DR1

After last year, anythings possible. If rose/kirk can keep mo williams in check, noah, taj, and brad can keep control of the glass, and deng can stifle lebron some, anythings possible. Kirk and deng are no stranger to being the underdogs... celtics last year.. the heat in 07... both were predicted to be sweeps.

theres three teams i absolutely hate in this league.. detroit, boston, and cleveland. kick some ass gentlemen.

Atleast we have Deng this year although Deng wasn't nearly as important as Gordon was for us. The best thing Deng can do this series is atleast try to wear down Lebron, just slow him down. You have to make him a volume shooter and not get to the foul line and make everything tough for him. The X-Factor in this series for the Cavs is Mo Williams. After watching the last game we played against them, he hit some ridiculously stupid shots. Shots that shouldn't have gone in but did. I pray this isn't a Ray Allen sequel and he starts pulling shots out of his butt all series long. Kirk needs to defend him with his life depended on it.

Now for us, Rose is the key. He's been tearing it up as of late and the Cavs have nobody that can stop him. Nobody in the league can guard Derrick 1 on 1 and he needs to exploit the Cavs defense so it will open up open shots for his teammates. And then THEY NEED to knock down the shots. Noah is going to do his thing on the boards. The Cavs will have a rusty Shaq who really doesn't have much to give anymore. I don't think Noah will have a problem at all on the boards. The X-Factor for us is Kirk Hinrich. You could go Taj but I think Kirk's defense on Mo Williams is the most important thing in this series. But he also needs to be the Kirk that scores at an efficient rate as well. I'm not saying he's going for 30 every game but he needs to help in the scoring effort if we are going to win this series.

With that all said I expect the Cavs to win perhaps 4-1 but I'm not putting any bets down. The Bulls shocked us last season, taking the C's to 7 I wouldn't be surprised if they did the same thing to Cleveland. We do match up fairly well overall against the Cavs but Lebron is Lebron and I'm afraid he's just going to be too much.

Unfortunately for us, I don't see any way that NBA officiating allows us to win this series when it comes down to it.

noah's motto for the playoffs: shock the world.

True that, but I'd still love to see the Bulls put some pressure on the Cavs. Rose has been on fire lately and is beginning to control games. With Hinrich actually contributing, that's a pretty awesome back court. Lebron is really the only player on the Cavs that scares me at all. Jamison is somewhat scary, but he can be contained. Other than that, what else do they have? Mo Williams? Old Shaq? I hope that Noah completely wears him down. The Bulls are a much younger team who can definitely provide a challenge to the Cavs. That said I'm not sure how the Bulls can win 4 games against Lebron and Co, but who wouldn't love to see it happen?

Mo williams can light it up as well.I just want the bulls to make it interesting!

Shaq will not be a problem for us unless they build a huge lead and start feeding him down low. I can imagine Noah wearing the hell out of him just running down the court. Shaq cannot keep up with Noah and that will be a huge advantage to us.

I want a 6 game series.

no blowouts please!

I would expect JJ Hickson to get more minutes than Shaq.. and defending him is a little more difficult.

Well that was a pretty all around terrible game. Outside of Rose, nobody did much of anything. Joakim Noah looked lost out there, he was getting killed on the boards by Varejo and that CANT happen. Luol Deng is worthless, what a joke of 70 million dollars. I guess if anything atleast we made it a game. I'd like to see us win atleast one game this series. Cleveland is just way too talented, so in order to win Rose needs to shoot better and Hinrich or Deng needs to score 20+ and we need to play team defense.

DENG must be traded!

normally under these circumstances i'd accept a 10ish point loss but this one was just embarassing

How good are you at hypnosis?