With two-tenths of a second left, rookie Tyrus Thomas tipped-in Ben Gordon’s missed jumper for a 109-108 win over the Denver Nuggets. For his efforts and heroics, fans at the United Center treated Thomas to a standing ovation, and unwittingly vaulted him to a higher level of disillusioned arrogance than ever before.
“I am the greatest player to ever play this game,” Thomas said during the post-game press conference. “MJ who? It’s all about Ty-To from now on. This is my house now.”
Thomas, who only scored nine points and grabbed 11 rebounds, went on to personally guarantee the Bulls would not only make it to the second round of the playoffs, but win the Finals outright.
It’s an outlandish claim given the Bulls aren’t all that great of a team-a point that coach Scott Skiles made very clear.
“Yeah, so that’s not going to happen,” Skiles said. “We’re still a mediocre team who lets our opponent dictate our play. Melo and Iverson combined for 59 points against us. We got lucky it wasn’t more.”
Ben Gordon led the team with 25 points and Luol Deng returned to form after several lackluster games, with 22 points and 14 rebounds.
After the game, Thomas was seen high-fiving himself and trash talking a group of kids about how he’d “dominate the crap out of them” in the post.
Number of the Night: 6
Home games the Bulls have remaining. They must win all of them all to have a single-digit home loss record. By the way, only two of those teams (Cavs and Pistons) are above .500 for the season, which really doesn’t matter since the Bulls lose to crappy teams all the time.
