Do The Stats Mean Anything?
Two players appeared to have a great game for Chicago – Isaiah Canaan and Doug McDermott. However, it didn’t really seem to mean anything.
Canaan finished with 25 points, McDermott with 22. Canaan hit five 3s, McDermott hit four.
McDermott led all scorers with 16 points in the first half, followed by Canaan with 14 who was tied with Giannis Antetokounmpo for Milwaukee at that point total. Despite having the top two scorers in the first half, the Bulls got crushed in transition – they scored zero transition points in the entire first half – and they trailed the Bucks 60-43 heading into halftime.
Stats sometimes tell the entire story and sometimes they don’t seem to tell any of the story. The Bulls would have been run out of the building if they hadn’t used the fourth quarter of a Saturday night preseason game with no starters, aka Ultimate Garbage Time, to make a ridiculous run.
The scoring output in this single game is dangerous to believe because, unfortunately, doesn’t mean much to the team as a whole heading into the regular season. It only serves as flat-earth truther fodder in a campaign for marginal players who have been well outplayed by the rest of the depth chart at their positions.