It\u2019s rare to have a regular season game where just about everyone\u2019s attention in the arena is elsewhere. That\u2019s where the fans at United Center found themselves on Sunday evening as the hometown Bears took on the Los Angeles Rams in the last game of the NFL Divisional Round. It was a thriller at Solider Field, but at the United Center, it was an easy, stress-free night of basketball.<\/p>\n
The Brooklyn Nets were without Michael Porter Jr and Drake Powell tonight as they sat the first leg of a traveling back-to-back. To begin the game, Brooklyn got off to a good start as they found some early success from three point range.<\/p>\n
However, the highlights ended there as the Bulls regained the lead and never looked back.<\/p>\n
The Nets defense made a dramatic turnaround in December, and it started with their defense. They held teams to just 32.8% from deep, third lowest in the NBA and just 105.4 points per 100 possessions, tops in the league. The team defense has started to slip in January, as teams shot 37.2% from three against them in January, 21st in the league. Tonight, we saw why.<\/p>\n
Chicago\u2019s offense started to figure things out in the fourth quarter of Friday\u2019s game. Although their rally fell short, they went 6-12 from three point range and felt incredibly confident coming into tonight\u2019s game. That confidence shined early and often in the Windy City. In the first half, the Bulls went 12-20 from three point range. The Nets\u2019 switching defense wasn\u2019t as in sync as they normally are and there were numerous breakdowns in their coverage. Coby White was the beneficiary of those lapses as his five first half threes<\/p>\n
It was over early and the lead grew to as big as 27 points in the second half. The Nets tried switching things up by going with a starting five of Nolan Traore-Cam Thomas-Tyrese Martin-Jalen Wilson-Nic Claxton combination. As far as I could tell doing a quick scan of the NBA\u2019s lineup data<\/a> and in Basketball-Reference<\/a>, it was the first time Jordi Fernandez went to that pairing. It didn\u2019t help as the Bulls built their lead to 26 before the Nets went to the bench. With the game fully in hand, it was a slow crawl to the finish line and everyone could focus on the win the city is desperately hoping for over at Soldier Field.<\/p>\n Final score: Chicago Bulls 124, Brooklyn Nets 102.<\/p>\n If you\u2019re looking for a positive, Cam Thomas did tie his career high with ten assists on the night to only one turnover. CT\u2019s playmaking has been a point of conversation throughout his time as a pro and a night like this should help him down the line. He had a season low (excluding the game he left early due to a hamstring injury<\/a>) three points, but scoring has never been an issue for him.<\/p>\n Nolan Traor\u00e9 set a career high in points (16) and three pointers made (four) off the bench, and with the team likely to be sitting players in their next game, has an opportunity to carve out even more minutes for himself.<\/p>\n Speaking of the next game, it\u2019s a quick turnaround for Brooklyn. The Nets are back in action tomorrow night against a surprising Phoenix Suns team. Tip off on MLK Day at 7:30 p.m. ET.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It\u2019s rare to have a regular season game where just about everyone\u2019s attention in the arena is elsewhere.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":545991,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3771],"tags":[7,920,919,329,3824,6,51809],"class_list":{"0":"post-545990","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-chicago-bulls","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-bulls","10":"tag-chicago","11":"tag-chicago-bulls","12":"tag-chicagobulls","13":"tag-nba","14":"tag-nets-scores"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/115919735066041134","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/545990","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=545990"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/545990\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/545991"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=545990"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=545990"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=545990"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}