Check out the Advanced Box Score from Thursday night’s Game 6 Brooklyn Nets victory over the Chicago Bulls here.
Some final takeaways:
- Update on the Andray Blatche-Brook Lopez combo: in the 13 minutes the two shared the floor against Chicago last night, the Nets outscored the Bulls 24-21, despite shooting only 5-17 from the field. The team drew 11 fouls in those 13 minutes (including the two late fouls that Blatche drew to ice the game’s result from the free throw line), which is how they were able to outscore Chicago despite the poor shooting numbers. The Nets have now outscored the Bulls 115-74 in 49 minutes with Blatche and Lopez on the floor this series.
- Reggie Evans gets a lot of flack for his lack of offensive ability, but we got a quintessential Reggie Evans game Thursday night: zero field goals and 15 rebounds in 29 minutes. Not much to expect other than that.
- To give you an idea of how healthy each team was, and how much trust each team has in their bench: the Bulls ran a six-man rotation with three players getting garbage minutes, one player playing through puking (Nate Robinson) and another playing the full 48 minutes (Jimmy Butler). Four of their starters played over 40 minutes. Only one bench player for Chicago got more than five minutes of playing time. Brooklyn essentially stuck with its eight-man rotation, and only one starter (Deron Williams) played more than 40 minutes.
- The secret sauce to this game: the Bulls threw away some sloppy, unforced turnovers in bad stretches, whereas the Nets ended the game with a surprisingly low turnover rate — just 8.8%. That said, Reggie Evans field goal attempts do not technically count as turnovers in the box score.
- One final note: It was an oversight not to give Kris Humphries a grade last night after his performance. Humphries played some of his best minutes of the season in the victory, even playing some backup “center” and mitigating the time between Reggie Evans and Andray Blatche well. Humphries scored once off the dribble with his left hand and even hit an and-one flailing jumper in the fourth quarter that displayed so much touch Marv Albert accidentally called him “Lopez” as it went in. Humphries can’t be “the” difference-maker off this bench, but if he provides minutes like he did Thursday night, all the better.
