On February 12, Beijing time, the NBA regular season continued, and the Chicago Bulls hosted the Minnesota Timberwolves. Although the opponent suddenly rose to the top eight in the West this season, it still barely lasted three quarters in front of the strong Bulls, who played a 42-31 attacking frenzy in the last quarter and finally closed the game at 134-122.
Both teams have a number of star players in the squad, but DeRozan is undoubtedly the brightest star on the field. In the 38 games he shot 14 of 22 shots to cut a game-high 35 points and grabbed 6 rebounds to deliver 6 assists, and in the fourth quarter of the decisive tiebreaker, he scored 16 points on 5-of-9 shooting, becoming the key contributor to the balance of victory and defeat. The data shows that when DeRozan was on the floor, the Bulls had a net goal of 19 points over their opponents, with the highest efficiency value in the game.
In fact, this game is just a microcosm of DeRozan's recent hot state, in the past 15 games, DeRozan has scored more than 20 points, the last five of which have scored at least 30 points, a total of 185 points, in the last four games he has scored at least 35 points with more than 55% shooting rate, becoming the second player to achieve this achievement after O'Neal in 2000; in the history of the Bulls, the last and only player to score at least 35 points in four consecutive games, his name is Jordan.
Counting this game, DeRozan has played in 52 games for the Bulls this season, averaging 27.5 points, 5.2 rebounds and 5.1 assists per game, shooting 51.2% from the field and 34% from three-point range. His average of 27.5 points per game has reached a career high. Under his leadership, the Bulls currently have a record of 35 wins and 21 losses, ranking third in the East. In yesterday's updated regular season MVP list, he ranked 9th.
As one of the representative stars of the 2009 draft, DeRozan will compare with Curry, Harden, Griffin and other students of the same class since entering the league, especially Harden, who are not only opponents on the court, but also friends on the field. Over the past few years, people have called Harden the league's first quarterback, often habitually ignoring DeRozan, who is equally brilliant behind him. However, judging from the performance of this season, the title of the league's first quarterback is probably going to change hands.