Bulls @ Pacers 6:30pm CT

[Ice Man]

Demar does a very passable impression of mid 30s Michael Jordan. Yeah I said it.

Ha! I was just getting onto the board to write that for the young pups who never saw Jordan live, they should watch DeMar down the stretch last night. That *was* Mike -- and a high-level version of Mike at that. No exaggeration.

[jc23]

awesome game; hope Coby is ok.

[drosestruts]

There's an old cliche in the NBA that "the team with the best player often wins"

Despite one team having one of the young budding stars of the league in Tyrese Haliburton, and also having the most coveted player moved at the deadline this year - the best player on the floor last night was the Bulls DeMar DeRozan (this has been the case many of nights recently).

In the wise words of Ferris Bueller - "'Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it"

This board is routinely focused on projecting tomorrow. Injuries may have sapped us of this team reaching whatever their full potential is - but this team, and particularly DeMar DeRozan have delivered some great basketball play and moments over the past three years and it would be a shame for people to miss or overlook these.

I often see some posters claim the team isn't worth their time and they're not watching - if this describes you, you're missing one of the better, funner player to have played in Chicago this decade.

You can keep telling me DeMar is 34 years old, and I'll keep showing you a guy leading the league in minutes, who's routinely putting the team on his back, coming up big in clutch situations, scoring efficiently, being a league leader in Win Shares, and having a 2nd or 3rd team All-NBA season for the second time in 3 years.

Don't miss the trees for the forest.

[weneeda2guard]

Didn't want to see the pacers in the play in but now I'm feeling more confident in playing them. I see if you attack Haliburton and make him play defense you can take him out the game. Ayo was torching him on some of those drives. And they clearly have no answer for derozan. Only thing we would have to figure out is the rebounding. But I would like our chances.

[kodo]

Neither FO built around Lavine.

Foreman: did everything possible to trade Butler to Boston, Phoenix, etc.. Well covered by Lowe. Lavine doesn't play for any of those teams. He was a salary filler for Jimmy and might have been swapped for Wiggins. The core deal was for Markkanen & Dunn. Foreman was building around his draft picks - Lauri, Wendell, White. Let's remember Foreman was fine losing Lavine in FA, Lavine said he was shocked the Bulls matched Sacramento after the way he was treated and assumed we didn't want him. Doesn't sound like a player we're building around.

AK: he ended up paying Lavine too much but it was a overpay or lose for nothing scenario we see too often. And we did the same with Vuc this year. It's been Demar & Vuc's team from the start. When AK finally admitted he needs to break up the big 3, Lavine was the first to be put on the trading block beginning of last summer.

I bash both FOs as much as anyone, but I don't think either actually thought Lavine was The Guy.

[DuckIII]

Demar does a very passable impression of mid 30s Michael Jordan. Yeah I said it.

Ha! I was just getting onto the board to write that for the young pups who never saw Jordan live, they should watch DeMar down the stretch last night. That *was* Mike -- and a high-level version of Mike at that. No exaggeration.

Agree and I’ve thought that about DDR since he got here. He doesn’t always look great in the 4th. Sometimes he forces it and it’s frustrating. But when he’s on and carrying us, its effectiveness and the style/method of how he does it is about as close to “second phase” MJ as you will see.

DDR is an artist and I will always remember him fondly as one of my favorite Bulls ever. Which is saying something since he’s really a Raptor. I don’t want him on the team anymore and haven’t for over a year, but for completely unrelated reasons. His skill and savvy (a/k/a cheating) are fun to watch.

[DuckIII]

Very fun game last night and Ayo just keeps getting better.

The move on Siakum. Remember that. Ayo has more iso scoring game than he has shown. As space continues to open for him organizationally and he assumes more responsibility as a scorer you will see more of it.

Shout out to the refs. A rare road game where the visitors receive the heavily favored calls. Not to detract from the win, Bulls played great. But if I were a Pacers fan I would have been pissed watching that game.

[weneeda2guard]

Looking at the schedule I think we actually end the season over .500

After the 5-14 start never would have thought it.

Taking 3 out of 4 out west and last night win might have saved the season

We get the clippers tonight but they might be without kawhi

Then we get the wizards and blazers at home and Rockets on the road. Could be over .500 by then.

[FriedRise]

Wow, what a monster game from DeMar. That was some MJ **** at the end of regulation there. Didn't matter who they put on him... Siakam, Turner, Nesmith, he just cooked all of them.

Man I hope Coby is alright. We have one of the easiest remaining schedule in the league, but we're not gonna do much if we lose Coby.

Speaking of schedule, how is it "easy" when every night we keep playing teams with a better record than us in the Standings? Not to mention all the travel, back to backs, etc. There's nothing easy about it.

[ChettheJet]

Just plain hard to believe. It's as though the Pacers played down to the Bulls' level, Haliburton decided the defense wouldn't let him shoot, for whatever reason didn't use their size advantage, they ignored Caruso as a shooter. But whatever happened those are the games they have to take when they fall into their hands because they need to balance out losing to DET and so bad to DAL at home.

[MrSparkle]

Just plain hard to believe. It's as though the Pacers played down to the Bulls' level, Haliburton decided the defense wouldn't let him shoot, for whatever reason didn't use their size advantage, they ignored Caruso as a shooter. But whatever happened those are the games they have to take when they fall into their hands because they need to balance out losing to DET and so bad to DAL at home.

Well, the NBA is all about match-ups (and 3Ps ) , and sometimes the lesser players/teams take advantage of someone better. I don't think anybody would take Sabonis over Davis, but he's 11-0 against AD, and last night was especially ugly (particularly rebounding).

We've got 2 excellent on-ball defenders in Caruso and Ayo... Pacers are a bad defensive team... they lost their 6th man Mathurin... don't have a Demar stopper. Hali went cold from 3P.

Indy won the columns they were supposed to (bench scoring, Turner vs. Vuc), but they didn't have an answer for DeJordan... and maybe the one flaw of Haliburton came up: his vulnerable lateral movement when defending quicker guards. Caruso and Ayo combined for 43 points, and Coby chipped in 15. Indy has probably the worst defenders at 1-3 in the league. If we got 58 points out of our tiny-3 every night, we'd be a top-4 team. But you can't count on Caruso and Ayo to get double digits every game.

[Stratmaster]

Great game to watch. The vets won this one. Great game from Caruso, and obviously it was super-Demar in attendance for this one.

Are the Bulls starting to be a better road team than home team?

Sent from my SM-S911U using RealGM mobile app

[Stratmaster]

Bulls 5-1 in their last 6 road games.

1-4 in their last 5 home games

Sent from my SM-S911U using RealGM mobile app

[chitownsports4ever]

Bulls up 2-1 in the season series with Indy with one more game to play against them and they are 4 games ahead of us in the standings .

This team plays well in Indy

[Chi town]

Demar does a very passable impression of mid 30s Michael Jordan. Yeah I said it.

Ha! I was just getting onto the board to write that for the young pups who never saw Jordan live, they should watch DeMar down the stretch last night. That *was* Mike -- and a high-level version of Mike at that. No exaggeration.

Truth. MJ played killer D in crunch time though.

[drosestruts]

It's almost forgotten about due to the alls well that ends well nature of things, but that foul on Nesmith being overturned to a foul on DeRozan was an atrocious call.

Really one of those - what's the point of doing a review moment. They showed the replay 10+ times last night during the review and every time from every angle it was clearly a foul on Nesmith. That they called it a non-shooting foul originally clearly shows they called the foul on the contact before any alleged "arm hooking" (which I still think was just another foul on Nesmith).

I know we had the free throw advantage, but that was just an awful awful call that left me completely baffled

[Chi town]

Looking at the schedule I think we actually end the season over .500

After the 5-14 start never would have thought it.

Taking 3 out of 4 out west and last night win might have saved the season

We get the clippers tonight but they might be without kawhi

Then we get the wizards and blazers at home and Rockets on the road. Could be over .500 by then.

We need to go 3-1 or 4-0.

We always lose a random game to a scrub team though.

[FriedRise]

Watch on YouTube

Looking at it more closely, this was an excellent play by Billy to get DeMar switched to a smaller McConnell. He wouldn't have been able to get a cleaner look if Siakam stayed on him.

[DuckIII]

It's almost forgotten about due to the alls well that ends well nature of things, but that foul on Nesmith being overturned to a foul on DeRozan was an atrocious call.

Really one of those - what's the point of doing a review moment. They showed the replay 10+ times last night during the review and every time from every angle it was clearly a foul on Nesmith. That they called it a non-shooting foul originally clearly shows they called the foul on the contact before any alleged "arm hooking" (which I still think was just another foul on Nesmith).

I know we had the free throw advantage, but that was just an awful awful call that left me completely baffled

It was absolutely the right call and DDR had been doing it even worse to Nesmitb all night long. There was a hilarious moment in the first half when DDR looked like he got absolutely mugged by Nesmith around the FT line and they called the foul on Nesmith.

The funny part was when they went to slo mo replay it was obvious that DDR with his crafty ninja moves had been offensively fouling Nesmith throughout the play, and listening to Stacy have to stick with the company line that Nesmith was Mr. Five to Ten on the Streets.

[jnrjr79]

Woj reporting the Coby injury is just a hip strain and he could be back as soon as Saturday.

KC reporting he's merely questionable for tonight.

Good news.