The Chicago Bulls moved to 8-3 on the 2021-22 season after beating the Dallas Mavericks on Wednesday night, 117-107. The Bulls led for most of the game, including the entire second half, and built a lead as big as 18 in the fourth quarter as they looked like a far better team than Dallas.

The Bulls used a complete team effort to dismantle the Mavericks, and so far this season this team is looking legit. Mavs guard Tim Hardaway Jr. even declared Chicago is “back.”

There were a good amount of Bulls skeptics before the 2021-22, even after their big offseason moves, but the way they've played so far is a good sign for them being even better than optimistic expectations. They're currently sixth in both offensive rating and defensive rating through 11 games, per NBA.com, a signifier that this is truly a quality squad.

On the latest episode of Blue Wire's Cash Considerations pod, Bulls expert Stephen Noh explained why this team could really go places:

“I think we have a lot of evidence at this point that the Bulls are going to be a lot better than people thought. They were so dominant in the preseason and people were trying to pooh-pooh that. They were so dominant in the beginning of the year and people were saying they were just playing these bum teams. But at this point, they have a bunch of quality wins and their losses have all been pretty close. … A lot of these stats start to stabilize by this point of the season, 11 games in, so there's a statistical argument. But just watching the games, though, it's so clear they're just way better than people expected them to be. … We're definitely seeing something special here.”

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Now, the Bulls could fall off a bit here over the next week as they embark on a five-game West Coast trip without All-Star center Nikola Vucevic. This was going to be a tough trip even with Vucevic, so likely not having him for all five games because of a positive COVID-19 test makes things a bit tougher.

Still, there shouldn't be much panic even if things go poorly on the trip, assuming there are no disastrous injuries. These Bulls have shown how good they are when their top guys are playing, and they're on the verge of getting Coby White back into the fold to add more scoring punch.

It's definitely too early to call these Bulls title contenders, but they look like a group that could make a lot of noise in the playoffs.

Listen to the entire Cash Considerations episode here:

Cash Considerations: A Chicago Bulls Podcast is part of the Blue Wire Podcast Network. The pod can be found on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, Google Podcasts.