Tempo will be a key in the Bulls’ play-in game against the Heat tonight, Julia Poe of the Chicago Tribune writes. Chicago will want to speed up the game, while the Heat would prefer a half-court battle.
“Our identity is up and down — and it’s not a secret,” guard Josh Giddey said. “Everyone knows the way we play.”
Coby White says the Bulls need to match the Heat’s physicality. Chicago lost to Miami in the play-in round in each of the last two seasons.
“I feel like Miami — the last two years we played them in the play-in — they physically dominated us,” White said.
We have more from the Central Division:
- Bulls center Nikola Vucevic remains one of the league’s most consistent players, Darnell Mayberry of The Athletic writes. Vucevic averaged a double-double this season. “It’s the hardest thing in this league,” he said. “There’s so many games. There’s a lot of ups and downs. You win, you lose. You have good games, bad games. But you just have to learn to deal with it and move on. I just try to bring it every night and do what I do and not get out of that. I’ve had better years and worse years, but I don’t think there’s been a huge difference in the way I’ve played and my numbers. So, I take a lot of pride in it. I try to bring it every night.”
- Coach J.B. Bickerstaff has a warning for the younger players on the Pistons — you’re about to step into a new dimension. They’re about to get a taste of postseason basketball, a totally different experience from regular season action. “It’s a completely different basketball game,” he said, per Keith Langlois of Pistons.com . “And until you’re in it, it’s hard to understand it. We’ve been through this before. At some point in time, we were all kids and didn’t listen to our parents, either, and didn’t figure it out until we experienced it on our own. That’s what the playoffs are. We can tell guys what to expect, but until we experience it you don’t understand just how different it is from an intensity standpoint, from the execution of schemes, the importance of possession-by-possession basketball.”
- The Pacers enter the playoffs as the No. 4 seed with a home-court advantage over Milwaukee in the first round. They made a surprise run to the conference finals last season. Expectations are different this time around, Dustin Dopirak of the Indianapolis Star writes. “I think even last year we were just satisfied with being in the playoffs,” guard Tyrese Haliburton said. “Everything from there was kinda playing with house money to be honest with you. This year I think we have real expectations to do something special as a group and when I say something special, I mean a championship. That’s definitely an expectation we’ve had since the start of the year. That doesn’t change.”