1. The effort was downright putrid
OK, so the Bulls lost by 11.
That doesn’t tell the whole story.
The Bulls gave up 64 points in the first half to the Bucks and looked about as awful as any team could doing it, too.
Throughout the night, the Bulls made lazy passes, resulting in most of their 16 turnovers. There was no sense of pace or flow on offense. Defensively, it was even worse. The Bulls had no answer for Jabari Parker (28 points) and Giannis Antetokounmpo (30 points), and appeared that they didn’t care either.
It was a lazy effort, full of silly mistakes, non-communication and overall bad basketball. It’s just game No. 25 in 82, but these kinds of losses could have a snowball effect.
The Bucks are a rising team in the NBA. They’re young and athletic, you know, like the Bulls front office said this team was this past summer. In this home-and-home, back-to-back set, the Bucks got the upper hand and the Bulls had no sense of caring or urgency (expect for the final few minutes of the contest when it was already over).