The Chicago Bulls snapped a seven-game losing streak at the expense of the Washington Wizards on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
Losers of seven in a row themselves, the NBA-worst Wizards will love nothing more than to return the favor Thursday when the teams reconvene in Washington, D.C.<\/p>\n
Rob Dillingham scored a career-high 26 points off the bench to fuel Chicago to a 129-98 rout Tuesday.<\/p>\n
The victory realistically does little for the Bulls (30-49), who already have been eliminated from postseason contention.<\/p>\n
So, with that in mind, just how important is it for Chicago to finish the season with victories in the last three games?<\/p>\n
Well, team president Michael Reinsdorf repeated Tuesday that the Bulls aren\u2019t interested in tanking for a better draft pick. However, that door doesn\u2019t exactly seem closed on the heels of the team dismissing vice president of basketball operations Arturas Karnisovas and general manager Marc Eversley.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe don\u2019t know where the lottery changes are happening,\u201d Reinsdorf said, per the Chicago Sun-Times. \u201cWe know what\u2019s out there and what\u2019s being talked about, but we have to see where the league goes. Once we see where the league goes, that\u2019s really important, understanding that trend. We haven\u2019t always done that. We haven\u2019t always recognized the trends on where things are going.<\/p>\n
\u201cBack in 2012 or \u201813, when the 3-point shooting started to increase, if we would have anticipated that more and how it was going to change, we probably would have had different decision-making in some of the players we drafted. So, you\u2019ve got to stay ahead of it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Back to matters on the court: Patrick Williams scored a season-high 20 points to go along with seven rebounds and six assists on Tuesday for the Bulls.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s no secret, there was a lot going on outside these four lines here. So, we tried to focus on this game, focus on basketball,\u201d Williams said, referencing the team\u2019s front office turnover. \u201cIt\u2019s been kind of a retreat for us to play the game and compete. Try to get the win, and we did that (on Tuesday).\u201d<\/p>\n
Bilal Coulibaly scored 19 points for the Wizards (17-62), who have dropped 23 of their last 24 games to guarantee that they will keep their protected first-round pick. Washington could win its final three games and still not fall past seventh in the draft order.<\/p>\n
Coulibaly, however, insists there are some positives during this gloom-and-doom season. Case in point, rookies Tre Johnson, Will Riley and Jamir Watkins, with all three showing flashes of improvement during the campaign.<\/p>\n
\u201cAll the rookies, they\u2019ve been doing a great job just staying with it, working, listening to coaches and all that, doing the right thing,\u201d Coulibaly said, per The Athletic. \u201cI think that\u2019s part of the growth of the team.\u201d<\/p>\n
Julian Reese posted 17 points and a team-high 11 rebounds Tuesday for his fourth double-double in 10 games with Washington this season. Sharife Cooper added 17 points off the bench for the Wizards.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think the biggest step we took \u2026 is the aspect of team camaraderie,\u201d forward Justin Champagnie said, per The Athletic. \u201cWe all support each other. We\u2019re all trying to root each other on and building that team aspect from the bottom up, especially with a group of young guys.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Chicago Bulls snapped a seven-game losing streak at the expense of the Washington Wizards on Tuesday. Losers…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":706165,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3780],"tags":[7,6,682,468,3892,683],"class_list":{"0":"post-706164","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-washington-wizards","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-nba","10":"tag-washington","11":"tag-washington-wizards","12":"tag-washingtonwizards","13":"tag-wizards"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/116371839115460662","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/706164","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=706164"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/706164\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/706165"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=706164"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=706164"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=706164"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}