CHICAGO _ Dwyane Wade put the Nets' decision to rest Brook Lopez, Jeremy Lin and Trevor Booker for the Bulls' win-and-they're-in 82nd game in the best perspective.
"We're not the team to overlook anybody," Wade said Wednesday after the final regular-season shootaround.
The Bulls didn't and are in the playoffs for the eighth time in nine seasons after missing out last season. They will face the Boston Celtics in the first round. Game 1 will be Sunday at 5:30 p.m. in Boston. TNT will televise the game.
Their 112-73 cakewalk past the Nets gave them a 41-41 record. Jimmy Butler's 25 points and a career-high 21 from Paul Zipser led the Bulls.
Resting regulars for meaningless regular-season games has become common practice for teams either locked into playoff seeding or trying to improve their odds to land a high lottery pick. But the Nets' first-round pick already has been traded away to the Celtics, which makes their decision to rest their best players unusual at the very least and offensive at most.
"I know they addressed it at the owners meetings," coach Fred Hoiberg said of last week's Board of Governors meetings. "I don't know what came of that conversation. It's obviously different dynamics, some teams getting ready for the playoffs and resting players, some teams are going into the summer making sure they're healthy with their rosters. I'll be as interested as anybody to see how these talks progress as far as how teams go about resting their players. They talk about the national television games, how important that is for the brand. I know there's going to be a lot of talks this summer, we'll see how that plays out.
"You have to go out and worry about your team. That's the approach we've tried to take here, especially these last couple of weeks when we've been fighting for the postseason. So we're going to do that, and hopefully get off to a good start and play well."
Rajon Rondo, who has missed the last three games with a sprained right wrist, was back. He started and finished with 10 points, six rebounds and five assists.
The Nets beat the Bulls on Saturday in Brooklyn.
"It doesn't change our approach," Hoiberg said. "We have a game plan in place for whoever takes the floor for Brooklyn. We know it's a group that's going to come out and play extremely hard and they're going to play with great pace. Our coverages change a little bit just based on some of the things we think they'll do, but it's going to be a high level game. We need to go out and approach it just like last week. Get a defensive mindset, hopefully get off to a great start and sustain it for 48 minutes."
