On Sunday night, while the Chicago Bears had the attention of most of the city, the Chicago Bulls were serving up an old fashioned beatdown in a blowout win against the Brooklyn Nets, proving that their offense can still be explosive sans Josh Giddey.
On Sunday night, while the Chicago Bears had the attention of most of the city, the Chicago Bulls were serving up an old fashioned beatdown in a blowout win against the Brooklyn Nets, proving that their offense can still be explosive sans Josh Giddey.
Obviously, injuries must be mentioned, as Brooklyn came into Sunday's game without leading scorer Michael Porter Jr., who poured in a game-high 26 points when these teams matched up on Friday. But Chicago continues to have their fair share of injury woes, as they were without their usual array of players with long-term ailments in Zach Collins, Noa Essengue, and the aforementioned Giddey, but they did get a positive update on Giddey (upgraded to "Doubtful" after logging a G League practice).
The new addition to the Bulls list of injured players was forward Patrick Williams, who was ruled out with an ankle injury.
The game started out with Coby White looking a lot more like his usual self with a pair of 3-point makes early. Ayo Dosunmu joined in on the early barrage from deep, knocking down 2-3 from 3-point range in the opening frame. Chicago shot just under 86% from 3-point range in the first, with crisp ball movement generating a steady stream of clean looks for the Chicago offense. The Bulls ended the first quarter with 14 assists on 16 FGs made. The Bulls first quarter blitz built them a 39-22 lead, giving the game a very different feeling as compared to the last matchup between these two teams.
Brooklyn fought back in the second quarter, mostly behind center Nic Claxton, whose length and agility provided problems for Chicago in the paint. Nets wing Jalen Wilson also had some solid production, leading the Nets bench unit in scoring and knocking down a pair of 3-pointers for them. However, the production of Claxton and Wilson wasn't enough for the Nets to mount any sort of real comeback, as the Brooklyn defense repeatedly gave up open 3-point looks to the Bulls. And on the rare occasion a Brooklyn defender was in the vicinity of a Bulls shooter, the closeouts were quite poor. But you can only play who is in front of you, and the Bulls took advantage of the young Nets porous' perimeter defense all night.
Chicago finished the game with a massive advantage in points in the paint, committed single-digit turnovers (9), and shot a red-hot 45% from 3-point range on decent volume.
Everything clicked for the Bulls against an undermanned Nets team, with Coby White's bounceback performance being the story of the night as we works his way into last year's elite form. The Bulls look to keep the positive momentum rolling when they take on the Los Angeles Clippers on Tuesday, January 20th.