It's fair to say the Bulls shock the basketball world, though not themselves, on Wednesday night when they took down the reigning NBA champion Milwaukee Bucks at Fiserv Forum.
Now the Bulls look to build off of their confidence-building win and take a commanding 2-1 series lead on Friday night. Here's how the Chicago Bulls can pull that off.
Continue to apply pressure on defense
The Bulls are at their best when they are forcing turnovers on defense and then promptly turning those turnovers into easy scoring opportunities.
Chicago got back to their beginning of the year intensity when they harassed the Bucks into 15 turnovers, scoring 19 points off of those Milwaukee mistakes. Look for Billy Donovan to have the Bulls apply even more pressure on defense knowing that Milwaukee with be without 2nd leading scorer Khris Middleton.
Feed you veteran scorers
DeMar DeRozan, Zach LaVine and Nikola Vucevic finally had a great game simultaneously, which Bulls Nation had been patiently waiting for. The stellar trio combined for 85 points in the huge Game 2 win.
DeRozan led the way with 41 points that torched the Bucks' defensive strategy, and LaVine and Vooch did enough damage from the 3-point line and elsewhere to round out the balanced scoring effort.
The Bulls defense needs to show up for them to compete at the highest level but when their three main shot-makers have it going on offense like they did on Wednesday night, it gives them a much greater margin of error.
Feed off the energy of the United Center crowd
The Bulls know their fans will be fired up for Chicago's return to the postseason stage, Nikola Vucevic even said as much. The Bulls were a great home team in the regular season, finishing with a 27-14 record at the United Center.
The Chicago crowd, outside of simply being fired up for their first postseason game since the 2016-17 season, will have some extra juice for Grayson Allen, who will likely be filling in for the injured Middleton.
In Game 1 Chicago was doomed by a poor start that saw them fall into an early nine-point hole. Game 3 will provide another opportunity for the Bulls to be the team that gets off to a fast start.