Ole!

At last check, Tom Thibodeau still leads Mike Budenholzer in the number of vowels in his surname. But virtually no one had Coach Bud one-upping Thibs in the NBA standings, never mind at his own game, this late into the season.

Coach Bud’s Atlanta Hawks (32-8) soar in from Canada for a Saturday night tilt with Thibodeau’s Chicago Bulls (8:00 PM Eastern, SportSouth, WGN), hoping two sweep a four-games-in-five-nights road trip ahead of a seven-game homestand. No matter the outcome, tonight's game will conclude the greatest first-half of an NBA basketball season that any Atlanta Hawks team has experienced.

And it’s not only the Hawks’ perch atop the Eastern Conference standings that has surprised lately. It’s the Hawks whose 99.7 defensive rating ranks Top-5 in the NBA (96.1 in January, 3^rd in NBA), not the Bulls (102.1 defensive rating, 11^th in NBA). And Chicago has really been slouching on that end of the floor (104.4 in January, 24^th in NBA), particularly at home, where the Bulls have dropped three of their last four and are a mediocre 12-9 at the United Center.

On Wednesday, Derrick Rose discovered his long-range jumper (6-for-9 3FGs), including one basket he nailed from Skokie to end the half. But his 32 points weren’t enough to keep John Wall and the Washington Wizards from zooming past the Bulls with 62 second-half points.

Two nights before, the Bulls allowed the most points in a home regulation game during the Thibodeau era, 120 points (63 in the first half) to an Orlando Magic team that came into the game with a 13-27 record. The Bulls unlocked Victor Oladipo’s All-Star mode (33 points) while Nikola Vucevic (33 points, 11 boards) was a nightmare for Pau Gasol around the rim all night.

The week before, the Utah Jazz (61 second-half points) roasted the Bulls by 20, in the Windy City. And they needed virtually all of Gasol’s vintage 46 points and 18 rebounds just to top the Milwaukee Bucks by eight. Bulls opponents have been shooting field goals this month at a 47.6% clip, the 5^th highest in the NBA. The team the Hawks blitzed yesterday, the Toronto Raptors, have only been slightly worse (48.9 opponent FG% in January).

It gets rougher for the Bulls (27-14) as last season’s Defensive Player of the Year, two-time All-Star center Joakim Noah, sprained his ankle in the first half against the Wizards, and is unlikely to play tonight after missing Chicago’s 119-103 win last night in Boston. On the strength of Rose’s 29-and-10, the Bulls were able to pull away in the second half, but not before the 13-25 Celtics put up 58 first-half points on them.

Aside from drawing technical fouls as he did last night in Boston, Noah will only be able to watch in street clothes from the sideline as perennial DPOY nominee Taj Gibson and Gasol wrangle with his fellow Gator alum. Al Horford has a chance to earn his second Conference Player of the Week award this season after averaging 21.5 PPG, 7.5 RPG, and 7.5 APG on a downright absurd 88.9 FG% in his past two games. When Noah’s ankle issues forced him to miss the Bulls-Hawks meeting in Atlanta last month, Horford had 21 points, 10 rebounds and 5 assists while Atlanta’s defense contained Rose (6-for-21 shooting, 0-for-7 on threes) to a season-low 86 points.

Gibson and the Bulls’ forwards will have to take turns helping Gasol with Horford, both in the paint and out on the wings. But they’ll have to recover quickly to cover Paul Millsap, who had 17 points and 8 rebounds in the Dec. 15 game, a gritty 93-86 Hawks victory that made ten-wins-in-11-games seem impressive at the time. Kyle Korver’s 4-for-8 three-point shooting in that outing helped keep the Bulls at bay.

On defense, Chicago (NBA-high 6.7 blocks per game, 8.1 BPG in January) will be swiping at anything and everything that comes into the paint, but Gibson must avoid foul trouble. On offense, the Bulls must find ways to get the ball to Gibson (15 points and season-high 17 rebounds @ATL in December, but five personal fouls) in the low post. Opponents shoot 56.0 FG% around the rim with Millsap in the vicinity (3^rd highest opponent FG% in NBA, min. 7.0 attempts per game).

The Hawks will have even more defensive help than they had in their last meeting, as Pero Antić missed the December game while fighting the flu. Antić can also help the Hawks spread the floor on the offensive end, something the Bulls cannot say as they’ve been missing swingman Mike Dunleavy since January 1 with a sprained ankle. Rookie Doug McDermott remains out after arthroscopic knee surgery in December.

“Psssssssssssssssssssshhhhhhhhhh…” Did you hear that? That’s the sound of the air fizzling out of Jimmy Butler’s MVP candidacy. Dunleavy’s absence has forced Butler (22 points, 8-for-17 FGs, 9 rebounds at Atlanta in December) to become more of a sharpshooter than a basket-attacker, drawing fewer trips to the free throw line. He’s gone from 21.7 PPG before January to 16.9 PPG this month on 39.3 FG%, a percentage bolstered only by his shooting 10-for-19 against the lowly Celts last night. On the plus side, Butler has his steals (2.8 January SPG) and assists (3.8 January APG) on the uptick.

Dunleavy’s injury and Butler’s scoring downturn is putting more pressure on Rose to prove he’s the worthy All-Star people expect him to be. He knows he’ll need a huge night if he’s going to avoid watching Teague (20.1 PPG and 8.3 APG in his last ten games; 13-for-24 FGs in his last two games) in the ASG from home. Rose missed his last five shots in Atlanta as the Hawks pulled away, but his postgame commentary showed was more concerned with the way the Bulls started. ''We put ourselves in the hole. We should have had the lead a long time ago,” Rose said. “Don't get me wrong, they're a great team. But we should have made sure we came out a little more aggressive at the beginning of the game.”

Proving themselves to be more than mere sideline novelty acts, Kent Bazemore (10 points, 3-for-3 FGs) and Dennis Schröder (9 points, 4-for-6 FGs, 4 assists) led an Atlanta bench corps featuring six separate scorers shooting a collective 61.9 FG% against the Raptors last night.

As for Chicago, Thibs needs strong bench scoring to take some of the pressure off of the starters, and Aaron Brooks (43.1 3FG%; 10.9 PPG, highest average since 2009-10) is happy to oblige. But Thibodeau hasn’t had the same success he’s had in the past (Korver, Nate Robinson, Dunleavy, etc.) getting notoriously subpar defenders to improve their efforts on the floor. He’s alternating Kirk Hinrich and Tony Snell into the starting lineup largely based on which one he feels is more likely to help the Bulls make stops.

Thibodeau is also turning more to Nikola Mirotic, the 2011 draft-and-stashee who is now in the lead in the race for Rookie of the Year. But Mirotic shot just 1-for-7 in Atlanta last month and is shooting a paltry 32.8 FG% (21.9 3FG%) this month. Thibodeau is trying to corral Mirotic’s energy, so that the 23-year-old Montenegrin doesn’t lose control on drives to the rim, and that he doesn’t lose his own man scrambling to help on defense.

Butler is convinced the 4^th-quarter screw-tightening against Boston is the key to success moving forward, particularly if they can start out games that way against red-hot teams like the Hawks, who have exceeded 100 points in their last five games, seven times in their last eight. "We play like that for 48 minutes, getting stops, teams won't score 90 points,” Butler said, “and damn sure won't score 100."

That remains to be seen.

Let’s Go Hawks!

~lw3