The Bulls had enough to make this interesting for a half, and then Philadelphia did what good teams do: it turned the game into a sprint Chicago couldn’t match.
The 76ers beat the Bulls 126-107 on Monday night at Xfinity Mobile Arena, moving to 7-1 while Chicago fell to 1-6 and absorbed a fifth straight loss. Caleb Wilson still gave the Bulls a real jolt with 24 points, but the Sixers kept stacking possessions, kept moving the ball and blew the game open in a seven-minute burst in the third quarter.
Chicago actually had some life early. Philadelphia jumped out 10-3 behind VJ Edgecombe, who had seven points in the first 3:17 and 15 by halftime, forcing Tiago Splitter to call timeout just 2:43 into the night.
The Bulls settled in behind Josh Giddey, who kept finding seams in the lane and set up Jalen Smith for three first-quarter finishes. Chicago even took the lead when Buddy Hield drilled a 27-foot three off a Giddey pass to make it 41-40, and after a stop that K.C.
Johnson of CHSN noted came out of a zone Splitter called from a timeout, the Bulls were up 45-41 a minute later.
Philadelphia answered with a late push of its own, closing the quarter on a 9-0 run. LeBron James created the last two baskets, setting up Dean Wade and Tyrese Maxey, and that surge put the Sixers ahead 62-52.
But Wilson had one of those short stretches that changes the feel of a game. With 55.9 seconds left, he picked off a Joel Embiid pass and dunked it.
Twenty seconds later, he jumped a James pass and found Matas Buzelis for a basket. Then, with one second left, he buried a 26-foot three off a Giddey feed, and a review upheld the shot.
In less than a minute, Wilson had five points, two steals and an assist, and Chicago went to the locker room down just 64-59.
Wilson finished 9-of-17 from the field, 4-of-9 from deep, with seven rebounds, four assists and four steals. It was his fifth 20-point game in seven tries, and he’s now hit 10 threes over his last two games. Giddey added 13 points and 10 assists, his second double-double of the season according to Johnson.
The game turned hard in the third quarter. Giddey opened the half with a 26-foot three to cut it to 64-62, but that was the closest Chicago got the rest of the way.
Over the next seven minutes, James scored nine points, mostly at the rim, while Embiid added two fadeaway jumpers, including an and-one. Philadelphia ripped off a 21-6 stretch and led 85-68 with 4:48 left in the period.
Buzelis did come up with a chase-down block on James at the rim, and Wilson later finished a Norman Powell-to-Buzelis fast break with a dunk, but those were isolated bright spots in a quarter that belonged to the Sixers.
James ended with 15 points, nine assists and seven rebounds and was a plus-30. Maxey posted 26 points and 11 assists on 10-of-15 shooting, Jaylen Brown had 25 points and 11 rebounds, and Edgecombe finished with 21 on 9-of-12 shooting.
Philadelphia assisted on 36 of its 48 baskets, shot 53 percent and won the paint 62-54. The whole thing looked a lot like the Sixers’ 125-111 loss in Boston on Friday, only this time they were the ones doing the damage.
The Bulls still had a chance to make the fourth quarter noisy. Giddey hit a pull-up three to trim the margin to 99-90, and Tre Jones scored off a Wilson pass to get Chicago within 103-94 with 7:34 left.
Then Leonard Miller picked up his second defensive three-seconds technical of the night, Maxey answered with a 25-foot three, and Brown followed with two threes in a 24-second span to push the lead to 119-102. Maxey scored 15 in the fourth, and that was that.
Chicago also hurt itself in plenty of small ways. The Bulls went 21-of-32 at the line and 10-of-38 from three.
Powell scored 18 points but shot 7-of-11, while Buzelis had four points and five turnovers and Isaac Okoro went 0-for-6. The Bulls were called for three technicals, two on Miller and one on Giddey, and each one gave Philadelphia a free point.
Patrick Williams did not play again.
The bigger issue is the scoreboard trend. Chicago has now allowed at least 124 points in each of its five straight losses.
The Bulls head to New York to face the Knicks on Wednesday, Nov. 4, at 6:30 p.m. CT, one week after the Knicks erased a 19-point deficit to beat them 133-127.
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Powell is still producing at a level that should hold value around the league, but the bigger issue is the teams direction and whether the Bulls can afford to wait for it to improve. If the slide continues, Chicago may have to at least listen on a player it only recently added, even if turning that into the kind of draft compensation teams usually want is easier said than done. [Read more 🡒]