Healthy Bulls have talent to beat Cavs

They've never confronted LeBron James with a roster this talented, this complete, this experienced. Finally, there's no need to hold a prayer session for the Chicago Bulls as they enter a series against The King.

The Bulls, at last, have their best player, their second-best player and what seems to be a healthy starting lineup. The gang's all here. The Bulls aren't coming with a pop-gun offense or a starting 2-guard who can't really score or is halfway to retirement.

Yes, the Cleveland Cavaliers have the best player, which is usually the ticket to success in an NBA playoff series. Even the defending champion Spurs couldn't overcome not having the best player, Chris Paul, in their epic first-round series with the Clippers. The Cavaliers will be the favorites, even with Kevin Love out for the series and J.R. Smith out for the first two games. They'll be the favorites because James isn't out, injured or suspended and because the Cavs have the second-best player in the series, too, in Kyrie Irving.

Just as we knew going in that Clippers versus Spurs was going to be the compelling matchup of the first round, Bulls versus Cavs has every bit of our attention in the second round. The Cavaliers seem vulnerable for the first time since New Year's because Love is done and Smith is out. And the Bulls, with that nuclear effort in Game 6 to eliminate Milwaukee, look like an ensemble cast with the stuff to beat Cleveland.

That we have so little to go on heightens the intrigue. The Bulls' preferred starting unit of Derrick Rose, Jimmy Butler,Joakim Noah, Pau Gasol and Mike Dunleavy didn't play a single game against Cleveland this season. In fact, one of the reasons so many people around the league think the Bulls can win this series is because the starting unit is finally starting to rack up some minutes, and success, together. The Bucks series was the first time all season that the Bulls' preferred lineup started six consecutive games. And of all the Rose-Noah teams that have gone up against LeBron, there's simply no disputing that this one is the best in terms of talent, depth and versatility.

As one Western Conference player told me this week, "With Love and J.R. Smith both out those first two games, the Bulls have too much firepower for Cleveland. The Bulls aren't a great defensive team anymore, but Cleveland ain't the best defensive team and the Bulls have too many scorers if Rose, Butler, Gasol, Dunleavy are going well. ... And [Nikola] Mirotic gives them a different dimension coming off the bench they haven't had against LeBron."

All true. Kyle Korver wasn't a starter then, and wasn't the player he's become with Atlanta. The Bulls were relying on Keith Bogans and Ronnie Brewer, who couldn't give them as much scoring in a series as Butler can in two games.

Without Love, it figures LeBron will play much more power forward, which is where the Bulls are probably as deep as any team in the league. Gasol, Taj Gibson and Mirotic are a diverse enough trio that the Cavaliers won't find any particular advantage by trying to go small or get the Bulls into foul trouble.

And it's not just Love's absence that the Cavaliers must account for. Love and Smith both average more than 30 minutes per game. Who picks up those minutes for Cleveland? Tristan Thompson, who killed the Bulls on the offensive boards in their first regular-season meeting? Not necessarily. Thompson already averages 27 minutes per game. How many more can he handle? Ten?

The Cavaliers are good enough and willing enough shooting the 3, a category in which they lead the playoffs, to put LeBron and Kyrie on the floor and scramble the game with Iman Shumpert, Mike Miller and James Jones, or either of those two and Thompson. But that's not a lineup that figures to intimidate the Bulls who, while no longer great defensively, can and do guard the 3-point line effectively.

While so much speculation centers on what the Cavaliers will do to make up for the absence of Love and Smith, there are also questions about whether the Bulls will doom themselves with their new trademark: dumb turnovers. The Bulls have become impossible to trust game to game, and nobody knows whether we're going to see the team with the highest rate of assists in the playoffs, which the Bulls are, or the team with the highest turnover rate, which they also are.

One player in the Eastern Conference playoffs said, "They rely so much on play calling, it just becomes a case of whether they value the ball or not. If they execute, they can beat Cleveland, yeah. But if they turn the ball over the way they did in a couple of those games against Milwaukee. ... LeBron kills teams that make stupid turnovers. ... Depends on which Bulls team shows up."

And therein lies the difficulty of forecasting this series. Even players who lean toward taking the Bulls over Cleveland concede that the Bulls' newfound carelessness could undermine any of the team's other advantages in the series.

What seems virtually certain is that to beat Cleveland, the Bulls will have to win one of the first two games in the series -- one of the two games with both Love and Smith out. I'd make the case that the Bulls' best chance at winning the series would be to win Games 1 and 2 in Cleveland because the Cavs, with Smith back in the lineup, would win a game in Chicago even after being down 2-0. So much will be determined not by matchups or strategic advantages, real or perceived, but whether the Bulls can play with the kind of sustained passion and focus which has escaped them much of the season.

Throughout the year, the Bulls have begged and prayed for good health, and relatively speaking, compared to a number of other playoff teams, including the Cavaliers, the Bulls now have that. They start the series in Cleveland with all hands on deck -- stars and support players alike. They know that they're facing the best player in the NBA but are just as good at every spot on the floor and better along the bench from head coach to sixth man.

James has expressed concern about a team with uncertainty facing a Bulls team whose primary members have suffered through playoff trials and tribulations and will come fully engaged to a playoff series they think they can win.

For once, the Bulls' primary prayer, the one for good health, has been answered. The rest is in their control against a short-handed Cavaliers team.