SACRAMENTO — The Chicago Bulls showed up to Golden 1 Center on Sunday night like they’d packed for a leisurely Sunday stroll, not a track meet. They left their running shoes in the United Center locker room 2,000 miles away, and the Sacramento Kings made them pay the ultimate price — a humiliating 126-110 beatdown that exposed every crack in the Bulls’ post-trade-deadline identity.
Final score: Kings 126, Bulls 110. Fast-break points: Bulls 9 (just 4 in the first half). The message from the Kings was loud and clear: if you won’t run, we’ll run you right out of the building.
The Game That Never Got Off the Ground
This wasn’t just a bad night. This was the anti-Bulls game.
Just 48 hours earlier in Phoenix, the Bulls had looked like the team Billy Donovan envisioned after the deadline purge — 22 fast-break points, 12 turnovers, and a track-meet victory over the Suns. Donovan had preached pace, spacing, and physicality all season. The Bulls currently sit top-three league-wide in pace. Against Sacramento? They played like they were dragging anchors.
The Kings, fueled by Russell Westbrook’s vintage triple-double and a roster built for chaos, turned the game into a track-and-field event the Bulls simply refused to enter. Westbrook and company feasted in transition while Chicago’s new additions — still adjusting to life at warp speed — watched from the halfcourt sets they couldn’t escape.
Matas Buzelis dropped 20 points and showed flashes of the two-way star the front office hopes he becomes. Josh Giddey matched Westbrook with a triple-double of his own, proving once again he can fill up a stat sheet when the game slows down. But those bright spots were buried under an avalanche of missed transition opportunities and defensive lapses that Donovan later called “conditioning and understanding” issues.
Collin Sexton (now patrolling the backcourt for Sacramento after his time in Chicago) couldn’t help but smile postgame. “I knew a little bit about Coach before the trades, and whenever we played the Bulls, we knew it was going to be a track meet, so bring your running shoes,” Sexton said. “Now being on the team, it’s pretty cool to be in that position, to be in open space and getting used to it. That’s the biggest thing, trying to get used to it.”
The irony? The Bulls’ own former teammate was now thriving in the exact style Chicago claims to want.
Donovan’s Honest Diagnosis — And the Grace Period Is Ending
Head coach Billy Donovan didn’t sugarcoat it.
“The biggest issue I think was the fact that a lot of those guys were coming from situations where they were not playing at all,” Donovan said, referencing new arrivals Guerschon Yabusele, Nick Richards, and Rob Dillingham. “Like Yabusele wasn’t playing, Nick wasn’t playing, Rob wasn’t playing, so I think the pace has been a little different. We went through some of that with Tre Young, Zach Collins and Kevin Huerter last year.”
Forward Isaac Okoro echoed the sentiment while also issuing a quiet warning: “I give the new guys grace because it is hard, especially when you add in the fast pace with which we play. Guys are still getting used to that. It’s hard to go from a slower team to how we play, then also try to have that physical identity.”
Translation: the grace period is real… but it’s not infinite. More than half the current roster could be free agents or trade chips again next summer. Donovan knows time is ticking.
The second-half collapse was particularly brutal. After scraping together just four fast-break points before halftime, the Bulls never found rhythm in the halfcourt either. Spacing collapsed. Turnovers mounted. The Kings’ bench mob — running like they’d stolen the Bulls’ playbook — turned a competitive game into a rout.
The Bigger Picture: Who Are These Bulls, Really?
This loss wasn’t just about one night without running shoes. It was a referendum on everything the front office tried to rebuild at the deadline.
Chicago entered the season talking championship contention before the Zach LaVine-era reset. They exited the deadline with a younger, faster, cheaper roster — but one still searching for its soul. The Suns game showed the ceiling. Sunday night showed the floor.
When the Bulls play with pace and physicality, they’re dangerous. When they forget to run? They become exactly what the Kings exploited — a halfcourt team pretending to be a track team.
The implications stretch beyond one loss on a West Coast road trip:
Conditioning for the new pieces remains a work in progress.Halfcourt execution and spacing still need major refinement.Sexton’s leg contusion (he left late) adds another layer of injury concern to an already thin rotation.Playoff positioning in the East suddenly feels more fragile than it did 48 hours ago.
The Ultimate Price
The Kings didn’t just beat the Bulls on Sunday. They embarrassed them in their own supposed style — up-tempo, physical, relentless.
As the Bulls board the plane back east, one image should haunt them: their running shoes, still sitting untouched in a Chicago locker 2,000 miles away.
The Kings didn’t just win a basketball game. They collected the ultimate price for a team that forgot what made them dangerous in the first place.
Next up: Can the Bulls find those shoes before it’s too late? Or will more teams make them pay the same brutal tab?
The West Coast trip continues. The clock is ticking. And the running shoes? They better be laced up by tip-off next game.