On this final day of the NBA regular season, the Bulls have nothing to play for as their playoff seeding has been already decided. This was the case in their last game against the Washington Wizards on Friday, the reserves put in quite the effort and came out on top 129-127. It was Chicago’s 2nd straight victory, they’ve won 3 of their last 5 games overall. Interestingly enough, they faced the Knicks twice in the last 9 days, splitting the series with each team winning their home game. The oddsmakers are aware that the Bulls will be resting all of their starters here, as a result we have a massive 14.5 point spread. In road games this season, the Bulls have covered the spread 22 times in 40 games played.
New York still has something to play for here, a potential win here and a Bucks loss against Orlando on Sunday would lift them up into 2nd place in the Eastern Conference. That might sound good on paper, but in reality it might not be all that appealing. Why? Because the Miami Heat are lurking in the play-in tournament and that’s definitely a team you want to avoid playing in the first round if you are the Knicks. We can only speculate what the Knicks will do here, but knowing how their head coach Tom Thibodeau operates, I have a feeling the starers will once again play heavy minutes, just like they did in the meaningless game against Brooklyn on Friday where two of them logged 40+ minutes.
