Vinny Del Negro explains his burning of timeouts
But it cost the Bulls coach Monday and could have Saturday

April 22, 2009
For the third straight day, Vinny Del Negro answered questions about not having a timeout for the game's final seconds.

After Ray Allen's three-pointer with 2 seconds left Monday night, Tyrus Thomas attempted a desperation 60-footer because Del Negro had burned the Bulls' final timeout with 20.1 seconds left and the Bulls trailing 115-113.

"People are going to second-guess and first-guess," Del Negro said. "So what? I don't care. I'm the coach. I will make the decisions. That's the way it is.

"In two or three seconds, the ball is going to go to Derrick [Rose] because he's our fastest guy to get it up the court. We set up a play in the Celtics' timeout [with 12.3 seconds left]. We didn't execute it because the Celtics did a good job with their execution."

I don't want to jinx it, but Vinny Del Negro is putting on an anti-coaching clinic for the ages. He ran out of timeouts in both games, never double-teamed Pierce when he was heating up in Game 1, didn't attack a one-legged Rondo in Game 2, put Kirk Hinrich on Allen for the biggest play of Game 2, played Brad Miller too much when the JoakimNoah-Ty Thomas combo was destroying the Celtics, and called two timeouts in the final three minutes of Game 2 to design plays for Ben Gordon, who, again, had an actual fireball shooting out of his butt. You can't just scream "go to Gordon again" from the sidelines, Vinny? Actually, why am I complaining about this? Forget I mentioned it.