Tonight, our 24-27 Chicago Bulls will host one of the league’s other depressingly “mid” teams with one All-Star, the 26-26 Portland Trail Blazers.
The Bulls will at least be better-rested, as Portland will be playing the second night of a back-to-back pair of games, having vanquished the Washington Wizards (like Chicago, another Eastern Conference play-in tournament hopeful) 124-116 last night in D.C. Portland’s prolific undersized starting backcourt of Damian Lillard and Anfernee Simons combined for 62 points on 20-of-39 shooting (12-of-22 from deep) to pilot the winning effort.
As always, the big issue with this Chicago team is three-point shooting, on both ends: the Bulls’ perimeter defense without Lonzo Ball has been lacking (Alex Caruso can only play so many minutes, after all) as has its volume of triples attempted per game.