Bulls have the parts, still honing fit

CHICAGO -- So it's obvious to pretty much everybody what the Chicago Bulls have now, particularly to the Bulls. It's not just the five straight wins, or that Pau Gasol is so reinvigorated, or that Jimmy Butler is now one of the very best two-way players in the league, or even that Derrick Rose is on the verge of striking that hard-to-find balance between self and others, warp speed and slow dance.

It's that as the Bulls leave the first stage of the NBA season and head with a little more determination toward the All-Star break, it seems they have pretty much every element a team needs to have serious championship aspirations.

Byron Scott, given to old-school reserve when it comes to assessing opponents, said of the Bulls after their 20-point win over his Los Angeles Lakers on Christmas night, "They are the best we have played so far in the East. They are good. They have length and athleticism. They have two of the best passing big men in the game. They are unselfish. They have a rising star in Jimmy Butler. They have a great basketball team."

The middle of the five-game winning streak is what has gotten the league's attention, even out West. You don't win in Memphis, in Chicago against Toronto, and back on the road against Washington unless a lot of important elements are coming together.

Gone, finally, is the lackadaisical rebounding that strangely plagued the team during the season's first few weeks; after beating the Lakers on the boards 57-39, the Bulls have now outrebounded four consecutive opponents and nine of their past 10. The preferred starting lineup of Rose/Butler/Mike Dunleavy/Gasol/Joakim Noah, which hadn't played together much because of various injuries and illness, is now 9-2.

The bench (particularly Taj Gibson, Aaron Brooks and Nikola Mirotic) is now routinely taking down other reserve groups. The Bulls' bench is at the point where coach Tom Thibodeau has no trouble trusting E'Twaun Moore to come in and play 15 minutes while Kirk Hinrich is out with his hamstring injury.

And every time the Bulls get a great game out of Butler and/or Gasol, they should thank the basketball gods that Carmelo Anthony said no to the $75 million or whatever the Bulls were going to pay him. Not only is the team not tied to the big contract, but the Gasol/Butler tandem simply gives the Bulls much greater frontcourt coverage and flexibility. No way does Butler flourish the way he has if Melo is taking his usual number of shots per game, and the Bulls almost certainly would not have Gasol if Melo had signed on. (Butler is actually getting to the foul line more than Melo and has been in the NBA's top five both for foul shots taken and made).

And as fortuitous as that all is, it probably ranks behind Rose's settling into his new way of playing the game, necessarily. Fortunately, Rose is a lot smarter and more patient than the many critics who wanted him to approach the early season as if it were a tough-man contest ... and to return to the explosive style of play that characterized his first three seasons in the league.

Gradually, Rose has gotten healthier, stronger and more certain of what his legs will allow him to do at a particular point. Just as gradually, he is finding out how to use his teammates in ways he didn't think of as a daring young soloist. Butler wasn't a 22-points-per-game scorer when Rose was MVP. Gasol wasn't on the low block ready to catch and score or draw a double-team. Noah wasn't the dynamic presence or secondary playmaker he is now. Dunleavy wasn't on the team, and Chicago also didn't have Mirotic to provide spacing and marksmanship.

It was Rose who said after first encountering Mirotic this summer, "This kid can do so much more than shoot ... There's so much more to get out of him!" Rose, that night in August, was like a child given a new toy, a sign of the emerging playmaker.

It shouldn't have been all that surprising when Rose was tentative most of November, given a new team to run. And at the same time, Rose had to put to bed once and for all his high-risk, high-flying ways. It's one thing to say, another to do. During the Team USA run in late summer, Rose would still rise off one foot and throw down the occasional dunk, perhaps to prove to himself and everybody he could still do it. Finally, two months into the regular season, Rose seems to have accepted that those high-flying days are over but that he can still dominate the game with his feet on the floor.

The best example was Rose never getting emotionally caught up in John Wall's Usain Bolt dashes up the floor for layups in D.C. on Tuesday night. Wall scored 10 quick points, relying mainly on warp-speed drives. Rose answered in that fourth quarter with floaters or midrange jumpers. He also seems to finally be ignoring the advanced-stats notion that he has to space the floor by shooting 3s. Somebody has to space the floor by doing that, but not Rose. He still has a deadly midrange game -- which ought to be his bread and butter -- that is both effective for this team and safer as he tries to simply stay healthy.

Rose seems about 75 percent there. And Thibs going with Rose and Brooks together to close the game is brilliant strategy. Noah, after the Lakers game, said of combining all the parts, "It all comes in time ... understanding personnel."

Part of that understanding, as Noah underscored, has zero to do with strategy and everything to do with navigating the emotional ups and downs of an impossibly long and trying season -- and how this group handles that, which is why at this point he's only willing to say, "I think we're playing ... OK. Look, we're very, very talented, so we can still get a lot better. We're very deep. But we've got to stay hungry and stay humble. There are a lot of different characters on this team ... a lot of stubborn characters on this team. I think it's a good thing ... but it's also a bad thing."

Noah didn't offer up any specific examples, but let me slide into a hypothetical some are already wondering about. Mirotic is a revelation. His 3-point shooting (41 percent) was more or less expected and is largely why the Bulls acquired him in a draft-night deal in 2011 and invested in him during multiple years overseas. But his ability to facilitate for teammates, rebound on the defensive end (4.6 per game) and play with a tenacity even on the road have pushed Mirotic into more playing time than anybody thought possible. He's the best rookie in the league and is contributing to a team with serious ambition. And all that sounds perfect ...

... except suppose that Gibson, who has become one of the league's best closers, objects to his minutes being cut because of some hotshot rookie? Despite Gibson's completely professional demeanor, scouts and opposing players are already wondering how that dynamic could play in the Bulls' locker room.

It's not a factor now and might not become one. Maybe Noah's simply too good in a locker room to let the stubbornness tear at the team? Late Christmas night, as Butler emerged from the training room with heat packs attached, Noah said, "Jimmy, it's ice packs after games! Jimmy! Somebody tell Jimmy it's ice packs!"

It's hard to tell if anybody other than Butler thought he was going to become such a force this season. Easy to see was that he had turned himself into one of the most physically imposing wing players anywhere. Impossible to know was that he spent all summer studying tape of Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant to figure out how a guy roughly their size should play the wing. He obsessed over what spots should become his favorites on offense, and how to use angles and leverage to get there, then how to convert once he had. "I've come to see 90 percent of the preparation for it being mental," Butler said. "Do you really think you can do something?"