With its crisp passing, efficient shooting and creative play-making, basketball is often an aesthetically pleasing sport to watch. Like when the Golden State Warriors and Los Angeles Lakers trade three-pointers down the stretch of a tight game to the tune of play-by-play announcer Kevin Harlan shouting, "Gooooood!"

There's that. And then there's whatever happened in the first quarter of the Chicago Bulls' 118-113 win over the Portland Trail Blazers on Friday night at United Center.

Trailing 26-20 with about five minutes to play in the opening quarter, Portland center Donovan Clingan badly air-balled a shot from beyond the arc. What followed was even worse. Kevin Huerter missed a dunk on the other end, Portland guard Dalano Banton and Bulls guard Josh Giddey were both denied at the rim on back-to-back possessions, and Banton sailed an alley-oop pass far over the head of teammate Shaedon Sharpe.

Trail Blazers forward Kris Murray mercifully put the sequence to an end with a layup after one minute of pure basketball chaos. All the Chicago Sports Network broadcasters could do was laugh.

Behind 31 points apiece from Nikola Vucevic and Coby White, the Bulls went on to win 118-113 at home to improve to 35-42—good for the No. 9 seed in the Eastern Conference.

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This article was originally published on www.si.com as Bulls, Trail Blazers Combine for Perhaps the Ugliest Sequence of 2024-25 NBA Season.

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