The first month of the NBA season is a perfect time to overreact to small trends. Just two weeks ago, it seemed like the Chicago Bulls — perhaps the league’s ultimate symbol of mediocrity over the last few seasons — might be a legitimate playoff team. Since then, though, Chicago has dropped each of its last five games and now sits 11th in the Eastern Conference, one spot behind where it finished 2024-25.
Tonight, the Bulls will have an extremely tough test against one of the hottest teams in the league, the Denver Nuggets, who currently occupy the second seed in the Western Conference. The game will begin at 9 p.m. ET at Ball Arena in the foothills of the Rockies.
The Nuggets are 13.5-point favorites at DraftKings Sportsbook (-850 on the Moneyline), and the point total is set to 241.5. Chicago is +575 on the Moneyline. Below, I’ll break down tonight’s most widely-anticipated contest and offer my prediction.
Chicago Bulls at Denver Nuggets preview, prediction
After a “slow start” by his unbelievable standards, Denver’s Nikola Jokić has decided to remind everyone why he’s the best player in the world, averaging 34.6 points, 12.0 rebounds, and 11.0 assists per game so far in November. He’s averaging career highs in PER, win shares per 48 minutes, offensive box plus/minus, and overall box plus/minus — categories in which he is already the all-time career leader. Jamal Murray and Aaron Gordon are playing well, too, but their success or lack thereof is almost unimportant when the Nuggets have Jokić. Christian Braun’s ankle sprain will hurt in the long run, but he’d been off to a slow start to the season regardless.
The Bulls, meanwhile, just got Coby White back for his season debut, and he dropped 27 points off the bench as Chicago fell, 150-147, to the Utah Jazz in double overtime. So far, Chicago’s best player has been Josh Giddey, who had a triple-double in the defeat in his return from an ankle injury, but he hasn’t been alone: Nikola Vučević has made 43.4% of his three-pointers, and Kevin Huerter is enjoying career-best defensive impact. Having White, an efficient 20-PPG scorer last season, should help free up the paint for Giddey, a relative non-shooter.
Bulls at Nuggets pick, best bet
Denver has the league’s second-best offense and its second-best defense, trailing only the Oklahoma City Thunder — whose defense is 6.6 points per 100 possessions better than the Nuggets’ — in net rating. That’s a huge step up defensively from last season, when Denver finished 21st on that side of the ball, and to an extent, it makes sense: the Nuggets brought in Bruce Brown, who was a plus defender for the title-winning 2022-23 team, and traded the defense-last Michael Porter Jr. for a solid three-and-D wing in Cameron Johnson. Gordon has also made some strides on both sides of the ball.
That’s not to say that Denver is close to as perfect a defense as Oklahoma City is.. The Nuggets have gotten extremely fortuitous this season, as opponents have hit just 32.0% of their wide-open threes against them, the lowest rate in the league. They’ve been more exploitable from other parts of the court, allowing the 11th-highest percentage from the restricted area. Still, they’ve hustled back well in transition, allowing the second-fewest points off of turnovers and the third-fewest fast-break points, and having Jokić means they’ve allowed the fourth-fewest rebounds. Controlling the boards means erasing the other team’s possession opportunities and is a critical aspect of defense.
The game will be decided at the rim, which should unequivocally benefit Denver. This season, the Bulls have conceded nearly two more restricted-area shot attempts per game than any other team, and while they’ve held opponents to merely the 12th-worst percentage, they’ve still allowed more total makes at the rim than any other squad. Similarly, they’ve attempted the most shots at the rim and converted at the second-worst rate. For all of Chicago’s misses, though, it has averaged a below-average number of offensive rebounds, which should be a problem against the fourth-best defensive rebounding team in the Nuggets, even though it has been even better than Denver on the defensive glass.
The Bulls will have to shoot the lights out in order to beat the Nuggets, but they’ve already benefited from plenty of shooting luck this season. They’re excellent at producing wide-open triples — in part because defenders tend to ignore Giddey from beyond the arc — but they shouldn’t be expected to maintain the eighth-highest percentage on such shots for the rest of the season after ranking ninth-to-last in uncontested deep accuracy after trading Zach LaVine at February’s trade deadline. Besides Huerter, Chicago doesn’t have elite individual shooters. On the other hand, Denver could improve, given that it’s posted the seventh-worst accuracy on such shots so far.
I’m still going to pick the Bulls to cover the spread, simply because 13.5 points is a huge spread and it could be lopsided enough after the first three quarters that they’ll make up some of the deficit in the fourth. Giddey missing two games was a big reason for their losing streak, but now that he’s back healthy and Chicago’s spacing has improved with White stepping back into the rotation, this team isn’t entirely a bottom-feeder. It also has an aggressive enough offensive approach to take advantage of the Nuggets’ mediocre rim protection.
