For some reason I blame Tomas Satoransky, something about tall pass-first guards just fires me up. Somehow a guy who averaged 8.9 points and 5 assist a game, in his best season, pushed me over the edge. I’m officially all in on the Bulls. Of course in typical Bulls fashion, they’re already trying to give me a heart attack. Two of my tweets do a pretty good job portraying how the bulls opener went.
The Good
I actually think there was some good to take away from the Bulls first game. First of Lauri Markkanen is officially my MVP front runner, after a 35 point and 17 rebound performance. Then there’s Kris Dunn and Coby White who virtually have Sixth Man of The Year and Rookie of The Year locked up. Seriously though the offense is actually going to play at a good pace this year. When you combine that with an overall solid roster with some serious scoring punch they have a chance to outgun a lot of teams.
The Bad
The defense was pretty terrible. I know the Hornets shot lights out and that’s likely to regress. Teams aren’t going to average 23 threes on 52 percent shooting against them this year. But they did let the Hornets get out in transition and get a lot of open looks from the outside. Honestly, the Hornets aren’t a great offensive team, the Bulls shouldn’t be making them look the Warriors. Expect a lot of 130-122 games this year.
The Bulls Looking Ahead
Obviously you don’t want to base an entire season off of the first game. A heartbreaking loss like this wasn’t ideal, especially when you go up by 10 in the fourth. All together though this is a good Bulls team that ran into a team that was hot from deep, that’s going to happen. There’s a couple of this to watch with this team. Can the Bulls continue to turn other teams over this much? The Bulls had 11 steals last night.
This is an offense that is going to thrive in transition and they need the defense to set that up. Also, will Lauri continue to be this assertive on offense? Zach LaVine got into early foul trouble and that allowed Markkanen to really take over. Personally I like the offense running through Lauri at the top of the key. It’s going to be interesting to see who the go-to guy is when LaVine can actually be assertive. Personally, I think the Bulls finish slightly above .500 this year. It’s going to be fun watching them in the playoffs again.
