The Denver Nuggets road trip continues tonight with a stop in Chicago to face the Bulls. The Nuggets four game winning streak was snapped on Sunday and they’ll look to start a new one against an up and down (mostly down) Bulls team. Chicago is one of those teams stuck in NBA mediocrity. Just talented enough to not land high lottery picks, but also not nearly good enough to be anything more than play-in tournament fodder come April. There’s a few bright spots on the roster. Young players Matas Buzelis and Ayo Dosounmo could form solid pieces of an up and coming core, but their mismatched with win now veterans like Zach Lavine and Nikola Vucevic. The questionable roster construction has led the Bulls to once again be a sub .500 team already looking towards next season in late January.
The Essentials
Who: Denver Nuggets (28-17) at Chicago Bulls (19-27)
When: 6:00PM MST
Where: The real Mecca of basketball. Chicago, IL.
How to watch/listen: My20 KTVD, Altitude+, Altitude Radio 92.5 FM, NBA League pass for those not in the Nuggets market.
Rival blog: Blog-A-Bull
The Matchup
| Position | Nuggets | Bulls | Advantage |
| PG | Jamal Murray | Lonzo Ball | Nuggets |
| SG | Russell Westbrook | Zach Lavine | Bulls |
| SF | Christian Braun | Josh Giddey | Even |
| PF | Michael Porter Jr. | Patrick Williams | Nuggets |
| C | Nikola Jokic | Nikola Vucevic | Nuggets |
| Bench | Aaron Gordon, Julian Strawther, DeAndre Jordan, Peyton Watson | Ayo Dosounmo, Jalen Smith, Matas Buzelis, Julian Phillips, Talen Horton-Tucker | Even |
Injury report: Vlatko Cancar – out (knee), DaRon Holmes II – out (achilles), Trey Alexander – out (G-League), Spencer Jones – out (G-League); Torrey Craig – out (ankle), Coby White – out (ankle), E.J. Liddell – out (G-League), Emmanuel Miller – out (G-League), Adama Sanogo – out (G-League).
The Three Things
The thing to watch for: Lonzo Ball
I don’t know about you, but my curiosity is extremely piqued by Lonzo. Once the second overall pick in the draft and looked at as an almost sure fire star in the making, injuries (and LeBron’s meddling) kept Lonzo’s career from every really getting off the ground. Still, when he’s been healthy he’s been a very good point guard. He is an excellent playmaker with a cerebral approach to the game and his size and defensive ability give him the potential to be one of the best two-way guards in the league. His knee injuries have been devastating though and there was concern he’d never get back into the league after missing two full seasons in a row. The Bulls are bringing him along slowly but he’s back starting again and I’m excited to see how he looks against Denver tonight.
The thing to remember: Our old buddy Artutas is the architect of this Bulls mess
A quick jump over to Blog-A-Bull and you’ll see Chicago fans are none too pleased with their GM Arturas Karnisovas. He of course got his start here in Denver as Tim Connelly’s right hand man before getting the chance to run the show in Chicago and that just simply hasn’t worked out. The Bulls haven’t really hit on their draft picks (Patrick Williams is a massive bust) and after Arturas’ initial big trade to acquire Vucevic, there hasn’t really been much in terms of roster improvement. The Bulls traded away a fantastic defensive guard in Alex Caruso to pick up empty stat man and resident creepy guy Josh Giddey, they’ve not made any notable signings in free agency and they’ve yet to find anything more than solid role players in the draft. It’s a team in desperate need of a rebuild and, frankly, one Jerry Krause probably shouldn’t let Arturas navigate but Jerry is Jerry so who knows. You have to feel for the fans of this once proud franchise, it’s been a very long time mired in mediocrity at best.
The thing to bet: Peyton Watson over 0.5 threes (-105)
Watson has hit a three in five of his last eight games, and one of the ones he didn’t was Orlando when he didn’t play in the second half. Nikola Jokic doesn’t typically score a ton of points against the Bulls, indicative of Chicago’s strategy to force the ball out of his hands, so I like the chances of him finding Watson in the corner for a classic Chris Marlowe “spinner!” call. -105 so basically even money, I’ll take it.
