Game Preview: Knicks at Bulls, Oct. 31, 2025

SB Nation

The New York Knicks and the Chicago Bulls will get their NBA Cup campaigns underway today, and I’m not sure if these two teams could be coming into Friday night’s opener on more opposing trajectories.

The Knicks, who entered the season as one of two teams expected to make the finals out of the Eastern Conference, have stumbled out of the gates with back-to-back road losses and a 2-2 record. Meanwhile, the Bulls, who have been perpetually stuck in the non-contending, non-lottery team purgatory, remain undefeated and have gotten out to a very surprising 4-0 start — claiming wins over the Pistons, Magic, and Hawks, all of whom have playoff expectations.

Making the Bulls’ feat even more impressive is the fact that they haven’t even had Colby White, who is one of their best players.

For New York, it’ll be a chance to not only hand the Bulls their first loss of the season, but also right the ship and calm down a fervent fanbase, even if it’s only for a couple of days.

Meanwhile, Chicago has the chance to stick it to the Knicks and enjoy its first 5-0 start to the regular season since 1996, when the Bulls put together a 12-0 record to begin with and eventually won the championship.

So, how can the Knicks prevent falling to 2-3 and watching their former rivals get off to one of the best starts in franchise history? It likely starts with looking in the mirror.

The Bulls have done some really neat things, but the Knicks need to straighten out their own play. They’ve struggled to hit open shots, can’t generate enough good looks when Brunson isn’t on the court, have struggled to integrate Karl-Anthony Towns, and have had a hard time limiting fastbreak opportunities. If they can address all, or even most, of those things, they should have the talent to beat the Bulls and gain some of the recently lost trust back from their fans.

But, given the unlikeliness that all of those things suddenly take a 180-degree turn 72 hours after their last loss, New York will likely also need to address Chicago’s strengths. While the Bulls rank right around the middle of the pack in many scoring stats, they do a great job of sharing the wealth. They don’t have a single player averaging more than 20PPG, which is a rare occurrence in today’s NBA, but they are second in the league in assists per game, and third in the league in assist percentage. They have five players averaging between 14.8PPG, and 19.5PPG, and have three players averaging five or more assists per game. As impressive as those numbers sound though, it has been their defense that has carried this team thus far.

They rank third in the league in defensive rating, give up the sixth least amount of points per game, and are holding opponents to a comically low 25.9% from three. Some of that can be attributed to a small sample size, and we can expect that number to go up a bit as the season progresses. But if you look at their defensive stats from last season, you’ll learn that this isn’t something new. While the 2024-25 Bulls weren’t a great defensive team overall, one of the few things they did really well was defend the three-point line. Last season, they finished second in the league in that category, holding opponents to 34.4% shooting from beyond the arc.

This should be concerning because the Knicks, as mentioned earlier, have struggled to convert on threes. They are currently shooting 33% from three, which ranks 24th in the league, despite hoisting up 44.8 attempts per game. And in their last two games against the Bulls last season, they shot 26.7% and 30.4% from three. Chicago also ranks in the top half of the league in fastbreak points per game, and plays with the seventh fastest pace — two stats that could be of concern for a Knicks team that is giving up the eighth-most fastbreak points per game so far this season.

Prediction

Over the last few years, the Brunson-led Knicks have been relatively good at coming up with much-needed wins, either stopping a losing skid or winning back the trust of the fans. And as much as I want to believe that’ll happen tonight, this game has all the markings of an early-season loss that’ll leave fans shaking their head, and wondering if this team has what it takes.

The vibes of the season so far have gone from good to subpar quickly, and playing a young team with nothing to lose, that also happens to be a very unfavorable matchup for the Knicks, sounds and seems like a recipe for disaster. I expect Towns and Anunoby to be better. I expect Bridges to continue his great early-season play. And I expect Brunson to be the best player on the floor like he so often is.

But I have the Bulls riding their three-point defense and balanced attack to get to 5-0, and hand the Knicks their third loss of the season.