Although the Chicago Bulls had the best record in the NBA in the regular season, there were a lot of questions about whether they could replicate that success in the playoffs. One of them surrounded starting power forward Carlos Boozer. Boozer has had plenty of playoff success during the Utah Jazz, but genuinely did not play very well against teams with strong power forward play. Of course it's not really fair to Boozer to judge him for trying to stop two of the best in Tim Duncan and Pau Gasol.
Well, second year man Tyler Hansbrough of the Indiana Pacers definitely made Carlos Boozer look foolish this Saturday afternoon. Over and over, Hansbrough went to the pull-up long jumper, and Boozer refused to step up and contest the shot on almost every occasion. 22 points for the former Tar Heel, and Boozer was held to 12 points on 4 of 11 shooting.
What makes it worse is Hansbrough went to the body of Boozer during the 4th quarter to contest that same sort of outside jumpers, and this was the result.
Tyler Hansbrough Steals / Dunks Ball on Carlos Boozer 4/16/2011 (via nbafufu)
Boozer is probably going to have better games, and Derrick Rose saved him from two days of constant bashing, but there will be tougher matchups for the big man down the road, and the question marks linger.