Bulls versus Cavs for two

home and home matchup

I have been doing game threads in the Substack Chat function, but we've already reached that point in the Bulls campaign where nobody cares. I like doing the roster snapshots and giving a forum to discuss the games though, and with two in a row against the same opponent it makes sense to just do a full post.

The Cavs are very interesting in how they’ve disappointed this year, and like all NBA teams are an example of how unambitious and incompetent the Bulls are by comparison.

Cleveland has had a lot of regular season success but back to back playoff flame outs, opting to run it back one more time and it's going terribly. There has been some key injuries to Max Strus, Jarrett Allen, Evan Mobley (very recently) and most damagingly to Darius Garland, who has played but doesn't look 100%.

And this is a team with young All-Stars, an outright superstar in Donovan Mitchell, and a humongous payroll. The Bulls have attempted similar continuity and injury excuses to, what…chase the ghost of a couple months of looking like a 4-6 seed? And now they have pivoted to this young and fast team that isn’t that young and definitely not that good. But perhaps expected to be a bit better than league-worst now that they have a couple middling veterans returning (Ayo is the only rotation Bull not available).

So it’s actually an interesting point of crossroads for each team: which will get right this week?