Bulls post historically bad first-half performance vs. Pistons amid laughably futile four-quarter stretch

The Chicago Bulls attempted to win a basketball game on Tuesday. Their hopes of doing so, however, were dashed fairly quickly. 

They welcomed the Detroit Pistons into the United Center for a Central Division clash that proved to be a mismatch in mere minutes. Detroit scored the first three baskets of the game and it took less than seven minutes for the lead to balloon to double digits. The Pistons led by 16 after the first quarter, and then opened the second on a preposterous 33-4 run to push that lead to 45 points. 

Chicago scored a few token points in the closing minutes of the frame, but the damage was more than done. The Pistons won the first half by 42 points, 71-29, in what ended up being a 132-92 win.

If you assumed that halftime margin was historic, you’d be right. It is now tied for the seventh-biggest halftime deficit in NBA history. And had the Pistons kept their run going just a bit longer, the NBA record — the Dallas Mavericks‘ 77-27 lead over the Los Angeles Clippers on Dec. 27, 2020 — was within reach. Still, the Pistons were able to set a record for largest halftime lead. 

On the other side, it was tied for the biggest halftime deficit in Bulls history, and the individual numbers were just as startling. The five highest-scoring players in the first half were Pistons, and the six highest-scoring players in the game as a whole also played for the Pistons. This was, obviously, among the most embarrassing two-quarter stretches the NBA has ever seen.

Bulls’ horrific play carried over from previous loss

Anyone can play poorly for two quarters. How about four? 

Let’s rewind to Saturday, when the Bulls, still at home, played against the Golden State Warriors. They led that game at the half by 14 points, and then opened up the third quarter on an 8-0 run to push their lead up to 22. Yet when the final buzzer rang, the Bulls lost by 21, 132-111. 

That means that they lost one half of basketball by 35 points and immediately followed that up losing the next half they played by 42. Across four consecutive quarters, the Chicago Bulls were therefore outscored by 77 points. 

While that four-quarter stretch accounts for two separate games, it would represent a bigger scoring margin than any team has ever earned in a single matchup, as that record belongs to the 2020-21 Memphis Grizzlies, who won a game over the Oklahoma City Thunder by 73 points. 

If you zoom in even more, it just gets worse for the Bulls. Starting at the end of Chicago’s 8-0 run to open the third quarter against Golden State and ending at the moment Detroit’s second-quarter run on Tuesday hit 31-4, the Bulls had an uninterrupted stretch of basketball in which they were outscored 144-56. Yikes.

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One of the worst four-quarter stretches ever?

The Bulls did get worse at the trade deadline when they dealt leading scorer Zach LaVine to the Sacramento Kings, but they actually got criticized for not doing enough to kickstart a rebuild. Veterans like Coby White, Nikola Vucevic and Ayo Dosunmu, who were in trade rumors of varying frequency, were all retained and played in both losses. This was not a case of a rebuilding team sacrificing its bench at the altar of a couple of contenders, either. The Warriors and Pistons have a combined record of 55-52.

This was, to put it simply, one of the worst four-quarter stretches of basketball that any team has ever played. So how did this happen? There’s no single culprit. The Bulls struggled just about everywhere.

The Bulls shoot quite a few 3-pointers, and they missed almost all of them in this stretch by going 7 for 41 from deep. It’s not as though their opponents made all of their own triples, though. The Pistons shot only 7 of 18 on 3s in the first half on Tuesday. The Warriors were better at 11 of 23 in the second half on Saturday, but that’s still not even 50%. The Warriors and Pistons out-rebounded them 61 to 35 in that stretch, while the Bulls committed six more turnovers. Amazingly, the whistles were nearly even across these four quarters. The Bulls took 25 free throws. The Pistons and Warriors combined for 26. The two of them, together, simply managed to outplay the Bulls in just about every conceivable way across 48 minutes divided in half across three days.

The cherry on top for the Bulls? They have to host the Pistons again on Wednesday, so they can’t even escape their tormentors. Fortunately, they’ll have the All-Star break to regroup after that.