Chicago Bulls extend their 5-game losing streak and 4 other takeaways from a 113-102 loss to the Portland Trail Blazers

The Chicago Bulls are crashing out. The team tallied its fifth consecutive loss Sunday night, this time a 113-102 doozy to the Portland Trail Blazers that threw every flaw of the Bulls’ offense into sharp contrast.

This was not exactly a meeting of heavy hitters. The Blazers (13-28) and Bulls (18-24) are battling for lottery position in the NBA standings. Both teams rank among the bottom eight teams in the league in defensive rating.

But even against one of the worst defensive teams in the league, the Bulls couldn’t kickstart their offense. Zach LaVine and Nikola Vučević attempted to shoulder the scoring — LaVine tallied a team-high 27 points and five assists while Vučević added 17 points, 11 rebounds and seven assists. The pair accounted for over half of the team’s assists and more than a third of their total points.

The Bulls will now travel to California to face the Los Angeles Clippers on Monday and the Golden State Warriors on Thursday in the final leg of a West Coast trip.

Here are four more takeaways from the loss.

1. A low point.

This wasn’t quite the worst offensive outing of the season for the Bulls — that was marked by a Dec. 23 loss to the Milwaukee Bucks, in which the Bulls only scored 91 points. But Sunday’s loss was still a low point for the offense, which recorded a season-low in assists (21).

The Bulls barely tallied more assists than turnovers (14) as players traveled and threw passes out of bounds. But the Trail Blazers matched them in mistakes, giving up 17 turnovers (including 10 steals by the Bulls).

2. Matas Buzelis got some minutes (sort of).

Rookie Matas Buzelis has struggled to get on the floor in recent weeks, earning only four minutes of playing time in Friday’s loss to the Charlotte Hornets at the end of a 10-game streak in which he averaged fewer than 12 minutes on the court.

The first half of Sunday’s game in Portland was a welcome change as Buzelis saw two early rotations, tallying four points and three rebounds in the first half.

While he is still learning how to impact the offense on a regular basis, Buzelis continued to deliver on his greatest strength: blocks. He blocked two shots in the first half, extending his stretch as the team’s leading blocker despite being 11th on the depth chart in minutes played. Buzelis was so eager to block every ball that came his way that he drew a whistle for goaltending in the second quarter after swatting a high-arcing shot from Deni Avdija.

But Sunday’s loss followed a pattern. Even after recording several solid rotations, coach Billy Donovan moved away from Buzelis to close the game. He played only three minutes in the third quarter and did not feature in the fourth. As a result, Buzelis finished with only 15 minutes of total play.

3. The poor 3-point shooting stretch continued.

The Bulls offense is mostly predicated on their ability to take and make a high volume of shots from behind the 3-point arc. But a recent stretch of losses has been punctuated by a cold streak from long range as the Bulls shot below 30% in the last four games.

In Sunday’s game, the Bulls attempted their second-fewest 3-pointers (29) of the season. Their lowest-volume 3-point shooting game of the season occurred two games prior when they attempted 27 against the Atlanta Hawks.