Bulls (5-13) at Celtics (13-4) Game #18 11/28/23

[ozgod]

The only thing at risk with the whole point-differential is keeping your starters in despite a 25+ point lead. Risk an injury.

Yes, the thing about those European soccer cups is that for the early stages when the good teams are playing inferior opposition they tend to play their second XI to minimize the risk of injury, and also to manage workload. They have rosters big enough to accommodate all the games they play. Maybe if this tournament takes off the NBA will look at possible roster expansion for it.

[PAOBoston]

Huge win for the NBA last night. Those were the most interesting Tuesday night games in a very long time. The point differential thing was great imo. Made paying attention to all those games fun. I don’t care about running up the score. You pay to watch the stars, not bench players. The stars should play even when up 20. They are all professionals so the other team should just try harder.

[angryguy77]

These guys showed me last night their blown leads are not due to skill, it's due to their mentality and how locked in they are.
Think about if they approached the Bucks game or Orlando game with the same mindset as they had last night. I know it's the Bulls, but it's not like this team isn't equal opportunity when it comes to letting teams back into games.

[ozgod]

These guys showed me last night their blown leads are not due to skill, it's due to their mentality and how locked in they are.
Think about if they approached the Bucks game or Orlando game with the same mindset as they had last night. I know it's the Bulls, but it's not like this team isn't equal opportunity when it comes to letting teams back into games.

I wonder if the reason that they stop playing after a big lead is because of this so called unwritten rule that piling on the points in an insult. So they take it easy and in today's NBA any team can come back with how many players can shoot 3s.

“Once I knew the point differential, I told the team that this is a good opportunity for us to work on playing with a lead and building on it,” Boston coach Joe Mazzulla said Tuesday, “because we want to try to win as much as we can.”

That mindset signals a break with professional basketball’s usual mores, which hold that piling on points in a settled game is an insult. After Mazzulla instructed his team to foul Chicago’s Andre Drummond, a poor free-throw shooter, in the hopes of getting the ball back quickly in the fourth quarter, Bulls coach Billy Donovan took visible exception. “I had to explain to him, ‘This is what our people are telling us, this is what we have to do,’” Mazzulla said.

Earlier this month, Warriors coach Steve Kerr had welcomed the new license to keep the accelerator floored.

“It’s great, nobody stops playing at the end,” he said before a tournament matchup with the Timberwolves. “I actually prefer it. I have no idea why people get offended in the NBA when you shoot at the end.”

https://www.wsj.com/sports/basketball/nba-in-season-tournament-11d8c1b3?mod=sports_lead_pos4

I should add that it's always the losers that get offended and cry about being disrespected when they lose by 20+ and the other team keeps playing.