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The Orlando Magic look to extend their winning streak to three games when they take on the Chicago Bulls on Saturday night. The Bulls however, already have a three-game winning streak and would love to take another step toward .500.

The Bulls are 13-17 while the Magic are 24-8. Chicago has been a terrible road team but is 10-6 at home. Orlando is 11-5 on the road.

Tip-off from the United Center in Chicago is set for 8:00 pm EST and the game will be shown by Sun Sports. Luckily, the game will also air on WGN America. As always, if you can’t watch the game, you can hear it locally on WDBO 580 AM and in Spanish on WONQ AM 1030.

The Line: Orlando -4.5

Starters:

Orlando

Dwight Howard
Rashard Lewis
Matt Barnes
Vince Carter
Jameer Nelson

Chicago

Joakim Noah
Taj Gibson
Luol Deng
Kirk Hinrich
Derrick Rose

The Bulls had an exciting season last year, losing to the Boston Celtics in seven games in the first round of the playoffs. Unfortunately, they’ve been a disappointment this season, but have played better recently. The Bulls have won three games in a row and five of their last seven overall after an 8-15 start.

The Bulls are one of the league’s worst offensive teams. They score just 91.7 points per game and are the second least efficient team in the entire NBA.

Luol Deng is having a very good season. He leads the Bulls in scoring with 18.1 points per game on 46.8% shooting.

Derrick Rose, last year’s Rookie of the Year in the NBA, is averaging 17.9 points per game and 5.7 assists per game, but he’s turning the ball over slightly more and is shooting a lower percentage from the field.

Surprisingly, Rose averaged just 13.5 points per game on 41% shooting last season, but Rose has been playing much better as of late and has much more aggressive. That could spell trouble for a team like Orlando that has trouble defending point guards.

Tyrus Thomas is averaging 16.0 points per game 10.3 rebounds per game in three games since returning from his injury.

The Bulls are a good rebounding team. They have the ninth best rebound rate in the NBA and outrebound their opponents by nearly two rebounds per game. Joakim Noah is the league’s second leading rebounder (behind Dwight Howard) and is averaging 12.2 rebounds per game.

Defensively, the Bulls are 12th in efficiency. They give up 97.3 points per game.

The Magic need to establish Dwight Howard early and he needs to be a force on the boards. It’d be nice if Howard could stay out of foul trouble and force Joakim Noah into early foul trouble since the Bulls don’t have a whole lot of size outside of him (except for Aaron Gray, who has the height but not the weight).

The Magic shooters need to be ready because they should get some good looks.

(Andrew Melnick is Howard the Dunk’s lead blogger and a contributor at NFL Mocks Subscribe to his RSS feed and add him on Twitter to follow him daily.)