The Bulls delivered a stinker for the ages
Falling to the Spurs 133–94, Chicago underperformed even for them.
The Chicago Bulls played one of their worst games in recent memory (a high bar, to be sure) on Saturday night, losing to the San Antonio Spurs 133–94. They never led for a single second, they looked absolutely lost on offense, and their defense made their offense look outstanding. Lauri Markkanen, who lost his streak of double-digit scoring, left during the second quarter with a left ankle sprain and didn’t return.
Things got out of control early for the Bulls. San Antonio went on a 16–0 run midway through the first quarter, fueled mostly by former Bull Pau Gasol. They never looked back after notching a 22–6 lead, and the Bulls never managed to cut the deficit to single digits again. In a way, this shouldn’t be too surprising. After all, the Bulls are a mess on and off the court while the Spurs are NBA royalty and a model franchise is just about every sense of the word. However, they were also a model franchise that was missing Kawhi Leonard, Tony Parker, Danny Green and Manu Ginobili. The Spurs have the infrastructure and the discipline to step up and achieve in situations like that. The Bulls are the Bulls.
One wonders how a guy like Denzel Valentine would be playing if he’d been selected 29th to the Spurs instead of Dejounte Murray. If Cristiano Felicio had spent his years developing under Gregg Popovich instead of weathering this dumpster fire in Chicago, would we be more optimistic about him? If Jordan Bell was playing his rookie season for the Warriors instead of the Bulls–OH WAIT.
Getting back to the game, the Bulls got closest to respectability during the second quarter when they went on a 13–0 run to cut the deficit to 10 points. Robin Lopez scored eight straight points and showed off some offensive versatility that would be exciting in any other situation. For the Bulls, it just makes you sad that a year of his career is being wasted. For his sake, I hope he finishes the year elsewhere. The second quarter unfortunately also saw Markkanen’s departure. Hopefully it’s nothing more than a minor tweak that several days off will fix.
I hesitate to analyze much else from this game just because it was such an outlier, but I’ll mention a couple more things quickly. Bobby Portis had another good showing, scoring 17 points and shooting 2-of-4 from 3-point range. He’s scored in double figures for three straight games now, and while I’d chalk a lot of the points up to someone having to score on this team, the efficiency from deep is definitely encouraging. The Bulls defense is also so, so bad. It’s a perfect blend of extreme incompetence and unwavering apathy, sprinkled with just enough Denzel Valentine to make you want to throw up. You would have thought Pau Gasol standing at the top of the key looking for a cutter was the most complex, evolutionary offensive scheme the world had ever seen, when in reality it’s something the Bulls ran on a nightly basis two seasons ago. With Pau Gasol. There’s no hope for problems this severe. Let’s just hope there’s enough flash from Markkanen to make things entertaining until draft time rolls around.
The Bulls have a few days off and then face the Oklahoma City Thunder on Wednesday night. We’ll keep you posted on all Bulls news until then.
