Bulls vs. Pacers lineups and preview: a reverse image

Indiana is young, fast, and can shoot

In the summer, and actually after last season’s trade deadline, Bulls management repeatedly demurred when hyping up their “group” and instead talked about how the East was relatively bad. Sorry, that there was “more parity”.

That effectively assigned a tier on their team that couldn’t be expected to be better than the top tier. Now that is definitely accurate, but it’s also loser talk coming from leadership.

And after three games it’s not even looking like they are in a 2nd or 3rd tier of teams in this conference. One of the few teams that finished below them last season, the Indiana Pacers, actually looked to improve externally and internally and may have already lapped Chicago. They’re led by a better best-player in Tyrese Halliburton, and are 2-0 with the league’s best offense and are 3rd in Pace.

These have been fascinating to do. Indiana has in their rotation picks #8, #10, #12, and #14 from the 2020 draft. Patrick Williams was #4.

The Bulls defense has been bad, and looking especially slow, so this isn’t a good matchup. That said, it’s only two games for the Pacers, and the Bulls are better shooters themselves than they’ve shown in their three games.

Game Time: 6pm Central, come back here for da chat

Injury Report: LaVine still listed as probable. Dalen Terry has been assigned to the GLeague but wasn’t in the rotation anyway.

Blogging with the Enemy: shout-out to my fellow SBNation exile: