Chicago Bulls vs. Toronto Raptors: Injury Report, Game Preview, and Open Thread

Chicago Bulls (21-53) at Toronto Raptors (51-23)

6:30 p.m., NBC Sports Chicago

Injury Report:

For the Bulls, a lot of guys are injured or being held out or both:

The Raptors have a clean injury report, which is pretty wild. It’s possible they ‘load manage’ a couple guys: they’re fairly locked into their playoff seed and are facing the Chicago Bulls.

Preview:

The Raptors continue to plug away at another fantastic regular season.

Kawhi Leonard and Danny Green form one of the best perimeter defender combos in the NBA. Marc Gasol and Serge Ibaka provide elite rim protection should an opposing guard figure out a way to slip past Leonard and Green. It all adds up to the Raptors owning the seventh best defensive rating in the NBA at 107.3.

Third year Cameroon-born player Pascal Siakam has been a revelation this season for Toronto, averaging 16.8 points per game which is the second most on the team behind Leonard (27.2 points per game). Between Siakam (24 years old), Fred VanVleet (24 years old), and OG Anunoby (21 years old) the Raptors have a fairly nice collection of young players on their squad.

Given their history, watching the matchup between Ibaka and Robin Lopez is always an entertaining subplot when the Bulls play the Raptors even if the Bulls lose by 30+ tonight.

For the Bulls, it’s just counting down the games to go, which is now at eight. They’d be required to in six of these final eight games just to match their record from a season ago, when they were transparently tanking.

But the Bulls G League squad has been more successful? The Windy City Bulls qualified for the G League playoffs for the first time ever and will square off against the Westchester Knicks on Wednesday in first round action.

Brandon Sampson and Rawle Alkins, both of whom saw NBA action with the Bulls this season, lead this Windy City Bulls squad.