Wizards Edge Bulls 124-120: Our Model's Under, Chicago Picks Miss

The Washington Wizards went into Chicago and left with a 124-120 win on Saturday, handing the Bulls a home loss in a game that stayed tight but never quite matched the script we sold subscribers.

How it played out

Two 1-1 teams with no season series history met with the market offering little separation. Chicago's early-season numbers were skewed by a 43-point opening loss to Toronto, and the read was that the Bulls' defensive profile was closer to league-average than the raw 130.0 opponent scoring average suggested. Washington's 115.0 points per game and +1.0 point differential pointed to a team that could hang around. It did more than that, finishing with 124 and handing Chicago its second loss.

Grading our premium pick

Our card leaned on a total that sat below the market number, with the Bulls as the side and on the moneyline. All three missed.

• Under: missed. The game cleared the total, with 244 combined points.
• Bulls moneyline: missed. Chicago lost outright.
• Bulls spread: missed. The home side failed to cover.

The model's projected 122.0-117.9 Chicago win was close on the Washington side of the score but wrong on the winner, and the total came in above the projection as well. Nothing on the card cashed.

What it means going forward

The takeaway is that two-game samples are still doing too much work in these early-season numbers. A 43-point blowout can distort a defensive rating for weeks, and the market's tight spread was the honest signal here — this was a coin-flip game that landed on the road side. Until the sample grows, we'll weight recent form more heavily and treat outlier results as outliers, not identities.