It’s game week! We’re two days away from the regular season tipping off in New Orleans, let’s get to some Monday bullets.
Bulls Bullets
- We discussed it a bit after the final warmup game on Friday, but through the five preseason contests before the regular season gets going the Bulls showed a serious commitment to taking more threes. Every game saw Chicago put up 40+ shots from deep, and the emphasis on playing with pace and taking more threes was evident throughout the preseason. Can the Bulls keep this up into the regular season?
- I really think they can. Now sure, we might not see as many 50+ three-point attempt nights as we saw in the preseason, but the younger roster clearly wants to play with more pace and Billy Donovan is clearly preaching that. Guys like Julian Phillips and Matas Buzelis aren’t afraid to take threes even though it’s not necessarily a strong part of their game. It feels like the emphasis has been to take more of those threes, and if there are a few bad nights then so be it. There will be a few ugly box scores early on this season almost certainly, but as long as Billy Donovan’s squad is committed to modernizing their approach offensively and committing to working on hitting more threes I’m all for it.
- The Bulls might need to start off the season hot from deep, otherwise we could be looking at a pretty tough start. Chicago opens the season with four of their first five games coming against 2023-24 playoff teams, and the one game not against a playoff team from last season is in Memphis against a Grizzlies team that was decimated by injury last year and should be right back in the mix in 2024-25. Last year’s start was rough. With this season’s brutal opening schedule, if Chicago doesn’t come out firing it could be another brutal first month.
- The second game of Chicago’s season comes against the Milwaukee Bucks, and it seems like the Bulls might be catching a break there. ESPN’s Shams Charania reported today that the Bucks will be without one of their stars Khris Middleton for the season opener on Wednesday. Middleton is still recovering from offseason ankle surgeries and Milwaukee is taking the extra-cautious route with him as they probably should. Charania didn’t say for sure how long he would be out, but if the Bucks are being cautious I would guess there’s a decent chance we won’t see him on Friday.
- When scrolling social media this morning on the hunt for some Bulls’ content, I came across a few fun posts I had to include this morning. First, Coby White did an interview with Fox 32 live from Portillos where he tried his first Chicago-style hot dog. I’m pretty stunned it took him this long to have one of those, but despite his disdain for tomatoes, Coby was a fan!
- And then apparently on Saturday, Nikola Vucevic was pretty hungry. He asked Chicagoans for some burger recommendations and the responses as you could probably expect had a pretty wide variety. In the replies, Vooch revealed his love for McDonald’s back in his USC days.
- Another fun story from around the NBA. Monty Williams is currently collecting big buyout money from the Detroit Pistons. But he is also taking a new coaching job! He’ll be the head coach at TMI Episcopal prep school in San Antonio where his son Elijah plays. The head coach Williams is replacing happens to be none other than former Spurs NBA Champion Bruce Bowen whose son also plays for the team.
- The Warriors agreed with Moses Moody on a new contract. It will be a three-year, $39 million deal. The deadline for players eligible to sign their rookie extensions prior to the season starting is today. Josh Giddey is one of those eligible players, but as we’ve noted a few times it’s very unlikely he gets anything done with the Bulls and will very likely go into the final year of his deal without a new extension.