Good evening! The Knicks are home from Philadelphia to play the second of a back-to-back. The visiting Bulls are also playing the second of a back-to-back, although this is more like a back-and-a-half-to-back. Chicago played four overtimes last night, with most of their starters logging huuuuge minutes, and they landed in New York relatively recently. Pau Gasol put so many minutes on his old-man legs that he's gonna sit tonight, rookie Bobby Portis starting in his place.
So, I dunno, maybe the Knicks have an opportunity to steal a win off a better team. Knowing the Bulls, it won't be easy, but it'll probably be ugly. Chicago's even sloppier than the Knicks on offense, but they defend extremely well. Tired or not, they are likely to disrupt New York's offense. Derrick Rose is Derrick Rose, Jimmy Butler is a humanoid robomonster who could probably dominate even if he'd played 100 minutes last night, and I'm semi-worried about Portis springing to life in his first big minutes. The Knicks must be on top of their shit to get back to .500 tonight. That'd be so great!
(Zooming out for a second: This match-up with Chicago begins a prettttty tough run of superior Eastern Conference opponents after what *looked like*, but did not prove to be, a light early December schedule.)
Tip-off tonight is at 7:30 on MSG. This is your game thread. This is Blog-a-Bull. Please don't post large photos, GIFs, or links to illegal streams in the thread. Please keep the thread clean and comfortable for others. Go the Knicks!