Chicago Bulls vs. Dallas Mavericks Preview and live OPEN THREAD

Chicago Bulls (7-3) vs. Dallas Mavericks (7-3)

The Chicago Bulls are up to two signature wins (versus Brooklyn and versus the Utah Jazz) in this young NBA season.

The win against the Brooklyn Nets was big after back-to-back disappointing losses against a shorthanded Philadelphia 76ers team. The Bulls are back on track and continue to add wins to an impressive early season resume. There are multiple good pieces of news for the Bulls right now going all the way to the deep bench, which was a bit of a question mark for this team but now they are getting (unexpected?) contributions from guys like Ayo Dosunmu and Tony Bradley.

While that’s great, teams with three All-Star-level players playing well together tend to do well when the playoffs roll around, so it’d be really nice if the Bulls can figure out how to get Vuc going.

Next up on the agenda is beating the Dallas Mavericks. They have started the season 7-3 and have the third best record in the Western Conference and an identical record to your Chicago Bulls.

I have a friend who is a big Dallas Mavericks fans who says the team this year is a bit fraudulent. It’s Luka Doncic and then not much else. Peeking at the Mavs’ early-season schedule, they have kind of benefited from playing a lot of mediocre to bad NBA teams. Maybe not so coincidental that they haven’t been able to compete with the better teams on their schedule thus far. Their three losses are against the Atlanta Hawks, Denver Nuggets, and Miami Heat and they lost by an average of 24 points in that game.

Against Luka, with Lonzo Ball and Alex Caruso in the fold this year, the Bulls will undoubtedly have a better chance to contain him than they have in previous seasons. If the Bulls do what they can to prevent Luka from outright winning the game on his own for the Mavericks, I like the Bulls chances in this one.

Injury Report:

The Dallas Mavericks will be without Maxi Kleber who is dealing with a left oblique strain.

Nothing we didn’t already know on the Chicago Bulls injury report, but a huge piece of the bench mob is on the precipice of making his 2021-2022 debut.

Game Time: 7:00 CDT; NBC Sports Chicago