It’s one thing to be on a hot streak.
But what Josh Giddey has accomplished in the last 10 games for the Chicago Bulls? That’s something different.
After sinking the longest game-winner ever scored by a Bulls player at the United Center in Thursday’s win over the Los Angeles Lakers, Giddey is now on the best tear of his young NBA career. The guard has tallied 220 points, 96 rebounds and 100 assists in his last 10 games.
Only one other Bulls player ever posted that many points, rebounds and assists in a 10-game period: Michael Jordan.
But even after playing hero to extend the Bulls’ winning streak to four game, Giddey stayed focused on the bigger picture.
“It’s the right time to get hot,” Giddey said. “We’re starting to get wins by committee. It’s not really a one-man show on this roster. It’s a special group to be a part of, it’s a fun group to be a part of. When we’re winning, we do it together.”
Giddey knows he’s never going to be perfect.
It comes with the position. Point guards are the risk takers in NBA offenses. It’s rare for the best playmaker on a team not to lead the roster in turnovers too. And while Giddey isn’t exactly a point guard — at 6-foot-8, he technically fills in as a forward — his offensive decision-making runs the Bulls offense.
Creativity is a source of pride for Giddey. He loves to thread a pass through a dangerously narrow window, tossing one-handed passes up the court and lofting improbable lobs from behind the baseline. His ability to execute on sideline out-of-bounds plays has been a notable strength since he entered the NBA in 2021.
But in the last six weeks, Giddey also is narrowing his margin for error.
Like most aspects of his game, there is a clear distinction between before and after the All-Star break. Before heading to Cancun in mid-February, Giddey was averaging 2.7 turnovers and 6.4 assists per game. Since the break, his turnovers haven’t budged — but his assists have skyrocketed.
Giddey is averaging 9.1 assists per game since the All-Star break, a 50% increase that has been paired with a negligible uptick of 0.1 more turnovers per game.
This wasn’t a gradual change. Giddey posted a fairly standard assist-to-turnover ratio (2.8) in the season’s first two months. But in December, his mistakes began to eclipse play creation. His assist-to-turnover ratio dipped to 2.06 in January and to 1.86 in the final six games before the All-Star break in February.
But Giddey has flipped his efficiency through simple decisiveness. Over the All-Star break, he committed to eliminating his running floater, a move that also helped pare down Giddey’s tendency to attempt midair passes. And driving to the rim opened up more opportunities to kick out and keep the ball moving, a cornerstone of the Bulls offense after the trade deadline.
“It’s been a conscious effort to improve my decision making,” Giddey said. “I’ve got guys around me that can make plays, so it makes my job easy to get them the ball and they do the rest. I’m trying to try to find that balance of when to attack myself, when to get other guys going. I think we’re starting to figure it out as a team.”
In basketball, it’s hard to define a perfect assist.
There are no extra points for creativity. It doesn’t matter if a player throws the ball behind his back or between an opponent’s legs — the statistics stack up the same way. But sometimes, a pass is so perfectly timed and weighted and placed that it earns a gasp from the crowd, an extra layer of appreciation and a few replays in slow motion.
For one play against the Lakers on Thursday night, Giddey achieved perfection.
An inch or two higher and the ball would have sailed past guard Kevin Huerter and into the arms of the Lakers’ Dorian Finney-Smith on the backside. Any lower and it would have smacked right into the hand of Austin Reaves, who foolishly had turned his back to Giddey in an attempt to track Huerter through the paint. But Giddey placed his pass in a precise pocket, hitting Huerter in stride for an effortless spin to finish with his favored right hand.
A few minutes later, Reaves once again turned his back on Giddey — this time to chase down Zach Collins as the Bull slipped a screen and bolted to the basket. The moment Reaves turned his head, Giddey released the ball. Once again, the pass was featherweight, dropping over the shoulder and into his teammate’s hands for a pinpoint finish.
Those types of plays transform the Bulls offense — cracking open a defensive setup, sending a jolt of discouragement through an opposing defender. When Giddey connects on these passes, he shows glimpses of a higher level of basketball, elevating the Bulls with an elite court vision that the team often struggles to sustain.
But it takes consistency — and balance — to ensure those risks are always met with equal rewards. And Giddey’s reliability will be more important than ever as the Bulls chase a higher seed in the NBA Play-In Tournament.
“We’ve shown over the last month that we can compete with anybody,” Giddey said. “We understand our game plan and our identity. When we stick to it, we’re a tough team to beat.”
