The Chicago Bulls hosted the Milwaukee Bucks on Friday night, looking to avenge an ugly loss from the night before when the two teams faced off in Wisconsin. That isn’t what happened.
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Just one night after looking absolutely flat, the Bulls did nothing to right the ship. In fact, things actually got weirder and worse as Friday wore on – and that was before the game started.
One of the more noteworthy happenings from Thursday night, Milwaukee’s first game on the TNT network since 2002, was the first DNP-CD of Nikola Mirotic’s career. Then, on Friday, Vincent Goodwill of CSNChicago reported that Mirotic missed (or skipped) the team’s walk through. Coach Fred Hoiberg wasn’t forthright with the details, but did make it clear that there was the possibility of a fine for his deposed power forward.
When the game finally got going, it looked like everything picked up right where it was left on Thursday night. Chicago continued to look flat, running bad sets, playing bad defense, and getting next to nothing from their early-season savior, Jimmy Butler. On the other side, the Bucks were ready to roll from the opening tip. Jabari Parker and Giannis Antetokounmpo attacking Butler, Rajon Rondo, Taj Gibson, Doug McDermott and anyone else that made any kind of attempt at slowing them down.
There were a lot of ugly things about a gritty Friday night game against a division rival, so here we go.