Chicago Sports Exchange: Different Stakes Emerge In Bulls, Hawks Regular Season-Ending Weeks
Ice men are iced out as UC's only meaningful games left are on the hard-court
As far as prognostications go, the Chicago Bulls are toast.
But between the chaos in Indiana and three consecutive double-digit victories —including one at Boston’s expense in front of a national television audience and 3,339 of the United Center’s first visitors since the pandemic knocked the world off its axis— their chances of playing beyond this week remain very much alive.
Tankathon and protected lottery picks be damned. At least for now.
HOLD — Bulls In Play-In’s Last Dash With Two Of East’s Best Awaiting
Like it or not, the Bulls are starting to gel.
Their third-straight victory, a 108-96 rout of lowly Detroit Sunday, was spurred by Zach LaVine, Nikola Vučević and Coby White, who combined to score 80 points on 32-of-59 shooting from the field and 9-of-24 shooting from three with 11 assists and just two turnovers between them.
It was the third game LaVine, Vučević and White have started together.
“We’re scoring at all three levels, and once we got that going,” LaVine, who scored the most points (30) and logged his most minutes (36) since returning from health and safety protocols last week, said after the game. “It’s pretty much pick your poison.”
While the trio’s recent performances substantiate LaVine’s swagger, there’s a faction of fans who view any outcome that doesn’t involve the Bulls (29-39), who are 2.5 games back of Indiana for the tenth and final play-in spot, boosting their lottery odds as toxic.
That includes the off chance they make a late push into the play-in tournament.
With games against Brooklyn, Toronto and Milwaukee in the final leg of the season, there does exist a scenario in which the Bulls unwittingly improve their likelihood of retaining the protected pick they sent to Orlando at the trade deadline while still saving face.
Either way, for the Bulls to be playing meaningful basketball this time of year is a refreshing development.
SELL — Blackhawks Eliminated From Playoff Race, Still Running Through Tape
They’re no longer fighting for a playoff berth, but the Chicago Blackhawks are still swinging just the same.
MacKenzie Entwistle drew first blood and Alex DeBrincat knocked Dallas to the mat for good with the last of his two goals in the Hawks’ 4-2 victory at the United Center Sunday. It was the team’s first game in front of its home fans in more than a year.
Though just a fraction (3,820) of the 21,275 fans who saw the Hawks beat San Jose on that March 11 night were permitted inside due to COVID-19 restrictions, the difference in live fan reaction and artificial crowd noise was night and day.
"It was such a huge difference right from the anthem," head coach Jeremy Colliton said after the Hawks’ second-straight win. "You couldn't help but smile when you heard the reaction from the crowd. As a home team you really feed off that energy. We've missed that this year."
In spite of playing at a level that, until a week ago, had them in contention for the playoffs, the Hawks (24-25-6) will also miss out on the postseason for the third time in the past four seasons.
Tonight’s rubber match with the Stars, the Hawks’ regular-season finale, won’t mean much in the short term but, for a team that’s had nine players score their first-career goals this year (including Entwistle), the confidence gained from closing the season on a three-game win streak could be valuable moving forward.
SELL — Fire Winless Streak Has Club Searching For Answers
Welp, it’s back to the drawing board for Raphael Wicky.
The tweaks the Chicago Fire FC head coach made to his starting lineup ahead of Saturday’s matchup against former Fire player-turned-Philadelphia Union coach Jim Curtin were for naught. Perhaps worse than the 2-0 loss at Soldier Field dropping the Fire to 0-3-1 was that it also led to the hatching of a few boo birds.
“It’s a tough loss, it’s a frustrating loss,” Wicky told reporters after the game.
“We’ve got to clean things up. We need to look at what we need to change because we probably need to change things. Not everything, but probably need to change certain things.”
That the Fire are still without last season’s second-leading scorer and midfielder Fabian Herbers, and winger Stanislav Ivanov can’t be ignored. But neither can the fact that, through four matches, the Fire, who play D.C. United Thursday, have only captured one of a possible 12 points.
HOLD — Sky Trade Williams to Sparks, Lose Preseason Opener
Never mind their preseason opening 82-65 loss to Indiana. The waves the Sky made Sunday crashed miles from the Bankers Life Fieldhouse court.
A saga that began Thursday, when the team placed Gabby Williams on the WNBAs full-season suspended list, was book-ended by her trade to Los Angeles. In exchange for the career 6.8-point, 3.4-rebound, 1.9-assist, and 1.2-steal per game forward, the Sky received rookie Stephanie Watts and the rights to Leonie Fiebich.
The writing of Williams’ departure had been on the wall for three weeks, when, according to the Chicago Sun-Times, the Sparks were targeted as a potential trade partner for the Sky’s former fourth-overall pick. This, after the French Federation of Basketball expressed its desire to have Williams compete for the French national team this summer.
Because of their salary cap situation, the Sky can only carry 11 players, not the customary dozen, this season. Had Williams been absent but remained on the roster, they’d only have 10 available players for the majority of the season.
“We needed our group of 11. We have players like [Stefanie Dolson and Astou Ndour] who are going to leave for the national team,” Wade told reporters before the Sky’s game against Fever. “They made it a priority to be here. We didn’t want to put our players behind the eight-ball because we start the season with only eight or nine when we didn’t have to.”
Watts was the tenth overall pick in April’s draft. Fiebich, a German-born guard, is a was the 22nd pick selected in the 2020 draft.
The Sky close the two-game preseason with a rematch against the Fever at Wintrust Arena Tuesday. They open the 2021 season in Washington against the Mystics Saturday.
Drew Stevens is a Senior Writer for WARR Media, he lives and works in Chicago