I like catchy titles; in my 3000+ posts, I always make sure I don’t ever use the same one twice. It’s funny… I come up with the same title more than occasionally. You run out of ways to say things; the titles can’t always be catchy. Thinking about the Bulls game on Friday night, I remembered an old game my son used to play where he had to match the beat of the opponent; if he did, he won that round. Well, regardless of how that specifically relates to the Bulls, I felt like the name of the game did. Welcome to Friday Night Funkin.
My wife made a nice little spread for the game. Wings, fries, biscuits, salad… we gathered around the TV to enjoy our little feast while watching the Bulls play against a 76ers team that had beat them 12x in a row. 12, 12 in a row… where have I heard that before? Ah yes, the Bulls broke the Nets 12 game winning streak at the UC earlier this week, and now, they would do the same to the reign of terror the Sixers have exerted over them. Of course, the Sixers were missing their main man; I’m not going to get into every game the Bulls have won where the other team was shorthanded… not yet at least. But hey, no Embiid was just fine by me. As you should know, he absolutely kills us. We have never beat a Sixers team with him; yeah, never! I looked into that a bit more. Funny enough, when Embiid first started playing for the Sixers back in 2016, the Bulls actually had been on a streak of their own vs them. In fact, the Bulls won their first 2 against Philly that year to bring their winning streak to, um, yeah, 12 in a row vs them; the Bulls would win 3 out of 4 that year. Thing is, Embiid wasn’t playing in all 3 of those losses. The Bulls would win one the following season, and one the season after that; both of those the Sixers were without Embiid. Those 5 wins against the Sixers were the only ones in the past 7 seasons, all when Embiid wasn’t playing. OK, history lesson over.
The Sixers came out strong without Embiid, and I felt myself getting pissed off all over again. This Bulls team is frustrating to watch at times; in fact, they’re frustrating to watch a lot of the time. Thankfully, they stepped it up before the half to take a 4 point lead; thank you! But it was the 3rd quarter when things started getting really good. Patrick Williams scored his first 16 points of the game in the 3rd; we’re a different team when he is playing well. And then there was Zach of course; he couldn’t miss. I think it was 8 in a row from 3 point land before he fired one off the side of the glass; I’m totally fine with the heat check. He was on a heater. He would finish with 11 of them, ensuring the Bulls didn’t squander their lead in the 4th. Haven’t seen many games like this from Zach this year; it was really, really good to see. In fact, I expect more of these types of games from him; certainly not 11 treys per game, but games where he leads us to victory. I have 37 million reasons why I expect that. And oh yeah, Vooch had the quietest triple double of all time too.
The Bulls are still 3 games under 500, but they have snuck into the expanded playoffs. Their performance against the top teams in the East has me hopeful in a first round matchup, as long as it isn’t against Cleveland… Yeah, the Bulls still have ways to go, and yeah, they may have gotten fortunate with other teams’ stars being out in a lot of their wins, but hey, a win in Philly to start the weekend? I’ll gladly take that. Lavine kicking ass in the process? More please! Not too much time to celebrate this one though; the Jazz and their new superstar (you know who) will be coming to the UC on Saturday night. Let’s keep this up. Go Bulls!!!
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