This number is built on what Chicago were last season, a team that ran as fast as almost anyone. Preseason isn't the regular season, though. Starters play roughly 16 minutes, and the rest of the game belongs to rookies and camp players. That gap is what this pick turns on.
Phoenix have already shown what that looks like. In Detroit they built a 19-point lead in the first half, then gave the ball away 22 times after the break. Their young bigs went 1-for-10 at the free-throw line. All that chaos still produced just 216 points.
Chicago are playing their opener, and it's Tiago Splitter's first game in charge. He wants to play fast, but he also talks about dominating the boards and winning the possession game. A rookie starts at forward, and Nic Claxton and Zach Collins are both out, so the centre minutes go to Jalen Smith and two-way big Tobe Awaka. A first night in a new system tends to mean messy halfcourt trips, not a smooth track meet.
The rest of the league backs that up. The preseason games I tracked this week averaged about 221 points, and only two of eleven went higher than the mark set for this one. With so much of the game in bench hands on both sides, I expect it to play more like those games than like Chicago's regular season.
