As Stephen Noh said in his recent notes on last night’s Bulls win over Toronto, it was really two different games. The Bulls wound up staving off collapse thanks to DeMar DeRozan’s late-game shotmaking (and it’s hard to turn the ball over if you aren’t passing!), but for the first 42 minutes of the contest it was a performance more in trend with the rest of the season’s start: active - and great - defense.
Up until the final six minutes of the game, the Bulls defense posted a 104.8 rating on a super-slow 95.