In the end, the Bulls, again, showed that they simply don’t have enough talent to win. They were without Luol Deng who sat with his sore Achilles tendon and Kirk Hinrich who sat with a sore back. Although given how bad Hinrich’s been so far this year, his absence may have actually been a benefit to the Bulls. DJ Augustin had a decent outting with 15 points on 10 shots in 36 minutes of time along with 5 assists. He committed 5 turnovers, which is not great, but it’s much better production than I’d have expected from Hinrich. Oh, and Jimmy Butler got hurt again, which totally stinks. Butler rolled his ankle in the first half and did not return.

The Bulls continued to shoot poorly, converting on just 37.7% of their attempts. This game could have been much worse, but the Bulls had a 39 to 14 advantage in free throws attempted, as they seemed to benefit from just about every close call for much of the game.

Outside of Augustin playing relatively well, the only other bright spot for the Bulls was, unsurprisingly, Joakim Noah. The big man dropped in 23 points on 17 shots, grabbed 12 rebounds, dished 3 assists, and snagged 2 steals and a block in just 29 minutes of action. He was kind of everywhere. It didn’t matter.

The rest of the Bulls were pretty terrible and they just don’t seem to know what they want to accomplish on offense. I’m not sure different offensive sets would work better, but it might be worth it to run even more of the offense through the bigs, as the guard play, aside from Augustin tonight, has just been so very bad.

Credit should go to the Thunder as well, obviously. Kevin Durant is just insanely great. He was 65% from the field tonight and 80% (4-5) from 3 . He scored 32 points, wrangled 9 boards, and added 6 assists, 3 steals, a block with just 1 turnover in 33 minutes of playing time. So yeah, KD did KD stuff. Similarly, the Bulls let Russell Westbrook be Russell Westbrook. The explosive point guard scored 20 points on just 12 shots and dished 10 assists in just 28 minutes. Reggie  Jackson continued his strong play on the season dropping in an efficient 18 points to go with 5 assists off the bench.

The Thunder are just blitzing the league right now and the Bulls are a sinking ship with parts falling off- due to injuries- so this result was pretty expected, even if it doesn’t really make it sting less.

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Stats from Basketball-Reference

Oklahoma City Injury Report:
None

Overview:
The Bulls bounced back from an ugly loss against the Heat with a win over the NBA’s worst team. But it’s back to the top of the standings for the Bulls, as they face the second place team in the West. Oklahoma City is just 1-3 in their last four games, but they’ve won 24 of 28 games at home this year.

Four straight solid defensive performances for the Bulls come at the right time, as they now need to try and slow down the best offense in the league. Oklahoma City is first in offensive rating, at 112.7 and first in points per game (106.7). They’re led by Kevin Durant, the NBA’s leading scorer (28.9) and Russell Westbrook, the league’s seventh highest scorer (22.9).

The Bulls haven’t allowed more than 87 points in their last four games, and that includes a game against Miami and the scoring robot that is LeBron James. The Thunder though, have scored more than 100 points in 14 of their last 18 games. They scored 119 against Houston and then exploded for 127 in their most recent time out.

Westbrook dropped 37 points on 22 shots, to go with seven rebounds and nine assists, in that 127-111 win over Minnesota that snapped the Thunder’s three game skid. Durant recorded 27 points, seven rebounds and seven assists. KD’s numbers have fallen over his last ten games, as he’s averaging 25.8 points (fallen for Duran’t high standards), but he is hitting 48.5 percent of his threes. Kevin Martin, as usual, scored an efficient 19 points off the pine and although Serge Ibaka didn’t score much (six points) he grabbed seven boards and blocked three shots. Actually, Thabo Seflosha was the only Thunder starter to not grab seven rebounds–he brought in six.

As a team Oklahoma City hit 9-14 from deep (64.3 percent). The Thunder have five guys that are playing significant minutes that have hit better than 42 percent of their threes over the last ten games (Durant, Westbrook, Martin, Ibaka and Seflosha). Oklahoma City is tops in the league in three point percentage, shooting 39.2 percent on the year. The Bulls have given up the second fewest threes to opponents, and are third when it comes to opponent percentage from beyond the arc (33.6). The three point line is going to be key for the Bulls, because Chicago has no chance if they get into a shootout with the Thunder.

The Bulls finally reached 100 points in their win over Charlotte, the first time they reached the century mark since February 4. It was truly a team effort, with eight different players scoring in double figures. Taj Gibson led the way, scoring 17 points on 8-11 shooting. As a team, Chicago shot 50.6 percent while holding the Bobcats to 33.3 percent. The most spectacular stat was that the Bulls had 37 assists on 42 made field goals. Everyone who played more than six minutes recorded at least one assist. Joakim Noah was again the dime-dropper, with Kirk Hinrich out, dishing eight assists.

Ball movement will obviously help against the Thunder, but this game is going to be drastically different from the victory over Charlotte. Oklahoma City is eighth in defensive rating (103.5) and, as discussed earlier, first in offensive rating. Charlotte is 28th in offensive rating and 29th in defensive rating.

The Thunder have given up 113.0 points per game over their last four contests, with three of those ending as defeats.

Luol Deng scored his third highest total of the season in November against the Thunder, dropping 27 points in a losing effort (his two highest totals have come against the Knicks). Rip Hamilton scored 20 points in that game, also tied for his third highest total of the season. At this point, Rip scoring 20 is the equivalent of finding a four leaf clover. Hamilton hasn’t scored 20 points since mid-January.

Chicago actually had the lead going into the fourth quarter of that November match-up, before being outscored 31-19 in the final quarter. Durant scored 24 points to lead Oklahoma City and Ibaka dropped 21.

The Bulls are again down to their third point guard. Kirk Hinrich will once again be out with his elbow injury. He has played just once in February, while missing nine games. Kirk playing is like finding all of the four leaf clovers.

That means it will fall on Nate Robinson and Marquis Teague to try and stop Westbrook. God help us all (but mostly, help them).

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