Chicago Bulls studs from road win over the Knicks: Zach LaVine
It’s weird that it’s almost starting to feel normal for the Bulls to be able to beat playoff-caliber teams by closing out in clutch time on the road. But that’s what you get when you have a trio of stars like shooting guard Zach LaVine, center Nikola Vucevic, and DeRozan firing on all cylinders at the same time.
As long as the star scoring duo of LaVine and DeRozan remains hot whilst Vucevic improves his play in the way that he has in the last couple of games, the Bulls are going to be really difficult team to beat moving forward for anyone.
This was a difficult choice whether to include LaVine or Vucevic to round out this list of studs and duds. But LaVine did make a truly wholesome impact on this game for the Bulls that really helped to get them a huge lead in the first half, which kept the team afloat in the second half when other scoring sources started to fade. Granted, there were points in the third quarter that LaVine started to go cold.
LaVine finished up this game with 27 points on 9-of-18 shooting from the field, 3-of-6 from beyond the arc, and 6-of-6 from the free-throw line. Along with that, he tied a team-high with seven rebounds, five assists, one steal, one block, and three turnovers.
When LaVine and DeRozan are two of the studs for the Bulls with solid two-way performances like they had in this meeting with the Knicks, it feels like the team is going to win at least 75 percent of the time. That was the case on this night. And really it was the trio of Vucevic, LaVine, and DeRozan that got the win on this night. These three combined for an impressive 88 points on the night.