The Milwaukee Bucks opened at home against the Chicago Bulls on Wednesday night looking for a reset after a fourth-quarter collapse in their previous game. Both teams entered 0-1, but the pressure felt sharper on Milwaukee because this was the home opener and one of the first chances to steady itself before the schedule turns ugly.
That made Bulls vs Bucks more than an early-season meeting. Chicago had already shown why it can be a problem even after a 135-92 loss to the Raptors: it played at a top-10 pace in the preseason, and last year under Billy Donovan it ranked third-fastest in the league. Josh Giddey was the engine behind that pace, and Norman Powell was the key offseason signing, a pairing that can force a game to speed up before the other side has found its footing.
The bigger question for Milwaukee was whether it could control the tempo long enough to avoid another late fade. The Bucks had already seen the Bulls up close in the preseason and lost, though basically none of Milwaukee's starters played that night. That leaves the warning intact but incomplete, because Chicago has already shown it can play fast even after a lopsided defeat, and the style alone can keep a game alive longer than the score on Wednesday suggested.
There are also signs that Chicago has more than one way to stay dangerous. Caleb Wilson began his NBA career shooting 7/21 with nine turnovers, yet Leonard Miller still finished the preseason at 17.3 PPG, 6.3 RPG and 2.0 APG while making threes at 54.5%. Those numbers do not guarantee a result, but they help explain why the Bulls were still treated as a threat despite the blowout loss that came before this game.
For the Bucks, the timing matters as much as the opponent. Milwaukee was trying to redeem itself after Wednesday's collapse, and its schedule after this game was described as scary. That puts extra weight on a home opener that was supposed to be about getting right, not just getting by. If the Bucks could not dictate pace and finish cleanly, the early warning signs would become harder to ignore.
The next stretch will tell whether this was the start of a response or just another night where Milwaukee let a fast team pull it off script. If the Bucks cannot settle the game down now, the difficult run ahead is likely to expose that flaw quickly.
