Chicago Bulls: Dunn establishing himself as heart of the Bulls

In leading the Chicago Bulls over the Milwaukee Bucks yesterday, Kris Dunn showed in a few ways how he’s become the heart and soul of this team.

Kris Dunn’s star turn with the Chicago Bulls keeps getting brighter and brighter with seemingly every game. And that was especially apparent during the Bulls’ 115-106 win over the Milwaukee Bucks yesterday evening.

In fact, Dunn’s stat line of 20 points, 12 assists, four steals and two blocks put him in some rarified air in terms of Chicago Bulls performances.

Ok, get all your “Don’t even put Michael Jordan and Kris Dunn in the same sentence!” objections out. Everyone good now? Cool.

Guess what? For this one game, Dunn earned the statistical comparison because of the huge all-around game he just put up. We should celebrate that, even if we can all agree that Dunn isn’t Jordan.

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Plus, he continues to love taking the ball when the game goes down to the wire. This kind of fearlessness and attacking mentality will hopefully lead to a lot of wins down the road.

But there’s another side to Dunn’s aggressiveness that has him establishing himself as the leader of this young Chicago Bulls team. And, though it had an unhappy result yesterday, it might be another reason Dunn is the perfect man to bring this team back to relevance.

With Milwaukee still seeking a comeback in the final minute, Dunn and Khris Middleton earned ejections for an altercation near the basket.

Middleton tried to clear Dunn out of the way for an easy basket, including hitting Dunn with an elbow. And Dunn was not having any of it.

Now, obviously, you don’t want to see a ton of this from Dunn. I personally want to see him on the floor as much as possible and avoiding ejections, as do we all.

At the same time, you can’t claim that he, and this Bulls team behind him, have no spirit. Sure, they might not be great at basketball, but they’re not going to back down from anyone.

And while that’s not going to matter much this year, it will matter when this team is ready to compete for real. And Dunn, even as a second-year player, has brought that mentality to the Windy City.

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Hopefully, Dunn keeps producing stat lines like yesterday’s for the Chicago Bulls over a long, fruitful career. And, perhaps even more importantly, I hope he keeps taking the fight (figuratively, of course) to his opponents every night.

If he does, I’m sure this team will follow his lead, and they’ll eventually get back to their winning ways soon.