Bulls vs. Hawks game preview and thread: the quest for 9th or something continues

Not a lot of Bulls games lately, as there have been plentiful rest days before and after their trip to Paris to take on the NBA-only-sorta Pistons and beat them soundly.

This game only further propped up their surprisingly impressive team numbers since the debacle in Minnesota. A top-10 offense and defense since then???

But we don’t need to consider the answer of whether the Bulls are actually good or not. They let us know when they lost 2 games in a row to the injured Wizards and tired Thunder, that they are not a serious team. And if they do nothing at the trade deadline, a deeply unserious franchise.

But there are still plenty of games to play until then. They’ll win some because they have good top-end players who can take over once in a while, and the actually-good teams will have off nights against them, especially this time of year. And they don’t even have to worry about actually-good teams for a while:

The Hawks are of similar caliber to the Bulls. Perhaps that’s why their two meetings so far have been so close, a buzzer-beater loss and then a buzzer-beater win.

Atlanta had their own season-low point more recently than the Bulls, when there was reports that their coach wanted to quit. They have also rebounded since that point, but I won’t delve into whether it was more of a dead-cat-bounce than actual change in play. Record-wise, they’re 7-4 since that report, and at 24-23 for the season which is 2 games ahead of the Bulls in 8th place in the conference.

Injury Report

Goran Dragic is questionable with a non-Covid illness

For the Hawks, reserve center Onyeka Okongwu is also listed as questionable

Game Time: 7 central, NBC Sports Chicago