Thursday's Game of the Night: Cleveland at Chicago, for none of the marbles

The 2016-17 NBA regular season, thankfully, is nearing an end. Though the tops and bottoms of the standings have all been straightened out since January or so, little has been made certain yet beyond the Golden State Warriors’ move to ensure home-court advantage through the Finals. Even with just a short run left, there is still plenty to figure out as the NBA takes to April.

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Since we all need the reminders as to who is set to start the playoffs where, who needs a bump during awards season or with a statistical accomplishment, and who is doing their best work in losing in order to grab improved lottery ball odds, Ball Don’t Lie is set to look at what should be your game of that particular day between now and the end of the term on April 12.

Thursday’s Game of the Night: Cleveland at Chicago, 8 p.m. ET

You’d like to run away from it, which is noble. Once again, you’ve been left with the Cleveland Cavaliers and Chicago Bulls, faked-adversaries from an era that never really came to reveal itself, disappointing us all yet again on the TNT stage.

They’ve gone at it quite a bit before, with LeBron James and Co. handling the Bulls with ease during Derrick Rose’s formative years and with decidedly less ease upon James’ 2014 return to his home state, with an infamous 2015 second round series tilting on the sight of LeBron James’ clutch 3-pointer late in Game 3. Since then, counting regular season games only (as Chicago’s front office does) the Bulls have somehow won just once in seven tries against this remarkably uninspiring club from Chicago.

The Bulls team that, on TNT, somehow keeps doing this:

They have to win tonight, the Cavs do, in order to keep its playoff standing in order. The team is locked into a virtual tie with the Boston Celtics, who held their own at home against Milwaukee on Wednesday, and it badly needs to secure home-court advantage with just nine games left in its season. Chicago, meanwhile, is about to miss the playoffs while fielding a mostly-healthy top-10 (and, at times, far higher) player for the second season in a row: Jerry Reinsdorf’s club is a game and a half outside of the East’s playoff bracket with just eight to play.

This will not be a war of attrition, at least not in the classic sense. Whoever hits the greatest amount of low-percentage pull-up jumpers, whoever gives up the fewest dumb layups, whoever gets bailed out at the line the most … this will be your winner.

Lucky us.

Also worth watching

The Pistons have lost five straight and eight of nine, but they couldn’t possibly fall to the Nets, right? … The Timberwolves topped off their ridiculous road excursion (from Los Angeles to Portland to Indianapolis and back to Minneapolis in six days) with a road win over Indy on Tuesday, so a, woozy and possibly punchy contest against the visiting Lakers should be worth a drop-in … The Suns are destined to tank and the Clippers are treading water after its deep-dive win over the visiting Wizards on Wednesday, but can they keep it up on the second half of a back-to-back against the precocious Phoenix kids?

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Houston and Portland should act as your professional, positive game of the night ahead of the Cavaliers and Bulls, but the combined presence of those barmy acts from Chicago and Cleveland left us smitten, in a way. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t tune forcefully into a showdown that could go a long way toward putting the new-look Blazers back in the postseason for the fourth straight year.

More NBA coverage from The Vertical:

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Kelly Dwyer is an editor for Ball Don’t Lie on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at KDonhoops@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter!

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