will the accidental Bulls tank resume?
After winning a surprise blowout against the No. 1 seed in the Western Conference on Wednesday, the Denver Nuggets (who then proceeded to lose to the Spurs) our Chicago Bulls got a couple days off to recuperate before traveling to Houston to face off against the West’s worst team, the 15-51 Houston Rockets.
In that 117-96 obliteration of Denver, only four Bulls scored in double figures (you can guess which ones), with a rejuvenated Zach LaVine again leading the charge, thanks to his 29 points on 12-of-18 shooting. Nikola Vucevic nabbed a 25-point, 15-rebound double-double. Patrick Williams stepped up, scoring 18 points during a solid two-way night. It was probably one of the Bulls’ best wins of the season.
Can Chicago take care of business tonight against a far inferior team that’s happily tanking? On paper, yes, the Bulls are the more talented club. But that doesn’t mean much for this middling Chicago team, which struggles to shoot triples at volume and thus can go cold on offense in any quarter.
The Bulls are very much not out of the play-in tournament picture, if you care about such things. At 30-36, Chicago sits just 0.5 games behind the similarly hapless Washington Wizards The Bulls are also just half a game clear of the East’s 12th-seeded Indiana Pacers.
Injury Report: Among healthy Bulls, only Marko Simonovic is away from the team, meaning we may see a Terry Taylor cameo tonight.
The rebuilding Rockets’ injury report is clean.
Game Time: 7 p.m. CT on NBC Sports Chicago