Two sweet wins and the Family Fest

After 3 defeats in a row, Bulls established itself as a creative team and won the last two games. Let's start with Spurs game.

It was Northwestern University night on last Thursday when Chicago Bulls played against San Antonio Spurs. My wife is working at Northwestern University so I told her that she should go to this match. At the beginning, she did not want to go to the match because she was with Northwestern community always and being them again does not look like too attractive :) I explained to her that

• The game would be on TNT (National Broadcaster), 
• The atmosphere would be amazing,
• Spurs is one of the best teams in NBA, 
• She deserves to experience such an activity in her lifetime. 

Finally, she could not resist the temptation and accepted my offer. I dropped them to United Center and tried to find a place to watch the game.

my dear son and my dear wife

I decided not to use any technology in order to find a place to watch the game. I am not against to technology but sometimes I believe that we should explore the place where we live by ourselves so we might end up with an interesting experience which does not exist on the Internet. The only technology which I used was my car. In addition, I used my navigation app on my cell phone a couple of times when I was not sure about my location. It took me 90 minutes to find a place so I was not very lucky. I found a place at the beginning but then I learned that their opening time is late. That's weird because in a huge billboard they mention that it is a great place to watch all professional Chicago sports teams but they were not open on time in one of the best games. When I decided not to use the internet in order to find a place, I thought that there will be a lot of options near to United Center. In Turkey and England, there are a lot of bars close to football stadium so people who do not have a ticket for the game go to the bar and watch the game on TV. At the end of the game, fans unite around the stadium and celebrate the game if the team which they support win the game. However; this is not the case in the US. I am not sure about the reasons. Some people claim that the game itself is an experience so winning or losing a match especially during a regular season is not very important. You may think it like a movie; your hero can beat the villain at the end of the movie but it does not need to be in that way. In addition, you do not hate the movie because of the result. On the other hand, I watched the game and fans near to my section supports Chicago Bulls from their heart and becomes very angry when refs make an unfair decision. Therefore; it is not easy to say that culture in the US is very different than Europe. I believe that the US fans have a potential to become similar to their European counterparts but do not show it at the moment.

Benny the Bulls is on air

LuvaBulls did a great job in putting the fans in an enthusiastic game mode. In fact, they were so much in the game, that when Pao Gasol thanked as a former Bulls player, they started chanting "traitor"

I would like to thank retired police officer who sat next to my wife during the game. He entertained my wife by chaffing his friend who became angry to biased refs. Chicago Bulls started the game very productive and took the lead by 6 points at the end of 1st quarter. San Antonio Spurs reduced the difference down to 2 points at the beginning of 2nd quarter but then Chicago Bulls took the control and finished the quarter with 13 points advantage. Chicago Bulls continued to play their game in the 3rd quarter and reached the maximum point difference in 6 minutes. The scoreboard was 65-47.

Bulls was leading the game by 70-57 in the 3rd quarter

San Antonio Spurs is one of the teams which does not concede the game easily. In their last 4 games before the Bulls game, they were more than 10 points behind their opponent but at the end; they found a way to win the game. Therefore; I was not very comfortable with 18 points difference. Apparently, Kawhi took the lead and reduced the point difference just to 4 points 3 minutes before the end of regular time. Then, Chicago Bulls defended well and allowed just 7 points.

Dwayne Wade scored the highest points in the Bulls with 20 points and also he made 5 assists and 5 rebounds. Rajon Rondo missed triple double by 1 assist (12 points, 10 rebounds, 9 assists, and 2 steals). As a team, Bulls made 19 turnovers and it is a miracle to win this game with that many turnovers. 

Kawhi Leonard made 24 points and Patty Mills contributed him with 16 points (12 of them via 3 pointers). San Antonio Spurs missed 19 three-pointers whereas Chicago Bulls missed 13 of them. 

Sweet win! Emir Arber enjoys the result!

Two days later, on Saturday, Chicago Bulls played against Miami Heat. We missed the beginning of the game because of bad time management. We decided to go to ballet on Saturday but we forgot that there was a game on Saturday. I am usually very careful about planning but I did a mistake because we planned to go to ballet on previous week but we decided to go one week later due to my son's chess tournament and it was bumped with Heat game. Anyway, it is not a big deal and we just missed first 6 minutes of the game like many supporters. On the other hand, we watched a great ballet performance at Northwestern University.

The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe

I knew that a snowstorm was expected on Saturday night but I did not know that it would start while we were watching the ballet show. I and my son left our beloved Dorina behind and started to run our home to get in our car. It was a good sprint for 10 minutes and we felt tired at the end of course. I was not the slowest driver on the road but I was very cautious due to my lack of experience in such weather conditions. There was a traffic jam but like usual days so we were in United Center after an hour driving. 

Yes, we did it! Not on time but we missed just a little part of the game.

When we arrived in United Center, we spent a lot of time in the queue for security and ticket inspection. I felt that the weather condition affected other fans as well. Maybe that is something usual which I am not aware of because I tend to be there at least 1 hour before the game. We were so unlucky that we heard the honk for the first timeout when we arrived our seats at section 330.

We were hungry due to rush during the day so it is time to eat something!

I was excited to see the performance of Hassan Whiteside and Goran Dragic. They both played well in the first half. Wade, Butler, and McDermott are the best in Bulls. Neither Bulls nor Heat could lead the game by many points. At the end of first half, both teams went to locker room with a tie (55-55).

Half-time competition

During the half-time period, there was competition between young talents. Unfortunately, my favorite artist who plays piano lost against rock music guitarist :)

Wade made a lot of spectacular moves so I highly recommend you to watch highlights of the game. This is one of them but there are more...

Heat substitute Reed missed two consecutive free-throws during the 4th quarter so all fans won free chicken sandwich. Unfortunately, I could not claim it because sellers said that they are out of stock. If there is no award, why did we scream a lot during free throws? :)

At the end of the game, Chicago Bulls won by scoring more than 100 points so all ticket holders won a free big mac from McDonalds. Yuppi!

After the game, Dwayne Wade made a short interview on the court. He said that he was happy to win the game. He mentioned about Lakers game which they were in a similar situation but lost the game. He said that they learned the lesson and did not repeat the same mistake. Good for them. Well done Bulls!

Freezing weather outside and it is just December. We are looking forward to coming games in January and February!

So far, we always parked our car in a closed parking area. Unfortunately, the place which we usually parked was fully reserved. We ended up to park outside so it was covered by snow at the end of the game.

We went back to our home safely!

This was a busy week for Chicago Bulls fans! There was a family festival on Monday so season ticket holders visited United Center and participated several activities with old players and enjoy the arena. Here is our experience during the family festival:

Welcome to Press Conference of Ahmet Bombaci

Welcome to Press Conference of Emir Arber Bombaci

Bulls Legend Horace Grant

There was a very long queue for Tony Kukoc. Did you see Emir Arber in this picture? If not, look carefully :)

Pop-a-shoot challenge

Photo with 6 trophies

Photo with 6 trophies. We hacked the queue by taking photo from far end :) Next time, I will use my photoshop  skills to make it more professional :)

Girls look like happy to be with us! Thank you, LuvaBulls!

We practiced on the court

From the bench

Another picture on the bench

It was a lovely day with a lot of activities. Unfortunately, we could not do all of the activities due to long queues and time limitation.

Finally, the next game is tonight against Minnesota Timberwolves. Timberwolves has started this season with high expectation but they could not perform so well until now. Unfortunately, it looks like it will be another lost season for them. Assignment of Tom Thibodeau as head coach was a good sign to make the team winner but it is very hard to change the habits. Most of the people might think that competition is very high in western conference so it is not fair to criticize western teams. I strongly disagree due to Lakers performance. Timberwolves should perform better in this season because they have the superstars of the future who are Karl-Anthony Towns, Andrew Wiggins, and Zach LaVine. These players will lead their teams in near future and we will witness to it altogether. In addition, I like to watch Ricky Rubio since he was 16 years old. Pekovic and Dunn are great team players so they do not have any excuse to lose their games. I hope that they will loose against Bulls tonight :) but I will support Timberwolves later on in this season. This squad deserves better results.