Midway through the second quarter of Friday’s 123-116 loss to the Charlotte Hornets, Coby White ran out of runway.
The play started like normal. White put his head down and stopped worrying about defenders. He charged toward the rim, barreling awkwardly into Moussa Diabaté in a flat parabola that sent him crashing down into the hardwood.
White had wanted to play hero, offer the Chicago Bulls another two points as they found themselves mired in a shootout against the sixth-worst defense in the league. Instead, he ended up halfway into a back roll, shoulders crunched against the stanchion, legs flailing with the bleak desperation that defined the Bulls throughout the first half.
White’s feet hit both Brandon Miller and Diabaté in the process, contact that was too aimless to inflict injury. The officiating team nevertheless upgraded the foul to a flagrant 1, a designation that White half-heartedly disputed as a trainer taped up his scraped knee. The outcome was a familiar one for the Bulls — another small error that piled into a deficit, then ultimately a loss.
The Hornets are not a competitive team. This is accepted as a fact in the NBA. They had won only four games before Friday night. They rank 12th in the Eastern Conference and give opponents the relative resistance of a colander on defense. And yet their offense was simply too much for the Bulls to counteract.
Same with the New Orleans Pelicans, who won their third game of the season against the Bulls earlier this week. And the Utah Jazz, who took their fifth win of the season off the Bulls. Games against the Bulls have transformed into dates to circle on the calendar — a rare opportunity to score at will and, if you’re lucky, pick up a win to boot.
Here are three takeaways from the loss.
1. The Bulls were bleeding points.
One hundred and sixteen points should be enough. That’s the brutally plain problem of nearly every Bulls loss this season. One hundred and sixteen points should be enough to win a basketball game. But it wasn’t — and it hasn’t been for a long time.
The Bulls have now allowed at least 120 points for 11 consecutive games, the longest such streak in 35 years of NBA history. This consistent permeability disarms any strengths the Bulls might have to offer, preventing them from establishing runs and exacerbating every individual error.
This is an insurmountable weakness. Chicago allows its opponents to score the third-highest volume of points (124.2) in the entire NBA. Only the five-win Utah Jazz and two-win Washington Wizards allow more points. And even with one of the highest-scoring offenses in the league, the Bulls rarely have enough in the tank to counteract their own defensive deficiencies.
2. Losses in the margins.
Most Bulls games can be defined by the same handful of stats — opponent rim attempts and second-chance points. These two variables represent the basic equation of marginal gains — or losses — that can help or hurt the Bulls in their attempt to establish consistency as a roster with no All-Stars.
The Bulls can sling dozens of shots from behind the arc and push the pace in transition from the opening whistle to the final buzzer. But if they don’t keep opponents off the rim and prevent offensive rebounds, they spend most of the second half fighting an uphill battle due mostly to self-inflicted wounds. The Bulls have now finished 12 of their 18 games this season in the clutch — and lost five of those games — often as a result of these inconsistencies.
Against Charlotte, the Bulls clinched a rare win in the paint — outscoring the Hornets 74-56 — but still allowed 44 points at the rim. But this doesn’t mean the Hornets lacked penetration; they simply sprayed out their chances at the rim, which helped to fuel their 15 baskets from behind the arc.
The Hornets scored 10 points off second-chance opportunities while logging 10 offensive rebounds. The depth of this weakness was captured with 42 seconds left in the fourth quarter, when Diabaté outjumped two Bulls defenders to secure an offensive rebound and kick the ball back out to LaMelo Ball for a second-chance opportunity. The Hornets did not ultimately score on that drive, but the offensive rebound allowed the home team to burn 12 precious seconds of the clock.
3. Bulls eliminated from the NBA Cup.
Friday’s loss officially dashed any lingering hopes for the Bulls to advance out of East Group C in the NBA Cup. The Bulls won only one of their four games in the group stage, dropping losses to the Miami Heat, Milwaukee Bucks and Charlotte Hornets.
The New York Knicks won the group outright with a 118-109 win Friday over the Bucks. The Heat are also slated to advance as a wild-card team.