CHICAGO (670 The Score) – The oddly constructed Bulls, who can only nebulously outline their vague goals for this season, displayed nearly the full extent of their capabilities Thursday evening at the United Center.
A night after the Bulls embarrassed themselves with an array of junior high-style turnovers that led to a layup line for the Mavericks in a blowout, the Bulls took care of the ball pretty well, selflessly shared it, shot at a high clip and led for more than three quarters against a Western Conference contender.
After all that, the Bulls still managed to blow a 13-point lead and lose 135-119 to the Timberwolves, who hung a whopping 45 points in the fourth quarter, when they shot a blistering 70.8%. In a way, it was an ideal path to an ideal result for Chicago, for those who subscribe to the theory that it’s in the organization’s best interest to retain its top 10-protected pick in the loaded 2025 NBA Draft that it owes to San Antonio for a player who now plays in Sacramento.
Sure, the Bulls defense was awful Thursday, but any quasi-rebuilding team wandering aimlessly through the NBA wilderness knows that defense is always the best fall guy to cite for a loss. That's because it's a collective culprit. No one’s feelings get hurt when no one gets singled out.
“We have to clean that up, and it’s not on one person,” 22-year-old point guard Josh Giddey said. “It’s a collective effort. We’ve kind of always spoke about it that way. We have to defend as a team, and obviously tonight we didn’t do that.”
Further evidence in the litigation of the game-changing stretch was that the Bulls got burned by an All-NBA talent in Anthony Edwards, who had 33 points, including 13 in the fourth quarter. What are you going to do when their star plays and yours is sidelined by injury?
“Our margin for error, we just don’t have it,” coach Billy Donovan said when asked about the Bulls’ talent deficiency on a night that two-time All-Star guard Zach LaVine sat out with an adductor strain. “Like we don’t have someone that’s going to be able to go crazy.”
Consider the rest of the festivities. The Bulls had 30 assists – including 13 from Giddey – against 13 turnovers and shot 53.4% overall. Their 3-point volume wasn’t quite as high as it has been recently or they’d like it to be, but they shot a solid 15-of-36 from deep. The Bulls took the lead with 8:16 remaining in the first quarter and held it for the next 37-plus minutes before faltering.
Veteran center Nikola Vucevic, a prime trade candidate should an opposing team finally show genuine interest, continued his blistering start to the season by scoring 25 points on 11-of-15 shooting while easily getting buckets on Wolves center Rudy Gobert, a four-time Defensive Player of the Year winner. Vucevic is now averaging 21.2 points in nine games while shooting 58.1% overall and 47.5% from 3-point range, a pair of marks well, well above his career averages.
“I’m just playing off my teammates,” Vucevic said. “I think the way we play opens up a lot of opportunities for me to score in different ways, whether it’s inside or threes.
“The pace we play at gets me a lot of easy looks because we make their bigs move.”
The Bulls are executing their goal of playing faster this season, as they led the NBA in pace entering Thursday. It just isn’t leading to success, as they’ve dropped to 3-6 and are now riding a four-game losing streak.
“There was a lot of positive for three quarters,” Vucevic said. “We really played well. We took it them. We just didn’t finish the job.”
Due to the Bulls' sad state of affairs, that's probably for the best in the big picture.
Cody Westerlund is an editor for 670TheScore.com and covers the Bulls. Follow him on Twitter @CodyWesterlund.