A rejuvenation for Gerald Wallace

We've been waiting for it all year, but it looks like the Gerald Wallace we all expected to get when he signed his 4-year, $40 million deal this past off-season has finally arrived. His play during this series against the Bulls has been almost outstanding. Every stat he struggled with in the regular season has shot up and his intangibles are even better than they were in the regular season. Not to mention he's made quite a few clutch shots.

To start with, Wallace's three point percentage has taken an astounding leap from 28.2% in the regular season to 35.3%. There hasn't been a large sample size, just 5 games so far in the series, you can tell that Wallace has a lot more confidence in his shot. After averaging just 7.7 points per game in the regular season, Crash is up averaging 10 points in this series against the Bulls. He's even making almost all his layups after struggling all season to put the ball in the basket. His field goal percentage has also taken a huge leap from 39.7% in the regular season to 46.2% in the series. So it looks like he finally found his role after admitting to the media that he had no idea what his role was with the team. The only thing Wallace continues to struggle with is his free throw shooting. After shooting 63.7% from the line in the regular season, his percentage went down to 57.1% in this series.

On the topic of defense, Gerald Wallace has done some of his best work all season on Bulls' all-star small forward Luol Deng. Deng, who had a very solid regular season for the Bulls, has seen all of his numbers take a hit in this series. He's averaging 13.8 points per game in the series and is down shooting just 38.1% from the field while shooting a horrific 5.6% from the three point line. This, in large part, is due to the tenacious defending by Gerald Wallace.

So what can we take from the vast improvement of Gerald Wallace's play in this series? Maybe he has his confidence back. He's had an issue with his confidence all season long and eventually lost all faith in his shooting abilities. Maybe the improvement is due to the fact that he's being more aggressive on offense. Instead of settling for silly three pointers, Wallace is attacking the basket a lot more than he did in the regular season. He seems to have found his role just by watching him play. I would say that this might be a rejuvenated Gerald Wallace. The playoffs serve as a brand new season for the players. This may be new beginning for the man we call Crash.

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