Chicago Bulls: 3 Takeaways from 122-113 win over the Raptors

The Chicago Bulls have won three in a row following their 122-113 victory over the Toronto Raptors on Thursday night. The win was huge, even though it came against an extremely shorthanded Raptors team that shouldn’t have hung around as long as they did.

While there are certainly things the team needs to learn from, including an old trend that almost emerged as they saw their lead shrinking in the fourth quarter, there were also a number of positive takeaways from this important win.

The Bulls are now three games ahead of the Raptors for the 10th seed in the eastern conference. While the Bulls were without veteran wing Garrett Temple the Raptors were far more shorthanded. In fact, they only had eight players total available.

Their all-star guard duo was among those not available in this one. That gave the Bulls a huge advantage from the get-go. It didn’t help the Raptors that they were also missing Deandre Bembry to go along with both Fred VanVleet and Kyle Lowry.

Somehow, the Bulls opened the game lackadaisical and without any real sense of urgency. That allowed the Raptors to jump out to a quick lead in the opening minutes of the first quarter. Still, the Bulls were back on top at the end of the first with a 33-27 lead.

Chicago has a quick turnaround as they are in action again on Friday night when they face off with the Atlanta Hawks. Like the Raptors in this one, the Hawks are expected to be quite shorthanded.

While it would be ideal to see this Bulls group getting reps against as much competition as possible it is equally as important to see them win games they should win. Right now the focus is more about what they are doing as they grow more and more comfortable as a group each game.