The Chicago Bulls lost to the Sacramento Kings 104-98 on Monday in the Golden 1 Center. It’s time to check out the one thing I liked and disliked from the game.
The Chicago Bulls extended their losing streak to seven games with their 104-98 loss to the Sacramento Kings in the Golden 1 Center.
Tank-o-meter: The Bulls’ loss drops them to 18-35. They have the sixth-worst record in the league and are two games out of the worst record in the association.
Fun Fact #1
The Bulls made 20 free-throws in their game against the Kings. This is the first time this season the Bulls made 20 or more free-throws in back-to-back games. The last time they made 20 or more free-throws in back-to-back games was in their Feb. 16 game vs. the Boston Celtics and their Feb. 24 contest against the Phoenix Suns.
The remarkable part about this is that the Chicago Bulls only attempted 26 percent of their shots at the rim (10th percentile). It’s crazy that they drew nearly as many shooting fouls within four feet of the basket, six, than they made field goals rim, seven.
Fun Fact #2
Guard Zach LaVine scored a season-high 27 points in the game. He’s scored 20 or more points in three consecutive games for the first time this season.
The last time he scored 20 points in three consecutive games was last season as a member of the Minnesota Timberwolves. He scored 24 points in a Dec. 13, 2017 game against the Chicago Bulls, recorded 24 points in a Dec. 17, 2017 contest vs. the Houston Rockets and tallied 23 points in a Dec. 19, 2017 game against the Phoenix Suns.
Dislike: Blowing the lead
It isn’t surprising that the Bulls blew their 21-point lead. Finding ways to blow leads was a fixture of their season before forward Nikola Mirotic made his season debut on Dec. 8. It looks like the Bulls are going to revert back to struggling to hold a significant lead like they did earlier in the season with Mirotic on the New Orleans Pelicans now.
The Kings’ struggles early in the game masked the Bulls’ incompetence to commence the contest. The Bulls only had an eight-point advantage over the Kings midway through the first half even though the Sacramento franchise shot 1-of-11 from the field and had three turnovers within the first four minutes of the game.
The Windy City franchise managed to overcome their own slow start and led the Kings 32-11 a couples minutes into the second quarter. But, yet again, the Chicago Bulls became innocent bystanders to the opposing team dominating large portions of a game.
The Kings progressed to the mean and shot 54.2 percent from the field, 45.5 percent from beyond the arc, only turned the ball over five times and outscored the Bulls 93-66 in the final 33:37 of game action.
In addition to center Robin Lopez getting ejected after only 13 minutes of play, forward Bobby Portis and guard Jerian Grant had inefficient scoring nights. The Kings bench unit outscored the Bulls bench 55-22. The Bulls bench mob is depleted since Portis and Grant have to start in the place of guard Kris Dunn and forward Lauri Markkanen. But, that’s still unacceptable.
I mentioned the Bulls’ lack of interior presence hurt them in their game against the Clippers on Saturday. That remained the case on Monday. The Kings made an absurd 75% percent (84th percentile) of their shots at the rim. The Bulls don’t have a reliable rim protector. They’ll continue to lose games (which is good!) as teams expose this deficiency in the team more frequently.
Like: A poster
Goodness gracious, LaVine. Goodness gracious.
.@ZachLaVine's first poster as a Bull 😤 pic.twitter.com/Pyxl9pGR7G
— Bleacher Report (@BleacherReport) February 6, 2018
The combination of grace, power and post-dunk trash talk makes this one of the best dunks on an opposing defender this season. The dunk itself was beyond disrespectful and would make anyone reconsider their career aspirations.
But, if you paid attention to the sequence that led to the dunk then you wouldn’t be surprised if Kings forward JaKarr Sampson wasn’t screaming at Kings Garrett Temple right now.
LaVine stripped the ball out of Temple’s hands (like taking candy from a baby!). He blew by Temple like he wasn’t even there and laid the smackdown on Sampson. It’s crazy to think this might not even be his best dunk on a person in a game.
LaVine is becoming pretty good at closing out quarters.