Bulls Stun Bucks 132-125, Expose DarkHorse's Efficiency Mirage

Well, that was embarrassing. The Bulls torched Milwaukee 132-125, obliterating our Bucks -1.5 pick and making that "catastrophic offensive dysfunction" analysis look like we watched the wrong team's tape.

Chicago's offense wasn't just functional—it was explosive. Whatever shooting woes plagued them in the opener evaporated inside Fiserv Forum, as the Bulls put up 132 points and clearly found their rhythm against Milwaukee's porous defense. The 29-point efficiency gap we cited? Turns out it was pointing the wrong direction.

The Bucks' supposedly "competent" offense got dragged into a shootout they couldn't win, surrendering 132 points at home and failing to cover even a measly 1.5-point spread. Milwaukee's defensive issues proved far more urgent than Chicago's offensive questions, and the market—which we claimed had underpriced the gap—actually had this one pegged correctly. Maybe even generously toward Milwaukee.

Credit where due: the Bulls answered every challenge and made us look foolish for buying into one disastrous opener as gospel. Their 132-point explosion suggests the opening night debacle was the outlier, not the baseline. Meanwhile, our Bucks couldn't defend a traffic cone and left us holding a losing ticket. Sometimes the "dysfunction" is exactly where you're not looking.