The Chicago Bulls had this game. They led by 22 points midway through the second quarter, they scored 41 points in the first quarter alone — the most the Spurs have yielded in a quarter all season — and the United Center was rocking. And then the San Antonio Spurs did what good teams do to bad ones: they came back and won it, 124-119, on Wednesday night for their 10th straight victory.
Victor Wembanyama led the way with 32 points on 13-of-18 shooting, along with nine rebounds, five blocks and two steals in 32 minutes. Dylan Harper added 18 points, 10 assists and four steals, and De'Aaron Fox had 17 first-half points as San Antonio built a 15-point lead of its own in the fourth quarter after trailing by 22 late in the second.
The comeback
The Bulls led 64-42 midway through the second quarter, their biggest lead of the season, and it looked like a blowout. Chicago erupted for 41 points in the opening quarter and kept pouring it on. But the Spurs chipped away, then took control in the second half, and by the fourth quarter the team that had trailed by 22 was up by 15. The win closed out a 4-0 road trip for San Antonio, which is now 10-2 on the season.
It was the second-largest road comeback in Spurs franchise history in the play-by-play era, and it said as much about the Spurs' composure as it did about their talent. A young team with a 7-foot-4 superstar does not panic at 22 points down — it just keeps playing, and eventually the math catches up.
Wembanyama's night
Two days after a 40-point outburst in a win over the Phoenix Suns, Wembanyama was at it again: 32 points, nine rebounds, five blocks, and 17 of those points in the second half, when the comeback actually happened. He shot 13 of 18 from the field and spent the night erasing Chicago's shots at one end and punishing its defense at the other.
Harper, the rookie guard, was just as important. His 18 points and 10 assists — plus four steals — gave the Spurs a second creator when the game tightened, and his poise on the road in a game San Antonio had no business winning was the kind of performance that makes a backcourt feel complete.
A rare piece of history
The Spurs are the second team ever to win 10 or more straight games immediately after an 0-2 start, joining the 2017-18 Boston Celtics, who went from 0-2 to 16-2. It is the kind of stat that sounds impossible until you watch this team play: they lost their first two games, then simply stopped losing.
Ten straight wins, a 10-2 record, and a comeback from 22 down on the road — the Spurs are no longer a curiosity or a one-man show. They are, a month into the season, one of the best teams in basketball, and the rest of the league has started to notice.
The other side
For Chicago, the loss was the eighth in a row, dropping the Bulls to 1-9 and 0-4 at home. Their only win of the season came against Milwaukee, the other team at the bottom of the East. Norman Powell missed a second straight game with back spasms, and the Spurs were without Devin Vassell for a second straight game with left adductor tightness — and still found a way.
How the comeback actually happened
The first half belonged entirely to Chicago. Fox had 17 first-half points for San Antonio and Wembanyama 15, but the Bulls were scoring at will — 41 in the first quarter, 64 by the middle of the second — and the Spurs looked like a team that had flown into a buzzsaw. The turn came after halftime, when the defense tightened and the lead started to melt: Wembanyama scored 17 of his 32 in the second half, Harper ran the offense, and a 22-point deficit became a 15-point fourth-quarter lead. It was not one run but a slow, methodical erasure, the kind of win that tells you more about a team than a blowout ever could.
The win also closed out a perfect 4-0 road trip, and it came two days after Wembanyama's 40-point outburst against Phoenix — so the Spurs' last three games read like this: a 40-point night from their star, a 22-point comeback on the road, and a 10-game winning streak that now sits one win from 11. They started the season 0-2. They have not lost since.
The Spurs host Golden State on Friday night, with a chance to make it 11 straight. The Bulls host Atlanta the same night, looking for just their second win of the season. And elsewhere on Wednesday, Jayson Tatum sealed a 22-point comeback of his own as the Celtics beat the Raptors 98-93 for their fifth straight win — a night when the comebacks, not the blowouts, told the story of the NBA.
