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Home Sweet…Home? The Portland Trailblazers @ the Chicago Bulls

Home Sweet…Home? The Portland Trailblazers @ the Chicago Bulls (7pm EST; Friday December 12, 2014)

By James Ng

In a close game, playing at home can swing the contest in your favor. Somebody please remind the Chicago Bulls, who despite a respectable 13-8 record to start the season, have a less respectable 3-5 record at home. This is music to the ears for the Portland Trailblazers, who have beaten the Bulls seven times in a row heading into Chicago. 

The Setup:

On the surface, the hard-nosed Chicago Bulls have what it takes to win a title in a wide open NBA season, provided former MVP Derrick Rose doesn’t collapse into a heap at any given moment. Despite Rose’s endless injuries – like heavyweight haymakers spaced neatly across two-plus seasons – the Chicago Bulls are tough to beat. Coach Tom Thibodeau doesn’t know a lower gear. Other coaches might cruise after losing his best player for two-plus years, hoping for a better draft pick to compensate. But not this guy. He pushed his Bulls harder and harder and that resulted in a hardened squad that is used to playing without their best player.

Rose will be playing the Trailblazers on Friday, so that’s settled (we hope). The Bulls will need all the help they can get as the Blazers have been excellent this season, with All-Stars LaMarcus Aldridge and Damian Lillard leading them to a league third-best 17-5 record in the superior Western Conference. In short, the Portland Trailblazers are really good.

They will even have motivation taken care of when they visit the Bulls. Portland is coming off their worst loss of the season at the awful Minnesota Timberwolves. Ouch. If ever a statement needed to be made, it is after losing to a truly terrible team. They’ll want to punch out the next team they see.

But before losing at the woeful T-Wolves, Portland was the hottest road team in the NBA with seven straight victories away from home. They had ridden a five-game win streak into Minnesota, which suggests that unexpected loss was an aberration most likely due to scheduling and a rare off-night for Aldridge.

Head-to-Head Review:

History has also been on Portland’s side and they are riding a seven-game win streak against the Chicago Bulls. They have also won three straight games in Chicago, holding the Bulls to 84.0 measly points per game during that stretch.

They ride and die with Aldridge, but strangely the big man’s production hasn’t affected the way Portland dominates Chicago. In his previous three games against the Bulls, Portland has won despite a lack of production from Aldridge as he averaged a highly unusual 11.0 points on 28% shooting. 

However, for seven games before this, Aldridge simply destroyed Chicago by averaging 28.3 points on 60% shooting. This may be because Chicago previously employed power forward Carlos Boozer, now defending poorly and failing to get rebounds at the historically bad Los Angeles Lakers. In Boozer’s place? We have an older Pau Gasol, an undisputed great player but never synonymous with defending. 

Both Gasol and terrifying defensive center Joakim Noah are listed as “day-to-day” with niggling injuries, and that plays directly into Aldridge’s hands. He has shown he knows how to play against the stringent Bulls defense, and we look for him to have a strong game against a weakened Bulls front line.

Sure, we have to consider that during this dominant Portland run against Chicago, Derrick Rose wasn’t playing basketball. This time, he will be suiting up. He says he is healthy now and ready to make a run, but we’ve heard this time and again from Rose who despite his good intentions, is quite simply a question mark. So, let’s not get our hopes up, Chicago. His heart is in the right place but sadly, his knees might not be.

So the question is: if Derrick Rose shows up, will that be enough to swing the game in his favour against a Portland team that is very comfortable playing against these pain-in-the-neck Chicago Bulls? It depends on what sort of vengeful mood Portland’s Damian Lillard is in.

The Pick and the Lines:

Lillard is a point guard who is fearless, loves the big stage and likes to send a message. In this respect, great players are like predators that sniff out weakness, and Rose’s injuries have unwittingly painted a target on his back. We just don’t know what Derrick Rose can bring, and guys like Damian Lillard love the smell of blood.

Crucially, Aldridge is likely to submit a strong game after such a terrible showing in Minnesota. And while other power forwards can struggle against the Bulls’ suffocating defense, Aldridge has already proved he can be dominant against them. 

We’ve got a pair of Portland All-Stars who are primed for good performances. We’ve got a Chicago Bulls team that has struggled at home this season. We have Portland’s win streak against the Bulls, stretching back to a time when Chicago’s defense was even stronger than it is now. We have Chicago playing with a hobbled front line.

And we have Chicago as the team that is favoured by two points! 

And for this last reason, our pick is Portland to win and/or cover the spread.

BetBright +2 Portland (20/21)

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