Chicago Bulls: Road Warriors of Three Under Boylen

Chicago Bulls continue recent road domination under Jim Boylen thanks to now healthy Big 3 of LaVine, Markkanen and Dunn.

The Chicago Bulls really stepped it up on Friday night in the nation’s capital versus the Wizards and showed they’re true road warriors with a 101-92 victory.  Giving them their third victory in their last four road games.

It was a game where three was a good number too.  As the Bulls got their third time in 12 games reaching at least 100 points under coach Jim Boylen and improved their record to 5-7 since he took over as coach.

In a game that say all five Bulls starters and veteran big Robin Lopez with double digits off the bench, it was a really good team effort.  But it was the Bulls Big 3 of Zach LaVine, Lauri Markkanen and Kris Dunn, who were really key on offense.  As they combined for 51 of the Bulls 101 points in the victory.

LaVine the most effective of the bunch by scoring a team-high 24 points on 7-of-12 shooting in just 28 minutes.  His second 20 plus point game since returning from injury.  That included this very key layup and one within the final 30 seconds of the game to about seal the victory.

In the rare spurts the Bulls Big 3 of LaVine, Markkanen and Dunn were on the floor together that we thought we would see a lot more of they looked really good.  Which included a key stepback jumper by Kris Dunn with 2:29 left to give the Bulls their biggest lead at 10.

His final points of the game to give him 13, Dunn was more of a facilitator by dishing out a team leading eight assists.  While Markkanen lead the team with 14 rebounds and got yet another double-double with 14 points and 14 rebounds.

The Bulls bigs showed once again how important they’re to victory too.  As besides Markkanen, Wendell Carter Jr. also got a double-double of 17 points on 8-of-10 shooting with 13 rebounds.  The veteran Lopez also contributing 10 points on 5-of-7 shooting with two blocks in 15 minutes off the bench.

Boylen getting into the Bulls how important defense is to winning, it showed on Friday night in the victory.  As Carter also had three pretty key blocks and a steal.  Steals a contributing factor to getting out on the break a few times.  As Justin Holiday and Ryan Arcidiacono with three and Dunn with two played small parts in a few buckets.

The great contributions all around from the whole team on both offense and defense Friday night showing how much better you have a chance of winning when that happens.  The question with everyone now finally starting to get healthy on a team that has had so many injury problems is can they gel enough to win some more games and have an outside chance at still making the playoffs in a still pretty weak Eastern Conference.