Rose-less Bulls Visit Pistons

The Chicago Bulls will soldier on without Derrick Rose for another year.

The Chicago Bulls will ride a four-game losing streak into the Motor City Wednesday for a showdown with divisional rivals the Detroit Pistons. The game marks the second time the team will take to the floor after learning that superstar guard Derrick Rose will miss the rest of the season.

Tipoff is scheduled for 7:30 p.m. ET at the Palace of Auburn Hills in the Detroit suburbs.

Chicago (6-7, 1-7 road) is in the midst of a six-game road trip that has seen the team go from title contenders to a potential lottery pick team in the time it took Rose’s right meniscus to tear.

Rose was injured in Friday’s 98-95 loss to the Portland Trail Blazers and missed Sunday’s game against the Los Angeles Clippers, another loss. The team learned Monday that Rose would miss the remainder of the season after undergoing successful surgery. The team responded with a hearty performance Monday night but came up short to Trey Burke and the Utah Jazz in overtime, a fourth straight loss and seventh road loss in eight games.

With Rose lost for the third straight year – he was injured in the first round of the 2012 NBA Playoffs and missed all of the last campaign – speculation begins to circulate as to whether the Bulls will decide now is the time to architect a new team, sending various components around the league.

General Manager Gar Foreman told ESPNChicago.com that he has no such plans, but plans quickly change in the NBA, particularly when your star player will have appeared in just 10 games out of 171 between April 2012 and the end of the 2013-14 NBA season. If the Bulls make the playoffs, that number of missed games will increase further.

The loss of Rose has already seen Chicago slip on the NBA futures list. The Bulls opened the season with 11/2 odds of winning the NBA title, second only to the three-peat hunting Miami Heat (21/10). That number has slipped to 22/1 this week and would probably be lower if the Eastern Conference – which has just three teams with a winning record – wasn’t such a wreck.

For now, the Bulls will simply look to navigate the final two games of this road swing before returning to the United Center, where the team is unbeaten.

Detroit (6-8, 4-3 home) is one of a group of teams benefiting from the Eastern Conference’s inadequacies as a whole.

The Pistons currently occupy the No. 6 seed having strung together four wins in seven games, and while the season is still young, you can guarantee new head coach Maurice Cheeks would be happy with that finish come April.

Wednesday night’s game will be the first meeting of four between the Pistons and Bulls.

Chicago has dominated this matchup in recent years. Since the 2006-07 season, the Bulls are 24-4 in regular season action against the Pistons, including 3-1 in last year’s head-to-head.  That stretch includes a 10-4 record at the Palace.

With the Bulls deflated after learning of Rose’s absence, things could be very different on Wednesday.

Chicago Bulls vs. Detroit Pistons odds for 11/27/2013

At just about full-strength, Detroit opened as the favorite in this one, a trend that has been fairly rare over the last seven years.

The spread opened at 2.5 but has already climbed to 4 with most sportsbooks as bettors expect the already-struggling Bulls to struggle even further.

Detroit (7-7-0 ATS) has covered the spread as many times as not this season and has narrowly succeeded at home (4-3-0 ATS) and as the favorite (4-3-0 ATS). Chicago (5-8-0 ATS) has struggled against the spread, especially on the road (2-6-0 ATS).

Detroit is 4-1-0 ATS in its last five games against Chicago and 4-2-0 ATS in the last six played at the Palace of Auburn Hills.

The over/under opened at 185.5 and has showed little movement since. That could change as America wakes up.

Detroit (9-5-0) has favored the over this season while Chicago (5-8-0) has favored the under. The total has gone over in four of the Bulls’ last five visits to Detroit.

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