Pau Gasol mails in his defense against Cavs (Video)
By Seth Colgan
The Chicago Bulls may have done themselves in during Game 2 thanks to bad defense and plays where they just mailed it in — looking at you, Pau Gasol.
The Cleveland Cavalier were able to beat the Chicago Bulls on Wednesday night, and we may have found out why. While the Bulls played alright defense in Game 1, it was plays like this from Pau Gasol in Game 2 that added up to a loss for the Bulls as the series heads back to Chicago.
As you can see, Pau is really excited to be on defense in this series, as evident by his All-Star effort on this play.
Now, the first part of the play, you can see where Pau is coming from. He’s going for a rebound against Timofey Mozgov, the guy who was so tall the Cavs had to remove ceiling tiles while he ran on the treadmill for his physical. You aren’t going to get a hand on that ball most times anyway.
It’s really the second part of the play that is just hard to watch. Mozgov tips the ball out to LeBron, who feeds a cutting Iman Shumpert with a bounce pass (that bounces directly in front of Pau’s feet on the way). Not only that, but Pau cannot even muster the effort to attempt to challenge or block the shot by Shumpert. This level of defensive effort surely makes the veins in Tom Thibodeau’s forehead nearly burst.
In this series, against this Cavs team, it is very important for Pau to challenge the Cleveland bigs physically. Not to say this is some easy task, as all of Pau’s potential matchups (Mozgov, LeBron, Thompson) are known for their size and physicality. However, Pau needs to amp up the physical effort in order to slow the production of Cleveland’s post players. The Bulls won Game 1 primarily because of their defense, limiting the Cavs to just 92 points for the game, and a very low 15 in the first quarter. The Bulls must continue to hang their hat on defense to win the series.