Derrick Rose had an interesting theory as to why Luol Deng played so well during the Chicago Bulls 120-110 win over the Indiana Pacers on Wednesday night.

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Randy Belice/NBAE/Getty ImagesLuol Deng scored a season-high 31 points in the Bulls' win over the Indiana Pacers.

"Attacking," the young point guard said. "I really don't know how he did it because you should have seen him earlier. He was putting Ben Gay all over his body. He looked like an old man."

Deng might have looked a little old as he hobbled through the Bulls locker room after the game, but he was anything but when he was on the floor scoring 31 points and pulling down nine rebounds. Even Deng couldn't help but laugh when the topic of his pre-game ritual came up.

"That's not true," he said of the Ben Gay. "It's just with our schedule, especially last week, I felt a little bit fatigued. I was kind of talking to my body. [Tuesday] was really a good day for us, kind of got our legs back. Just got to take advantage of your rest time. It's that time of the season where it just hits you when you wake up. And that's what I was telling them."

Regardless of what he had to do to prepare himself for the game, it was apparent that the Bulls needed him on this night. Deng has been criticized recently for not playing consistently well for 48 minutes. He did exactly that on Wednesday night, proving that if Deng's jumper is on for an entire game, he gives his teammates an added jolt of confidence and the type of scoring punch that they have lacked at times.

"We're 100 times better," rookie Taj Gibson said, while discussing the importance of Deng's offensive game. "Whenever Lu's hot, we just have to give him the ball. In this league, you've really got to take advantage of who's the hot man. And tonight, Lu was and we just kept feeding him the ball. He did a phenomenal job, even rebounding the ball. We really need everybody to go for every rebound and he did that tonight, too."

The key was that Deng's usual aggressiveness continued even after the Bulls let the Pacers back into the game.

"I really tried to come out aggressively in the first quarter," he said. "I was able to get fouled and get to the line. When they came out to guard me I was able to get to the basket and when they dropped back I knocked down some shots."

That was an assessment that Bulls coach Vinny Del Negro agreed with -- and was clearly happy to see.

"I thought he was real active early," Del Negro said. "He wasn't settling for the jump shot. He got to the line 11 times which is great. So he was attacking off the dribble, putting pressure on them. When he's doing that and the game's coming to him on the break and stuff ... it was good to get him going early."

The best part for the Bulls is that he actually kept going late this time.

Noah still hurting: Not that it should come as any big surprise, but Joakim Noah (plantar fasciitis) is still hurting -- a lot. The Bulls center played just seven minutes on the night and is very clearly in pain. A lot of people have wondered if Noah took an extended period of time off (maybe a month) and then came back to play later in the year if it would make that much of a difference.

I posed that question to him after the game. Here is how he responded: "Who knows," he said. "That's just speculating so ... I want to be there for my teammates and I want to get back right. [I'm] just trying to get back into a rhythm. And just help the team."

It's clear that Noah desperately wants to be on the floor, but it's also just as clear that there is no chance he will look like the player he was earlier this season. The only way he is going to be able to get truly better is by taking a few months off and resting. He won't be able to do that until at least May ... unless the Bulls shut him down.

Line of the night: Once again, Derrick Rose had another solid game. He scored 23 points, had nine rebounds and eight assists -- close to a triple double. He was asked if he knew that he was close to a triple double. "Yeah, I did know," he said with a smile. "But, I'll probably never have a triple double in this league. More than anything I was just trying to get the win."

With the way he's been playing, he'll have a triple double in no time.