Chicago Bulls vs. Cleveland Cavaliers: Highlights, Score and Recap

On Friday night in Chicago, the Jimmy Butler-less Chicago Bulls took on the LeBron James-less Cleveland Cavaliers at the United Center in preseason action.

Next: Jerian Grant will be out with something to prove this season

For the fourth act of the new-look Chicago Bulls during the NBA’s preseason, the red and black took the floor at the United Center to face the world champion Cleveland Cavaliers on Friday night.

Friday’s game was rather weird. No, it wasn’t so much the game as it was those that didn’t play in the game. Jimmy Butler and LeBron James both sat out, along with Kyrie Irving, Kevin Love and former Bulls forward Mike Dunleavy on Friday night.

How ugly did it get for the Bulls? They gave up 35 first-quarter points to a Irving-James-Love(-less) lineup. That’s not great.

Can it get any worse than that? Yeah, it can. They turned the ball over 11 times in the opening 12 minutes. The fact that doing something like that is actually possible is amazingly bad.

The Bulls did find a way to score 54 points in the first half, but giving up 63 to basically a D-League roster is not a good thing, even in the preseason.

Highlights

So, the Cavalier roster doesn’t like deep dish pizza? None of them came to Chicago on Friday night.

J.R. Smith got paid! During the game!

When Rajon Rondo just attacks the basket instead of assist-hunting in transition, he can still finish fairly well. (Note: This did go in, plus the foul.)

The Chicago Cubs are still playing these days, right?

Honestly, Rondo probably has trademarked this move.

Yeah, you could say that.

It wasn’t a highlight by any means, but it sure was funny.

It’s like Larry Bird passing to Dennis Johnson. Sort of.

Tajkeem OlajuGibson, or something like that.

Three Stars

1. The fans that actually paid money to attend this game: To those that actually paid to watch a basketball game without Jimmy Butler, Kyrie Irving, Kevin Love and LeBron James, you not only deserve your money back, you deserve a medal for your bravery.
2. Rajon Rondo turnovers. He’s averaging more than five turnovers per game so far during the preseason. Couple that with some ridiculously poor defense and you begin to understand why Rondo is always going to be known as a former All-Star with heavy emphasis on former.
3. Taj Gibson, starting power forward. Gibson got the nod and managed a double-double in points and rebounds against the Cavaliers D-League team. It would be great if he had this kind of outing against a Tristan Thompson-Kevin Love duo, but we’ll have to just hope that this type of performance can be repeated against better competition.
4. Paul Zipser. Yes, I am aware that if we have three stars, there isn’t a fourth star because then it would be four stars. Too bad. Zipser had a great game, particularly in the fourth quarter. If he keeps this up, he’s going to be seeing a fair amount of regular season minutes and that is a good thing.

What’s Next for Both Teams?

For the Bulls, they’ll make the short journey north to face the Milwaukee Bucks once again in the preseason on Saturday night. The Cavaliers will head home for their final preseason game against the Washington Wizards this coming Tuesday, Oct. 18.