Bulls at Hornets
North Carolina sports fans have had Cam Newton and the Carolina Panthers occupying their attention since the beginning of the season, but with the Super Bowl out of the way the focus can shift to the Charlotte Hornets. The Hornets will aim for their seventh win in 10 games when they host the slumping Chicago Bulls on Monday.
It was convenient to focus on the Panthers’ playoff run when Charlotte began a stretch of nine losses in 10 games beginning on Dec. 30 that dropped the team four games below .500. The Hornets have been steadily scratching their way back toward a winning record and pulled within a game of .500 by knocking off the Washington Wizards 108-104 on Saturday. The Bulls were briefly considered the second-best team in the East behind the Cleveland Cavaliers but have dropped 11 of their last 16 games to fall to sixth in the conference. “We talked about it a little bit,” Bulls forward Mike Dunleavy, who played his first game of the season on Saturday after recovering from offseason surgery, told reporters. “We’ve got to have a bigger ego, a bigger team ego. To the point where it’s like, look man, we go into games like ‘we’re winning this game.’”
TV: 7 p.m. ET, CSN Chicago, FSN Southeast (Charlotte)
ABOUT THE BULLS (27-23): Chicago lost All-Star guard Jimmy Butler to a knee strain in a loss at Denver on Friday and followed that up with a 112-105 setback at Minnesota that dropped the team to 2-4 on their seven-game road trip. Butler is not expected to play on Monday and could sit out through the All-Star break after leaving the court on a stretcher Friday. “We’ve got good players, we’re well coached and we’ve got to execute a little better,” Dunleavy told reporters. “But more importantly, we’ve got to have that feeling like, ‘Man, we’re going to get this done.’”
ABOUT THE HORNETS (25-26): Charlotte tends to play better when shooting guard Nicolas Batum is healthy and playing well, and the Frenchman came up just short of a triple-double with 26 points, 11 rebounds and nine assists on Saturday. Batum missed eight of the last 16 games in January while dealing with a toe injury but began to find a rhythm with 21 points against Miami on Friday before Saturday’s breakout. “I think you can tell by the way he’s moving,” Hornets coach Steve Clifford told reporters of Batum. “He’s getting separation again. His toe was obviously really bothering him, but … (Saturday) he played great.”
BUZZER BEATERS
1. Bulls G Derrick Rose is 1-of-14 from 3-point range in the last eight games.
2. Hornets C Cody Zeller is averaging eight rebounds in three games since returning from a shoulder injury.
3. Charlotte has taken two of the first three meetings this season, including a 130-105 home triumph on Nov. 3.