits of bad news:

--After a decent game in Miami on Sunday, John Salmons slid back into a 3-for-15 shooting night and scored just 7 points. Salmons is now at a .259 field-goal percentage for the season, which is just baffling.

--Kirk Hinrich stayed in his slump, hitting 2 of 9 shots for 4 points against the Bucks. He’s shooting 35 percent on the season.

--Derrick Rose didn’t play well in the first three quarters (6 points, 4 turnovers), but picked it up with 10 points in the fourth.

DENG IN DEEP
Take away a mundane performance at Boston last week and Luol Deng would be averaging 22.3 points and 12.3 rebounds this season, which is better than the Bulls could have imagined.

Against the Bucks, Deng scored most of his 24 points on mid-range jumpers, which he’s obviously launching with confidence. Only 1 of his baskets came off of one of the 20 rebounds.

“We got physically dominated by Deng tonight,” Bucks coach Scott Skiles said. “We just couldn’t do anything with him.”