Bulls-Clippers: Three Takeaways From the loss

The Chicago Bulls lost to the Los Angeles Clippers 113-103. Here are three takeaways from the game.

Tobias Harris had one heck of a debut against the Chicago Bulls at a lightly-attended Staples Center on a Saturday afternoon. Danilo Gallinari, in only his 12th game of the season, joined Harris in scoring 24 points apiece. Though the Clippers only beat the Bulls 113-103, the margin should have been double that. The Clippers are a significantly deeper and more talented team.

This was a sloppy game for both teams. Chicago, missing significant key personnel in Lauri Markkanen and Kris Dunn and the just-traded Nikola Mirotic, had an excuse. The Clippers did not. The win boosted the Clippers, amidst a fight for the eighth seed in the West. L.A. is now 26-25, just one game behind the Denver Nuggets for the final playoff spot.

With the loss, Chicago dropped to 18-34.

Jim Boylen might secretly be the Bulls’ most important coach

I was at this game and my big personal takeaways were that: Clippers games are essentially home games for the opposition and as for the Bulls, associate head coach Jim Boylen did a lot of the communicating with players from the sidelines.

The formerSpurs assistant coach was recently a guest on Nate Duncan’s Dunc’d On podcast. He explained in an aside that Lauri Markkanen, Kris Dunn, and Zach LaVine, three of the team’s best and most important players, were “his guys.” This note gave me pause at the time. Did this mean that busts like Denzel Valentine and Jerian Grant were Fred Hoiberg’s guys?

While Hoiberg generally stood around and awkwardly put his hands on his hips, Boylen was actively engaging the Bulls players with notes and plays. At one point, following a stoppage in play very late in the contest with the game completely out of reach, Hoiberg produced a sheet of paper (a play, perhaps?) from his coat, as if he was going to try out something crazy. After the time out, the Bulls ran around and forced up a bad look with time to spare. Was that as crazy as Fred was willing to get? Why didn’t he try a weird play earlier?

Paul Zipser had his best game of the season

Not only that, but most of the damage he did was wrought in the first half. Zipser was on fire from deep at first, before cooling down considerably when the game started to matter. When the dust had settled, the German had scored 16 points on a slight 6-10 shooting night. He also grabbed five rebounds and had a weirdly relentless motor. I’m sure this was an anomaly, but it was nice to see that he could put together a nice game, since he is currently the starting power forward over Bobby Portis.

David Nwaba was a virtual non-entity

Though Nwaba was the Bulls’ second-most important healthy wing, he failed to contribute much in the loss. Zach LaVine in person doesn’t quite pass the eye test – he fouls nonstop on defense, and his offensive output comes and goes. 

He scored 21 points on a poor 6-18 shooting night. LaVine also pulled down nine rebounds and four assists.

Without the spacing or defensive attention given to Lauri Markkanen and Kris Dunn (and Nikola Mirotic), Nwaba’s contributions were largely nullified. This is a player who does the dirty stuff: leaping after loose balls, setting tough screens and scrambling for buckets via put backs, dunks and hard-fought rebounds. When the shots aren’t falling or they’re being defended straight up, Nwaba can’t roam. He played just 12 minutes, and scored just two points.

So what did all this add up to? 

With Markkanen and Dunn sidelined and Nikola Mirotic having gone the way of the Pelican, the Bulls lacked a legitimate long distance threat. The Clippers didn’t respect any of their remaining players, and would abandon people who stuck on the perimeter to clog the lane when Nwaba, Jerian Grant, or Zach LaVine penetrated. With three and sometimes four black jerseys swarming them, the Bulls’ starting back court settled for awful contested layups, threw the ball out of bounds, or just got blocked. This also happened to Denzel Valentine a few times.

Next: Zach LaVine had a nice game against Clippers

Chicago has now lost six straight games. The Bulls should be able to pad that streak so long as Dunn and/or Markkanen remain out.