Midway through the second quarter of Friday’s 123-116 road loss to the Charlotte Hornets, Coby White ran out of runway.
The play started like normal. White put his head down and stopped worrying about defenders. He charged toward the rim, barreling awkwardly into Moussa Diabaté in a flat parabola that sent him crashing onto the court.
White had wanted to play hero and give the Chicago Bulls two more points as they found themselves mired in a shootout against the sixth-worst defense in the league. Instead, he ended up halfway into a back roll, shoulders crunched against the stanchion, legs flailing with the bleak desperation that defined the Bulls throughout the first half.
White’s feet hit both Brandon Miller and Diabaté in the process, contact that was too aimless to inflict injury. The officiating team nevertheless upgraded the foul to a flagrant 1, a designation that White half-heartedly disputed as a trainer taped his scraped knee. The outcome was a familiar one for the Bulls — another small error that piled into a deficit, then ultimately a loss.
The Hornets are not a competitive team. This is accepted fact in the NBA. They had won only four games before Friday. They stand 12th in the Eastern Conference and give opponents the relative resistance of a colander on defense. Yet their offense was simply too much for the Bulls to counteract.
Same with the New Orleans Pelicans, who won their third game of the season against the Bulls earlier this week. And the Utah Jazz, who got their fifth win of the season against the Bulls. Games against the Bulls (9-9) have transformed into dates to circle on the calendar — a rare opportunity to score at will and perhaps pick up a win to boot.
Here are three takeaways from the loss.
1. The Bulls were bleeding points.
Scoring 116 points should be enough. That’s the brutally plain problem of nearly every Bulls loss this season. That should be enough points to win a basketball game. But it wasn’t — and it hasn’t been for a long time.
The Bulls have allowed at least 120 points for 11 consecutive games, the longest such streak in the NBA in 35 years. This consistent permeability disarms any strengths the Bulls might have to offer, preventing them from establishing runs and exacerbating every individual error.
The Bulls are allowing the third-most points per game (124.2) in the league, ahead of only the five-win Jazz and two-win Washington Wizards. Even with one of the league’s highest-scoring offenses, the Bulls rarely have enough in the tank to counteract their defensive deficiencies.
2. Losses in the margins.
Most Bulls games can be defined by the same handful of stats — opponent rim attempts and second-chance points. These two variables represent the basic equation of marginal gains — or losses — that can help or hurt the Bulls in their attempt to establish consistency as a roster with no All-Stars.
The Bulls can sling dozens of shots from behind the arc and push the pace in transition from the opening whistle to the final buzzer. But if they don’t keep opponents off the rim and prevent offensive rebounds, they spend most of the second half fighting an uphill battle due mostly to self-inflicted wounds.
The Bulls have finished 12 of their 18 games this season in clutch situations (within five points in the last five minutes) — and lost five of those games — often as a result of these inconsistencies.
Against Charlotte, the Bulls had a rare win in the paint, outscoring the Hornets 74-56, but still allowed 44 points at the rim. That doesn’t mean the Hornets lacked penetration; they simply sprayed out their chances at the rim, which helped fuel their 15 3-pointers.
The Hornets scored 10 points off second-chance opportunities while logging 10 offensive rebounds. The depth of this weakness was captured with 42 seconds left in the fourth quarter, when Diabaté outjumped two Bulls defenders to secure an offensive rebound and kick the ball out to LaMelo Ball for a second-chance opportunity. The Hornets didn’t ultimately score on that possession, but the offensive rebound allowed the home team to burn 12 precious seconds off the clock.
3. The Bulls are eliminated from the NBA Cup.
Friday’s loss officially dashed any lingering hopes for the Bulls to advance out of East Group C in the NBA Cup. The Bulls won only one of their four games in the group stage, losing to the Miami Heat, Milwaukee Bucks and Charlotte Hornets.
The New York Knicks won the group outright with a 118-109 win Friday over the Bucks. The Heat are also slated to advance as a wild-card team.
