There’s a familiar axiom in the NBA about how everyone makes a run.
Well, not always, and certainly not Monday as the only run in evidence was the cattle stampede you might see in those old cowboy movies as the Dallas Mavericks had a double digit lead less than five minutes into the game, scored 44 first-quarter points for a 28-point lead and pretty much kept that and extended it to 37 at times in a 127-92 flattening of the Bulls.
Anyone get that license plate?
It seemed also to be as much as inaccurate a pretty much exhausted Bulls team from their impressive 3-1 Western Conference road trip that never much showed the usual recovery rate and resilience of which we have become so accustomed. Though no one was about to offer any excuses, the Bulls primarily perimeter players Coby White, DeMar DeRozan and Ayo Dosunmu, who averaged close to and above 40 minutes per game on the road, might have been mistaken for racers in the starting blocks during stoppages in play the way they were leaning over.
There just wasn’t much of a Bulls finishing kick this time.
So the remade Mavericks with former Bull Daniel Gafford and reserve center Derrick “He Certainly Was” Lively shooting a combined 20-of-21 and Luka Dončić with a Michael Jordan matching seventh consecutive triple-double suddenly looked the serious contender while the Bulls stumbled to 31-34. Onuralp Bitim off the bench led the Bulls with 17 points and rookie Julian Phillips had a lively (small L) 11 points. DeRozan and Nikola Vučević finished with 13 points each and White with 12.
“It was obvious they came out and jumped on us and played aggressive defensively and offensively,” said DeRozan in a brief summation for media. “They got to their stuff. Got to give them credit. No excuses from our end. No matter how tough a road trip we just came off we’ve got to be ready to play.
“All these games mean something and we have to take advantage, but tonight was one of those nights where it seemed nothing could go right for us,” DeRozan added. "Got to move forward. Sucked we had to lose like this on our home court. Feels like every team is due for a butt kicking of some sort throughout the season, and we have to let this be ours and the last and only one for the rest of the season and be ready to respond come Wednesday (in a crucial play-in game in Indianapolis). It’s all about how you respond from here and throughout; put it behind and move onto the next one. We were just step slow, and when you let the bigs get downhill and get steam going to the basket it’s tough, especially when we take our best rebounder and best rim protector outside the paint. We try to be there for one another; were just scrambling and being a step slow.”
It’s just one game, and in the first game back from long road road trips a letdown game is not uncommon.
But there was no strategy that was going to change the outcome of this game.
“Luka is one of the superstars in this league for a reason,” said DeRozan, who Monday was voted Eastern Conference Player of the Week and Dončić the Western Conference Player of the Week.
Luka got that one.
“His IQ, the way he reads the game, the way he breaks down defenses,” the always classy DeRozan admired. “He’s hard to stop, a guy of his caliber, passes the ball the way he does. He can score the way he can, has teammates in the right spot and picks teams apart. And a guy like Kyrie (Irving) who can get it going. He’s (Dončić) one of the best in the league for a reason. He showed it tonight. We were trying to be there for closeout threes and he kind of broke us apart, found spots and got the ball to people, and they have a great feel for one another and you saw it tonight.”
Those people were especially Gafford, who is riding a remarkable streak of making 28 consecutive field goals the last four games, and Lively. The Mavericks in that 44-16 start that was a 19-2 close to the quarter had 10 layups or dunks in the first quarter. And it just continued with 60 Mavericks inside points, making 30 of their 40 attempts from there, and the burly 6-foot-7 Dončić barely aware Alex Caruso was defending him. It’s hardly on Caruso, who is all-league. But not all-miracle.
Though the game for these Bulls likely was an outlier the way they so often respond to deficits and came back to beat the Kings from 22 behind, the parade of dunks and layups was a repeat of the loss to the Clippers. Both teams do have special facilitators with Dončić and James Harden, but the Bulls defensive plan was taken apart by both teams. The Bulls send a big man, Vučević or Andre Drummond, up to blitz or help on screens and usually to chase the ballhandler. It’s left the opposing centers setting the screen for the Clippers and Monday the Mavericks to cruise into the lane for dunk after dunk.
Bulls coach Billy Donovan said it was more lobs for the Clippers and rolls for the Mavericks; though the results were similar.
“We needed to protect the rim a lot better than we did the first quarter,” Donovan agreed. “They didn’t shoot the ball particularly well to their standard (13 of 41), but I thought transition and easy buckets, offensive rebounds and easy buckets and the layup easy buckets coupled with us not shooting well, you dug yourself an enormous hole to get out of. We needed to be better protecting the basket than we did
“We tried to blitz and trap (Dončić),” said Donovan in a strategy hardly uncommon. “We didn’t execute well enough any of the coverages were in. Part of the reason Gafford and Lively had such huge numbers in the game was right there. In the Clippers game it as (Ivica) Zubac with lobs. We didn’t give up a lot of lobs tonight. It was a lot of rolls to the basket and offensive rebounds. We have to be more pulled in than we were. We were too worried about getting back out to that three-point line instead of saying we are going to take away that roll.”
Hopefully, the Bulls primarily players recover some of that energy with rest going into Indiana Wednesday. But it’s also asking a lot when you’re playing small inside as the Bulls often do and asking those players to cover big men rolling to the rim.
Like old friend Gafford, who was a Bulls second round draft pick in 2019 with limited opportunities with a losing team for a season and a half, and among those changing uniforms when Bulls management changed. Then it was his road to perdition by going to the quagmire of the Washington Wizards. In some sense similarly for P.J. Washington, whom the Mavericks rescued from Charlotte purgatory, both at the trade deadline, and suddenly the Mavericks are playing defense. If Dončić and Irving ever decided to Dallas might be a title contender.
The Mavericks moved to 37-28. Lively had 22 points overall and Gafford had 20, and the former Bull was in media demand back where it started for him. And he sounded a bit wistful about his time in Chicago.
Wilt Chamberlain, by the way, had the record (like most others) with 35 straight field goals.
“I tell people any accolade that is around my name is a good thing for me, but at the end of the day, I just want to win,” said the lively Gafford. “I felt like in all honesty, just where my work ethic is now, it most definitely could’ve been a lot better when I was here. I felt like I took a lot of stuff for granted. I felt like I didn’t get the job done whenever I stepped out on the floor. I felt like I was always fidgety. I felt like I was always not ready, not locked in. So just taking that next step once I got traded, it was something that I wanted to get better at. It helped me build my character. It helped me build my mentality to just come out every night and always be ready.
“It’s like I kind of fell out of love with the game and I had to kind of re-evaluate myself,” Gafford said. “Once I got traded to Washington, it’s like I took a step back and just like figured out how to bring myself back into love with the game. I wanted to be better than I was (with the Bulls). When I was here for the year and a half, I felt like I just wasn’t in that position when it comes to just being ready for anything. I don’t think it was necessarily because of the losing. I wasn’t making any steps to be that player. So I had to do a lot of re-evaluations. I had to do a lot of soul searching too. I feel that I’ve come here and I’ve locked into everything that I needed to lock into.”
We know; going to Washington D.C. can be detrimental to the character.
And it sure helps when are getting the ball from Luka Dončić and not Ish Smith, Raul Neto, Spencer Dinwiddie, Monte Morris, Tyus Jones and Jordan Poole, who were some of the guards Gafford had been playing with in that corrosive capital atmosphere. Of course, it wasn’t that much better when he was with the Bulls with Kris Dunn, Tomáš Satoranský, Otto Porter, who supposedly announced his retirement Monday though most assumed he had years ago, Denzel Valentine and Troy Brown Jr.
Because Dončić is a perennial league MVP candidate, and if the Mavericks can ever put it together around him he might actually win sometime.
The Bulls “held” Dončić to 27 points, 14 assists and 12 rebounds, which was his seventh consecutive triple-double. Though the first in the last seven he didn’t also have at least 30 points. His six with at least 30 is the record. Though the Mavericks were trying for him as coach Jason Kidd left Dončić in the game for one more three to get 30 points with about seven minutes left and the Mavericks leading 111-76. Dončić missed two straight and was taken out.
For those keeping score — along with me — the Mavericks had that 28-point first quarter lead, which was the largest first quarter margin in the NBA this season, saw that lead cut to 62-42 at halftime, but then got back ahead 98-64 after three quarters and that 37-point separation two minutes into the fourth.
The Bulls regulars were mostly irregular. But former two-way player Bitim showed some nice hustling his way to those 17 points with four offensive rebounds, and Phillips was the only Bulls player to make more than one three-pointer with a good corner stroke.
He also made the only play Donovan singled out.
“There was a play at the end of the second quarter where Julian pulled all the way in on the ball, went up for a (Mavericks) lob (attempt) and he we got a steal,” Donovan relayed. “We weren’t there enough like that, and that was why their bigs scored so much. It was offensive rebounds and rolls of us being late.”
Though with Caruso ingrained at power forward and as primary defensive menace and Torrey Craig getting additional minutes as he recovers from injury it may be difficult for Phillips to see that much playing time.
The Bulls saw too much of it from Dončić, whose seventh consecutive triple-double with at least 20 points matched Oscar Robertson and Michael Jordan, according to ESPN stats.
Since there’s not much more to say about this game, and since Jordan’s name came up maybe this is why he’s all that.
His triple-double run came in March 1989.
The Bulls had basically began their run two seasons before when Doug Collins took over as coach and the Bulls won 50 games. A nervous Collins at 35 in his first head coaching job was sweating that opening game in New York. Jordan strolled up to Collins as the game was about to begin, said to relax, that he had this, that his coach wasn’t losing his first game. Jordan scored 50 points and the Bulls won.
The next season the Bulls won 50 games and seemed ready to take on the NBA.
But in 1988-89, they were taking a step back with the Cleveland Cavaliers the favorite to be the new kids on the NBA block. Magic Johnson, then a bitter Jordan rival, called the Cavaliers the NBA team of the 90s. The Bulls were going through point guard changes with John Paxson and Craig Hodges giving way to Sam Vincent. It wasn’t going well with the Bulls on the way to 0-6 that season against upstart Cleveland.
So the team went to Boston in early March without Jordan. He supposedly was ill, the only game he’d miss in five seasons between 1986 and 1991. The speculation was perhaps he was making a statement. The Bulls were sliding and the narrative was Magic and Bird got triple-doubles and made teammates better; Jordan just scored.
Though he’d asked what the big deal was about the triple-doubles.
The Bulls lost that game in Boston and there was the come to Jesus meeting when the team returned. They want triple-doubles? He could do that.
Collins benched Vincent and Jordan became point guard.
Two games later, Jordan recorded his fourth triple-double of the season, one with 41 points and another with 38, and then two weeks later he began that record streak of seven consecutive triple-doubles, missed one with seven rebounds though he had 40 points, and then had three more in a row, one with 40 points and the other with 47. The Bulls also got their season going winning eight of nine, and then came “the Shot” and the franchise’s first conference finals appearance in 14 years.
There, now don’t you feel a little better?
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