Sluggish Bulls Lose Badly to Pacers

As I said in my last post, the NBA is super random this year & the unexpected tends to happen. Seeing the Chicago Bulls get slaughtered by an average team was something I did not want to see on a fine Monday evening. I’ll be very honest; I did not have it in me to watch the entire game. The Bulls just came out really slow but that was something expected since that was their fifth game in seven days—just absurd. It involved a lot of traveling therefore had a greater impact than anyone anticipated. The Chicago Bulls small ball lineup struggled against the much larger Indiana Pacers team. Myles Turner was practically everywhere & Sabonis owned the paint; they played a zone defense & no adjustments were made. Missing Alex Caruso due to a wrist contusion was definitely noticed & the zone defense will continue to be used until Vooch returns. I guess you just can’t win them all.

The game immediately started off bad; the Bulls definitely looked sluggish, had turnovers & couldn’t rebound. The zone defense hurt them terribly & they couldn’t figure it out. Coach Billy Donovan started Coby White to see if he could continue his momentum from the New York game but Coby couldn’t get going. The Bulls got no offense going & had scored only nine points with less than three minutes left in the first quarter & that’s when I realized the game was not going to be good. Pacers went on multiple runs while the Bulls continued to have empty possessions. Seeing that the Bulls called up a couple players from the Windy City Bulls, I expected them to be used to provide some extra energy but that did not happen. To exploit the zone, Coach Donovan should have used the rookie Marko Simonović, who can shoot at all three levels. That did not happen. The second quarter there was some hope showed with a slight increase in activity & energy along with DeMar doing DeMar things. They proceeded to go on a run & cut the lead down to 11—only to let the Pacers go on their own run. The defensive rotations looked extremely slow & the players were struggling to get around screens. I do expect the physical impact from the New York game played a part. The third & fourth quarter was more of the same; it was truly unfortunate to see practically no adjustments made or different lineups tried. Billy Donovan generally has a good game plan & he might’ve but I’ve had an issue with his in-game rotations & adjustments from the day he was hired. This is one more game I blame on the coach.

Look, you can’t win them all. It just sucks to lose a game that they easily could’ve won. The Warriors game hurt less than this. We do move on though & take on the league-worst Houston Rockets tonight. They have won only one game this season & it is the best possible bounce back opportunity a team can have. They don’t have any crazy start talent & their new coach Stephen Silas hasn’t proven anything yet. They do have young talent in the explosive rookie Jalen Green, an explosive guard in Kevin Porter Jr & a talented three-level scoring big man in Christian Wood. Both Vooch & Caruso should be available for tonight & hopefully Vooch can use this game to get his groove back. In bounce back games, LaVine & DeRozan end up having great games so that is something that should happen. Expect the Chicago Bulls to bounce back & leave the city of Houston with a solid win.