After years of being the picture of mediocrity, the Chicago Bulls finally decided to tear it all down. They traded DeMar DeRozan before the 2024-25 season, dealt Zach LaVine midway through that season, and finished the destruction in 2025-26 with deals sending Nikola Vučević and Coby White to new teams.
The ultimate fate of the Bulls’ rebuild will be decided by ping pong balls during the draft lottery, but for now, the new-look roster is achieving its purpose. Chicago has lost 12 of its last 13 games and should be in line to lose against tonight when it faces the over-achieving Phoenix Suns at 9:10 p.m. ET.
As might be expected for a tanking team, the Bulls’ injury list is extremely long, with Zach Collins (toe), Noa Essengue (shoulder), Jaden Ivey (knee), and Anfernee Simons (wrist) out, Jalen Smith (calf) and Patrick Williams (quadriceps) doubtful, and Josh Giddey (ankle) and Matas Buzelis (ankle) both questionable. Phoenix’s is shorter, but two starters — Dillon Brooks (hand) and Mark Williams (foot) — and one key role player — Jordan Goodwin (calf) are out.
The Suns are 10.5-point favorites at DraftKings Sportsbook (-535 on the Moneyline), with the point total set to 224.5. The Bulls are +400 on the Moneyline. Below, I’ll break down this clash and offer a prediction.
Chicago Bulls at Phoenix Suns preview, prediction
Given that this is now a roster with a litany of guards and no center, it’s not a surprise that Chicago has lost at the rate that it has. In the Bulls’ 0-11 February, only four losses were even decided by single digits. During that span, even their most reliable offensive player, Buzelis, was inconsistent, scoring 32 points once but two points once. Perhaps more alarmingly, Ivey — who was selected with the fifth overall pick four years ago — played just four games before going down, having seemingly lost all of the burst that defined the early years of his career. The other point guard reclamation project that they took on, Rob Dillingham, has also struggled mightily.
Phoenix, meanwhile, has weathered the storm of Devin Booker’s absence pretty well. Booker went down just nine minutes into the season’s second half with a hip injury and sat out the next four games, and Brooks injured his hand in the team’s second game back from the break. Regardless, the Suns are a solid 3-3 since the All-Star break, including a pretty impressive win over the Los Angeles Lakers in which Royce O’Neale hit a game-winning triple. All in all, Phoenix has maintained a solid grip on the seventh seed in the Western Conference, two games behind the Lakers in sixth.
Bulls at Suns pick, best bet
If Buzelis ends up sitting, it’d be his first missed game all season, but it might not have all that much of an impact, as he’s only improved the team’s net rating by 0.3 points per 100 possessions when he’s been on the floor. In fact, the only impactful absence that Chicago will have tonight is Smith’s; in his 937 minutes on the floor, the Bulls have been 12.1 points per 100 possessions better. Either way, Chicago is adjusting from a low baseline: since the start of February, the Bulls have the second-worst offense and the eighth-worst defense. The Suns, on the other hand, have the 10th-best defense, and both Brooks’ and Williams’ combined on-off splits are more negative than Goodwin’s is positive.
Getting to the rim will be key. For the season, the Bulls have allowed the most field goal attempts in the restricted area and have gotten even worse defensively since the start of February, allowing 31.4 layups or dunks per game. As a result, they’ve given up the third-most makes in that zone despite holding opponents to the eighth-lowest percentage. Thankfully for Chicago, that’s not necessarily Phoenix’s game; it attempts the second-fewest restricted-area tries per game and is a league-average finishing unit. Defensively, the Suns have done a good job stopping opponents from getting to the rack but not such a good job keeping them from finishing while there, and even after turning over most of their roster, the Bulls have gotten downhill well and finished extremely poorly.
Perhaps unsurprisingly for a team without a center, Chicago hasn’t rebounded very well since the start of February, ranking just 24th in rebounding percentage, and it has been 3.0 percentage points worse on the glass without Smith on the floor. But that’s not an area in which Phoenix excels, either; it ranks just 18th in rebounding percentage since the All-Star break, perhaps as a function of not having Goodwin, one of the league’s better rebounding guards. Neither team holds a major advantage in transition, but the Bulls have been the slightly more disciplined team, even after gutting their roster.
It could all come down to shooting; since the start of February, both teams have ranked in the league’s top 11 in wide-open threes generated. Chicago has actually connected at a higher rate on such shots, though its best player by shooting percentage over expectation, Simons, won’t play, and the Suns’ best shooter, Collin Gillespie, will. Phoenix has definitely been better at defending the three-point line, giving up 2.1 fewer wide-open threes per game than the Bulls since the start of February, but it has also gotten luckier that opponents have been less accurate.
It feels weird to pick a team with most of its regular rotation on the injury report against one that just welcomed its best player back from injury, but even this post-deadline Chicago team is a good fit against the Suns, given their mediocre rim protection and struggles to get to the rack. Phoenix should definitely win, but expecting the Bulls to cover the spread is reasonable.
