The Chicago Bulls will enter the New Year on a winning streak after outlasting the Charlotte Hornets in a 115-108 win Monday.
After Miles Bridges punched the Hornets into overtime with a last-gasp 3-pointer to tie the game with one second remaining, the tank was completely emptied for the home team. The Bulls outscored the Hornets 17-19 in overtime, anchored by a performance off the bench from Torrey Craig.
This was an unfamiliar position for the Bulls — the team has not gone to overtime this season, making it 32 games before requiring extra time to close out a game. The win lifted the Bulls to 15-18 on the season, strengthening their standing as ninth in the Eastern Conference as they enter 2025.
Here are four takeaways from the win.
1. Zach LaVine is sidelined with a busted toe.
The Bulls went without Zach LaVine on Monday after the guard suffered a bruised toe in Saturday’s win over the Milwaukee Bucks. LaVine told reporters in Charlotte the injury occurred when he was stepped on during the game.
LaVine was ruled out after participating in shootaround at the Spectrum Center on Monday morning. The guard plans to return for Wednesday’s game against the Washington Wizards. The Bulls were 1-3 in games played without LaVine before Monday.
2. Patrick Williams and Torrey Craig fueled the offense from deep.
Patrick Williams and Torrey Craig provided the only consistency from behind the 3-point arc for the Bulls in Charlotte. Williams went 4-for-7 from behind the arc in the first half, then buried his only 3-point attempt of overtime to finish 5-for-10 from deep.
Craig did not feature in the first half for the Bulls but quickly served as an accelerant off the bench in the second half. He finished 5-for-7 from behind the arc to score 18 points between the second half and overtime. He logged the second-most points on the roster — behind Coby White, who scored 23 points — despite only playing half of the game.
Williams and Craig helped to balance out an otherwise shaky 3-point shooting night for the Bulls. Back in November, the Bulls and the Hornets broke the NBA record for most missed 3-pointers in a game with 75 total misses from behind the arc.
Monday’s meeting was slightly more accurate, but both teams still combined for 75 misses from 3-point range. Coby White went 1-for-11 and Josh Giddey went 1-for-8. Only three Bulls players — Williams, Craig and Nikola Vučević — scored more than one 3-pointer.
The Bulls were undeterred by this low accuracy, taking more than 50 shots from behind the arc for the ninth time this season. Neither team shot above 30% from behind the arc — the Bulls finished 18-for-60 and the Hornets finished 10-for-43.
3. Spreading the wealth.
This was not an efficient offensive performance for the Bulls — but a sole bright spot was the team’s ability to move the ball despite the absence of LaVine and fellow guard Ayo Dosunmu.
The Bulls scored only eight unassisted baskets in the entire game. White shouldered the bulk of this ball movement as he stepped into LaVine’s sneakers for the night, tallying nine assists as he anchored a team-wide effort to drive relentlessly to the rim and kick the ball out to keep the offense widespread.
4. Lonzo Ball pulled the strings on offense.
The key to this ball facilitation was Lonzo Ball, who unlocked the Bulls offense — while playing his highest volume of minutes in nearly three years.
The last time Ball logged more than 25 minutes on a basketball court occurred in January 2022, shortly before the guard suffered an enigmatic knee injury that kept him sidelined for the last two seasons. But on Monday night, coach Billy Donovan once again stretched Ball’s minutes restriction to play him for the entirety of overtime.
Ball ultimately played 25 minutes and 54 seconds — and those minutes shaped the win for the Bulls. The guard scored only four points, but he tallied five assists and three rebounds while opening up the Hornets defense with his passing and disrupting their offense with three steals and a series of deflections.
This is the latest sign of positive progress for Ball and the Bulls as the guard enters 2025 with the hope of being cleared to play a full rotation.
