With four days off to recover, the undermanned Charlotte Hornets got not one, but two injured players back into the rotation. Even with more healthy bodies available to them, their offense was completely stagnant and out of sorts in a 14-point defeat, 109-95, to the Chicago Bulls on Friday night at the United Center.
The Hornets Brandon Miller, who has taken over as the leader and No. 1 scoring option since LaMelo Ball has been out with injuries has been on a heater. His streak of consecutive 20-point games was extended to 12, although the efficiency, although the efficiency is not where he or the coaches want it to be, 21 points on 8-of-21 from the field, 3-of-15 from 3-point range and turnovers (7) were a major issue that he will have to work on. Making his first star of the season, the former first round pick out of Duke, Mark Williams had a season-high 15 points on 6-of-7 shooting and cleaned the glass with nine boards over 17 minutes and saw some second half action for the first time this year.
Led by Ayo Dosunmu’s 19 points, it was a balanced scoring effort with all five Chicago starters scoring in double figures, leading to the team’s seventh straight head-to-head win over the Hornets. Josh Giddey, who is in his first season with the Bulls after coming over in a trade with the Oklahoma City Thunder, was just shy of a triple-double, putting up 17 points on 7-of-13 from the floor, nine rebounds, a game-high seven helpers and a career-high-tying four steals.
After allowing the Hornets to go on a 10-0 run to close the first quarter, the Bulls put their foot on the gas pedal and controlled the second quarter, 28-18, to head into halftime with a 15-point advantage, 59-44. Charlotte recorded the same number of made baskets as turnovers (7), which is never a recipe for success, in the frame and went a dreadful 2-of-17 from deep (11.8%) in the first half. Both teams struggled with their shot and scored only 23 points each in the third, allowing the Bulls to maintain their 15-point cushion with a quarter to go. The Hornets did not pack it in and showed signs of makings a potential comeback in segments of the fourth, but the Bulls had plans of their own and quickly salted them away and rolled to victory.
At the beginning of the game, it felt like the Hornets were attempting to play the Bulls brand of basketball, trying to go shot for shot with the NBA’s fastest team in terms of pace. Then, the rushed shots became more forced with some settling for deep 3-pointers also mixed in. By the end of the night, Charlotte had set two new season lows in field-goal percentage (35.7%) and 3-point percentage (17.4%; 8-of-46). They will not win games that way.
Similar to how the Hornets have done often this year, Chicago’s small ball lineups stayed out of the paint and hoisted 51 3-point attempts (made 14), 39 coming from above the break. These long misses helped the Bulls, who entered as the NBA’s second-worst offensive rebounding team, grab 12 offensive rebounds and a +13 margin (33-20) on the glass over the first two quarters.
If nothing else positive, this rocky outing hopefully allowed a pair of Charlotte power forwards in Miles Bridges, who missed the past 10 games, and Tidjane Salaün, the 19-year-old rookie out of France, sitting out the last two, to shake off some rust. Bridges had 14 points on 5-of-16 shooting to move into seventh place on the franchises all-time scoring list (5,532), while the French rookie added eight points and six rebounds.
“No consistency throughout the whole game. Early in the game, I thought we had a really good process on our early offensive possessions. We had some great looks, didn’t knock them down and [the Bulls] hit some shots. I thought we lost our momentum and let the offense dictate how we were going to play defense. In the second half, we re-found our competitive spirt, but we had already dug ourselves too much of hole,” stated Hornets coach Charles Lee.
For the second time in less than two weeks, the Hornets will host Paul George and the Philadelphia 76ers on Monday, December 16 beginning at 7 PM ET. Charlotte has lost the first two meetings this season with Philadelphia (one at home, one on the road) by only eight combined points, one of which was decided in overtime.
The Bulls travel to Toronto to face RJ Barrett and the Raptors on Monday, December 16 also.
