Bulls Walk Into TD Garden Desperate, Celtics Ready to Feast
A 1-4 Chicago Bulls squad heads to TD Garden on Friday night to face a Boston Celtics team sitting at 3-1 — and the gap between these two rosters right now is hard to overstate. Our model doesn't have a validated read on this one, so we're calling the angles straight.
Let's start with the obvious: Chicago is in trouble early. A 1-4 record through five games isn't a slow start you can explain away, and walking into TD Garden against a 3-1 Boston team is about as unfriendly an environment as the NBA offers in late October. The Bulls need something to change tonight, and fast.
On the Chicago side, the offensive load is falling on Norman Powell, who is averaging 21.6 points per game — a legitimate scoring threat who can keep possessions alive. Josh Giddey is expected to start and has been one of the more productive facilitators in the early going, averaging 8.0 assists per game. Jalen Smith is pulling down 8.2 rebounds per game, which gives the Bulls at least a fighting chance on the glass. The pieces aren't embarrassing. The record, though, is what it is.
The problem is Jayson Tatum. The Boston star is averaging 28.0 points, 8.0 assists, and 6.2 rebounds per game — numbers that make him a one-man matchup nightmare at every level of the floor. When a single player is leading his team in scoring, assists, and rebounds simultaneously through four games, you're not just looking at a hot start; you're looking at a player operating at a different altitude than almost anyone Chicago can throw at him. Tatum is expected to start and will almost certainly be the central problem the Bulls need to solve — and there's no clean answer for that in Chicago's current rotation. Without a validated model read to anchor a prediction, the honest framing here is this: the numbers favor Boston at home, Tatum's early-season production is genuinely alarming for opponents, and the Bulls have not shown enough yet to suggest they can flip the script on the road. Watch Powell's scoring volume and Giddey's ability to create advantages in pick-and-roll — those are the levers Chicago has to pull. Tip-off is at 7:30 PM ET on NBA League Pass.