Bulls Get By Ailing Cavs

Sometimes in sports, it's all about catching a great team at the right time.  In Wednesday's case, the Bulls benefited from a pandemic that's hit the defending champion Cleveland Cavaliers.  Kyrie Irving missed his third straight game with a hamstring injury, Kevin Love is dealing with food poisoning and even LeBron James was a question mark until 20 minutes before tipoff thanks to a cold.  None of that mattered to the Bulls, who took it to their hosts and won, 106-94.

It initially looked like a blowout the other way might happen when the Cavaliers opened the game on a 15-2 run.  But the Bulls cut the deficit to seven at the end of the first quarter and from there, commanded most of the contest.  A hot offense outscored Cleveland by 13 in the second quarter and got the lead up to 17 in the third.  The Cavs, led by James' game-high 31 points, made a final push in the fourth and got to within one, but that came during a stretch in which Jimmy Butler scored 10 consecutive points for the Bulls to put the game away.

Butler, fresh off his 52-point performance against Charlotte on Monday, was considerably colder at first, missing nine of his first 11 shots from the field.  Luckily, it doesn't matter so much how you perform as when you do it.  He scored 14 of his team-high 20 points in the final frame.  It was just in time to be one of four Bulls with three treys in the game.

Taj Gibson shot 9-of-10 from the field to end up not far Butler with 18 points.  Doug McDermott made all six of his field-goal attempts in the second quarter en route to a 17-point game.  The good version of Nikola Mirotic showed up and scored 16.  Michael Carter-Williams started again while scoring 13 and Dwyane Wade added 10.

Once again, Rajon Rondo was left on the bench.  The longer this goes on, the more it's worth questioning what exactly his role will be from here on out.  Not even Rondo himself knows as a meeting with Gar Forman and John Paxson answered no questions.  For now, all he can do is support his team from the sidelines while perhaps realizing he's becoming more expendable.

People won't look at this as a defining win for the Bulls because of the fewer Cavs superstars they had to face.  But at a time when they desperately need wins to make up for a bad December, they'll take them even if it means kicking a top dog when it's down.  They almost always show up against great teams on national TV anyway, so as far as they were concerned, this was no different.  And if you're going to stay mediocre, you might as well do it while beating championship contenders.

The Bulls welcome the second-best team in the East to the United Center, the Toronto Raptors, on Saturday.  It will be the first time these teams meet this season after the Bulls swept all four games a year ago.  Will the team that represents our northern neighbors have better luck this time around?  Or are the Bulls in their heads, as is often the case when you just can't top a team you should be all accounts?