'Joke' is on the new-look Bulls roster in what was great night to tank

This is what Bulls basketball should look like the rest of the season.

They should put in three quarters of competitive, hard-nosed play, have seven players in double figures, then get overwhelmed in the fourth quarter in a dash for more draft-lottery balls.

With Nikola Jokic passing Oscar Robertson for the second-most triple-doubles in NBA history (182), the Nuggets helped the Bulls out in the soft-tank department, outscoring them by 23 in the fourth to run away with a 136-120 victory Saturday at the United Center.

Jokic had 22 points, 17 assists and 14 rebounds.

“I love watching [Jokic] play,” Bulls coach Billy Donovan said. “One, he impacts the game in so many ways. He does it with his passing, his screening, just a level of unselfishness, and the way he plays the game is impressive.”

Donovan and his new-look squad got to see that up close, especially in the fourth quarter. Jokic was a plus-19 in that quarter alone.

As for the new Bulls, Collin Sexton had 17 points, Nick Richards and Anfernee Simons each had 15 points, Guerschon Yabusele scored 12, Jaden Ivey had 10 points and Rob Dillingham scored nine.

Matas Buzelis led the Bulls with 21 points and grabbed eight rebounds.

“The defense was not good [in the fourth quarter],” Donovan said. “We’re going to make some mistakes. The guys are all playing together; guys are forgetting plays; the spacing may not [be there]. It’s going to happen, but we’ve got to get much, much better defensively.”

Ivey league

Ivey said it was quite some time since he put in a 33-minute shift, which he did in his Bulls debut in Toronto on Thursday.

It actually took place Dec. 26, 2024, while he was still a regular in the Pistons’ starting lineup.

No wonder Ivey was admittedly feeling it.

“Obviously, it’s taxing on my body, but, shoot, so is basketball in general,” Ivey said. “I checked the stat sheet as far as my minutes, and 33 minutes was probably the longest I’ve played in a while.”

When asked about his approach in figuring out how to play with all of his new teammates, he said it feels like a pickup game at the local gym.

“I mean, yeah, you ask anybody that gets traded, nobody just comes in and, ‘Man, we got it down pat,’ ’’ Ivey said. “You gotta kind of figure it out, and it takes time.”

A different view

Bulls executive vice president Arturas Karnisovas admittedly took a lot out of the 15-5 run at the end of the 2024-25 regular season, but he might’ve put too much stock in it.

Donovan was asked about the approach to the rest of this season and made it clear that he looks at things differently.

“The thing that stood out to me more than anything else was the Miami [play-in] game,” Donovan said. “The 15-5, because it was the end of the year, was such a mixed bag of teams.

‘‘When there was a meaningful game, like a Game 7, so to speak, we got really dominated in that game.

“I looked at it from the lens of we’ve got a lot of growth yet to get better and a lot of that was, ‘Hey, we’ve got to get more physical.’ ’’