The Chicago Bulls haven't just been beating teams on the road recently, they have been destroying them. In just the past week during their nine-game road trip, the Bulls (23-6) have beaten the Milwaukee Bucks by 23, the New Jersey Nets by 21, the New Orleans Hornets by 23 and the Charlotte Bobcats by 31 points. As it turns out, road dominance of that caliber in the NBA has never been seen before.
Elias Sports Bureau points out the the Bulls are the first team in NBA history to win four straight games on the road, all by 20 or more points. In fact, no other NBA team has even accomplish that feat for three games in a row, meaning the Bulls broke their own record with their blowout win over the Bobcats on Friday night.
The defensive prowess of Bulls is not exactly a secret around the NBA. Tom Thibodeau has his team playing with the third highest defensive efficiency in the NBA for the season-to-date, and the unit forces opponents to take the highest percentage of long two-point attempts out of any defense in the league. Futhermore, Elias also points out that the Bulls are the first team to hold opponents under 70 points at least six times in a season since 2003-04, when Ben Wallace and the Detroit Pistons did so 11 times and Tim Duncan's San Antonio Spurs did so six times.
As a nod to the tenacity and dominance of the Bulls' defense, the NBA has made Chicago the focus of their most recent BIG promo. Here's the text of the ad in its entirety, and the video clip is embedded below:
Thank you for calling the Chicago Police Department. If your basketball has been stolen, please press one. If your offense has been dismantled, please press two. If your entire game plan has been ripped to shreds in front of 20,917 eyewitnesses, please press three. Please be patient we are currently processing multiple claims from [nearly every city pops up on the screen simultaneously]. As you can see, the problem has become rather BIG.
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