Notes from the Bulls' season opener

Some quick bullet points from Game 1 vs. the Pelicans

There were concerns that the Bulls would be too good to keep their top-10 protected draft pick this season. I was not one of those people — I think that the Bulls will sneak under their 28.5 win total set by Vegas.

You never want to take too much from one game, but that looked to be a safe bet in the team’s 123-111 loss to a Pelicans team missing two starters in Zion Williamson and Trey Murphy. Dejounte Murray was also playing with what was later disclosed as a broken hand in the second half, and the Pelicans still smoked the Bulls during that timespan.

I live-blogged that game for the fans who couldn’t get their antenna setup to work. I also graded Josh Giddey’s performance at Sporting News (along with clipping every shot, make or miss, every assist, and every turnover he had).

Since you’re probably a Bulls sicko if you’re subscribed to this newsletter, I’ll give you one more and do some bullet points of what I observed from this game.

• The Bulls stayed competitive in the first half behind insane shotmaking from Zach LaVine. He had 19 points on 7-10 shooting, including 5-of-6 from deep on some tough looks in that half. He finished with 27 in a game that should help his trade value.

• The Pelicans came out of halftime with the plan to blitz LaVine more and get the ball out of his hands. LaVine started forcing things as the deficit grew larger, and he had a bad second half. His problems with shot selection and turnovers re-emerged, and he finished with seven of the Bulls’ 21 giveaways for the game.

• Matas Buzelis only got five minutes in this one. He had one real shift in the second quarter where he promptly airballed a 3 and fouled Brandon Ingram. He looked rough, but it was hard for him to get into a rhythm with such a short leash.

• Patrick Williams was mostly invisible, scoring six points on 2-of-7 shooting. He had some wide open 3’s, of which he made 1-of-4. His handle remains shockingly bad — he turned it over twice against very light pressure.

• Coby White looked to struggle in his new role. He missed all five of his 3’s, and he had some bad turnovers where he drove right into the teeth of the defense with nowhere to go. He also blew a defensive rotation on the opening play of the game, leading to a dunk for Daniel Theis. The broadcast picked up the coaches screaming to get his attention before it happened. He did pick up his play midway through the game by focusing on creating more in transition.

• The return of Lonzo was a bright spot. He drilled his first shot and threw a nice lob to LaVine. The team functions better when he’s out there, but he was limited to 14 minutes.

• Ayo Dosunmu and Jalen Smith were also good glue guys off the bench. Dosunmu was his usual self, getting downhill and playing great defense. Smith played bigger than his size and scored points in bunches.

• Nikola Vucevic did his usual thing, scoring inside and grabbing a ton of rebounds for a 21 point, 11 rebound performance. The Bulls’ pick-and-roll defense was atrocious though due to the lack of screen navigation from Giddey and others. That puts way too much pressure on Vooch to clean things up, which he is incapable of doing.

• Read my full Giddey recap here please. Clicking on my Sporting News stories is by far the best way to support the free newsletter. If you want the one sentence version, I gave him a C. His defense wasn’t good, he wouldn’t shoot it, but he was a willing and somewhat effective driver when he wasn’t getting his shot swatted.

• If you want to hear even more from me, I’ll be recording a podcast with Bulls on Tap on Thursday night which will be livestreamed at 6:30 pm CT and presumably available for download later. (Here’s a link to their YT channel)