Vinny Del Negro has spent most of his two-year tenure with the Chicago Bulls being criticized.

Some say he's not a very good in-game strategist. Some say he doesn't have nearly enough experience to be a head coach. The list goes on and on. The criticism that I've heard more than most at various points throughout this season is that Del Negro doesn't show enough fire. There's been a segment of fans that always wished Del Negro would be more animated on the sidelines. He's certainly not as laid back as Lovie Smith, but he isn't exactly Stan Van Gundy, either.

Make no mistake, Del Negro is filled with fire, but he doesn't usually show it on the sidelines. Sure, he'll pick up the occasional technical, which he did several times over the Bulls' recent 10-game losing skid. But he usually prefers to chomp on his gum or shake his head in disgust whenever the mood to burst hits him. On Monday night, all of that changed.

With 58.5 seconds left in the third quarter of his team's 98-88 win over the Houston Rockets, Mount Vinny finally erupted.

All the frustration of the game, the perceived flops by the Rockets players and the recent rash of losing and injuries manifested itself into an explosion the likes of which the Bulls hadn't seen.

After Taj Gibson was called for a questionable offensive foul, Del Negro marched onto the court and started screaming at referee Bob Delaney. The first technical came almost instantly.

After a few more seconds, the second one came right after.

For the first time in his coaching career Del Negro had been ejected from a game.

"There were too many to make any sense of it," he said of all the flopping. "I have to do a better job staying in the game, but sometimes you have to get your team going and let them know the importance of this stuff. I thought I got tossed pretty quick. We got the win, that's the most important thing."

At this point, Del Negro is absolutely right. The Bulls are still two and a half games out of a playoff spot, and if it means that Del Negro has to show some rage to give his players a little boost then so be it. "We need it. We needed that," Bulls point guard Derrick Rose said. "We need that more often. One of us has got to step up and just be known in this league. They're not going to keep bullying us."

It was a gesture that even caught some of Del Negro's players off guard.

"It was a little bit surprising ... I was just looking at Bob Delaney and I knew he was going to get tossed," Bulls guard Kirk Hinrich said.

Still, Del Negro got his point across. The Bulls were playing solid and by getting tossed the young coach kept his team on pace for an important victory.

"We definitely finished the game strong, I felt like," Hinrich said. "When he got the technical we were playing really well. We were playing with a lot of energy. We just knocked down threes. We were flying all over the court. I don't know if [the explosion helped] or not. More than anything it let us know that we needed to calm down and handle our emotions. It was that type of game."

Stat of the game: The Rockets were 11-for-46 from the floor in the second half. Yikes.

Quote of the night: Joakim Noah to Bulls play-by-play man Chuck Swirsky, on where his conditioning is at right now after sitting out almost two months, because of plantar fasciitis. "It's not too good, Chucky. I'm not going to lie to you. It's not too good."

Noah played nearly 12 minutes on Monday night and hopes to gradually increase that number over the next week.