Sadly—fortunately?—the Bulls were left off of the NBA Christmas Day slate. But while we didn’t get to see another big night from Lauri Markkanen and co., we did get a better idea of the true contenders among the some of the top teams in the league.
Christmas Day featured five games, all involving teams still in the playoff hunt sans the Knicks. So what did we learn?
We learned that the Rockets can still hang with the league’s best, as they downed the Thunder 113-109 behind 41 points from James Harden. Houston held the Thunder to 43 percent from the field and seem to have rediscovered last seasons’ mojo.