The sad, demoralized Bulls are having their asses handed to them in Oklahoma City tonight. Perhaps the familiarity of another grim drubbing was more than they could bear—in the third quarter, down 21 points, they picked several fights all at once:
It’s hard to tell what started this. Westbrook ran Kris Dunn through a couple screens and tried to post him up on the offense’s left side. The two were still tangled up in a struggle for position when the whistle blew to signal a foul on recurring practical joke Cameron Payne, guarding Terrance Ferguson above the break. Westbrook seemed to exaggeratedly fling his arms free of Dunn’s, and Dunn responded to this by angrily shoving Westbrook in the chest. Simultaneously, Payne took a grumpy swipe at the ball, earning back a light shove from Ferguson. But the real action is behind Payne—Jerami Grant rushed over to confront Dunn, who responded with another shove, and then big Robin Lopez arrived and shit temporarily got pretty haywire.
Various technicals were assessed, but what you need to know is that Robin Lopez is a man who holds onto a grudge for at least three minutes of game clock:
For dropping the ball on Grant, Lopez was assessed a second technical foul and ejected from the game. Seems like the Bulls might be nearing the end of their rope, although this kind of fighting is certainly better than last season’s kind of fighting.