DEERFIELD, Ill. -- With the All-Star reserves coming out Thursday night, Tom Thibodeau hopes the Chicago Bulls can have three players on the team.
He believes Joakim Noah, Carlos Boozer and Luol Deng have done enough to warrant serious consideration.
"I hope all three make it," Thibodeau said. "I think all three are deserving. I don't get wrapped up in that stuff because it's political, and I think it's a waste of time. If someone sent me something I wouldn't even look at it. When they ask me to do something, to vote, I try to look at the team's success, how that play has fit in, and they're all tough choices because you can make a case for a lot of guys, there's a lot of guys that are deserving and are very close.
"So you try to put a little bit more value on a team's success and also how consistently the player has done it. Often times it takes a couple years for a guy to get there. I thought with Luol he should have made it two years ago and he finally made it last year, so I think that factors into it. But I think we have three guys that are very deserving."
Hinrich taking better shots: Bulls guard Kirk Hinrich went 9-for-11 from the field in Monday night's win over the Los Angeles Lakers, and Thibodeau hopes he can keep that up, but he doesn't want the veteran guard to force shots.
"The game tells him when to shoot," Thibodeau said. "The primary responsibility of the point guard is to run the team. So I want him to run the team, play great defense and take the shots that are presented to him when he's open after he's run the team. I think your primary scorers have the responsibility of reading the defense when they're guarded one on one they should try to score and when the second defender comes, hit the open man."
Thibodeau said in the beginning of the season he believed Hinrich was passing up open looks at the basket.
"What I don't want him to do is pass up open shots," Thibodeau said. "And I thought he was doing that earlier in the year and when you do that often times it leads to taking a lesser shot or a poor shot or being stuck at the end of the clock. I think he's reading things a lot better. I think his focus was on getting our team running smoothly, and I think he's doing both right now."