This one will leave a mark.
The question for the Bulls now following Friday’s agonizing 108-107 loss to the Orlando Magic on Jalen Suggs’ unrepentant stepback three pointer with five seconds left in the game, the team’s sixth loss in the last seven games and fourth straight, is whether this tattooing is henna-like.
Or is it going to be difficult to erase?
Not so bad, insists DeMar DeRozan, who in a seemingly desperate effort to snap out of this funk, played the entire second-half and 44 minutes overall, scoring 41 points and in the second half of the Bulls comeback from a 19-point deficit had just about half the team’s points and shots.
“You’ve got to stay positive,” counseled DeRozan. “You look at the dynamic of the league. Everybody is kind of still clustered right there. You put together a good week or two, that changes everything. You cannot get too down on yourselves. It sucks. It’s frustrating to lose, especially right now. But I’d rather us figure it out now because once it comes it’s going to be good for us. It’s going to come.”
But trending downward in the standings at 6-10 and facing first place Boston Monday, it may be a tough one to wipe away for Zach LaVine, who for the first time in his Bulls career was benched down the stretch in a close game.
Struggling through a one of 14 shooting game, though remaining uber confident.
“You play a guy like me down the stretch. That’s what I do,” said LaVine. “Do I like the decision? No. Do I have to live with it? Yeah. And get ready to put my shoes on and play the next game.” LaVine was taken out for good with 3:43 left and the Bulls trailing 101-97.
And no specific fault to LaVine, but it looked like Bulls coach Billy Donovan had pressed another of the right buttons after sitting out Javonte Green the entire first half and Green then lubricating the team and ebullient crowd with a series of steals and dunks.
“Woo did a great job,” commended LaVine, again cooperative with media in his most disappointing moments expressing more disappointment than anger. “That’s what he does every night, comes in the game, plays hard and physical, changes the momentum and gets up in the air and gets the crowd going.”
It seemed like it would be the Bulls magic potion to make the Magic disappear after Orlando dominated the first half and led 73-54 three minutes into the second half.
A seeming desultory drive to defeat for the Bulls became a delirious kaleidoscope of thrills and emotions with a DeRozan 19 footer making it 103-103 with 1:06 left. Then Alex Caruso threw himself into an offensive foul that was the sixth for young Magic star Franz Wagner, one of three Orlando players with at least 20 points led by former Bull Wendell Carter Jr. with 21.
With Orlando then double teaming DeRozan, he passed to Nikola Vučević who made a quick read to get Green a layup with 40 seconds left for a 105-103 Bulls lead. Ayo Dosunmu, who had replaced LaVine, then blocked a Suggs drive. And DeRozan with Vučević’s rebound fired ahead to a streaking Green for a dunk, a 107-103 Bulls lead with 26.5 seconds left.
And game?
The crowd went wild!
“I never think the game is over until it’s over,” DeRozan acknowledged later. “It was a hell of a momentum. We’ve all seen crazy things happen. That’s a valuable lesson for us to know, inbounding the ball, getting a rebound, putting them on the free throw line and it’s back to a one possession game.”
Orlando called timeout, the young team that was winless on the road this season and without star rookie Paolo Banchero seemingly ready to talk about making progress and all that. But that’s where Donovan identified the crucial and fatal sequence, and not those last few you’ve-got-to-be-kidding moments.
Carter attempted a three, but Suggs got inside Dosunmu for the offensive rebound and was fouled. He made both free throws to get Orlando within 107-105 with 20.3 seconds. Which changed everything and had fateful closing consequences.
“The offensive rebound to me was more significant than Suggs’ three,” said Donovan.
That’s because with a foul to give and then a Suggs deflection out of bounds, Caruso had difficulty inbounding the ball. So Donovan had to use the Bulls last timeout with 14 seconds left and leading by two points.
Still, a quick Orlando foul and free throws...
Vučević got open for Caruso and was quickly fouled with 12.2 seconds left. Good news for the Bulls? Vučević came into the game shooting 91 percent on free throws.
That’s right. He back rimmed both.
“Just sucks,” said a downcast Vučević in the solemn Bulls locker room. “Have to do a better job of that. It’s going to suck, what, for a couple of days. I can’t dwell too much over it. It just sucks because it was a tough moment for us, a losing streak and not playing great and we have a chance to change that. It’s happened to me before where I missed a big shot. I made a lot of big shots and this is not the end of the world. But it sucks because you feel you let your team down. It’s part of being a professional player; you have to live with it.”
Orlando now down two points and also without a timeout. Orlando got the rebound of the second Vučević miss and passed immediately to Suggs, who began dribbling up at Dosunmu with what seemed like the intent of driving to the basket to try to tie the game.
Dosunmu got in front of Suggs just inside the free throw line and Suggs, the NCAA tournament shooting hero when he was at Gonzaga, stumbled. His back was to the basket, but he kept his dribble. And there now was about six seconds left. Tick, tick, tick.
Suggs gathered himself after backing into Dosunmu and then stepped out past the three-point line and…do I have to say it again?
Suggs’ three pointer gave the Magic the unlikely one-point lead. And now the Bulls didn’t have a timeout with those five seconds left because of the double timeouts. Green threw in to DeRozan near the end line about 92 feet away. DeRozan rushed to midcourt. Standing on the red Bulls logo and leaning forward, DeRozan shot... but not like in Indiana and Washington last season.
The ball banged harmlessly off the left side of the backboard to stunningly end the game, DeRozan retrieving the miss and firing the ball off the backboard in frustration as Magic players leaped all over Suggs.
And the Bulls trudged into 12th place in the Eastern Conference, a game ahead of the rebuilding Magic.
“It sucks,” added DeRozan to the sucking conversation. “(I) feel like it’s not right now with the losing, dropping games like that, not playing well, not shooting well. But it’s going to come.”
And then there’s Zach.
It’s just one game, and one late game benching, and one bad game of shooting, and, after all, the coach’s job is to do whatever he can to put the team in the best position to win. The way LaVine was shooting didn’t suggest a positive result. But LaVine is one of the best shooters in the NBA and often streaky. Generally you ride with your best guys to the close. And the Bulls have invested big in Zach futures.
“He (LaVine) had a tough night shooting and I thought that group really fought their way back into the game,” Donovan explained. “Obviously, I played DeMar the whole second half. He seemed like he was fine physically. I came back to Zach (with 8:50 left trailing 92-88), and it was one of those games he just didn’t have a great game; with great players it happens sometimes.
“I just made the decision and felt that group had really worked their way back into the game and I wanted to give them an opportunity to close it, and certainly we had every opportunity to do it,” said Donovan. “I’m sure he’s really disappointed. I know how much it means to him and how much he cares. The ramifications of him not being out there, to me, I was trying to do what was best for our team in that moment. I feel like my job, my responsibility in those moments, is to try to make the best decisions for the team. I thought that was the best decision at the time.”
LaVine didn’t agree, but you don’t want your best players satisfied to watch.
“That’s Billy’s decision,” LaVine acknowledged. “Do I agree with it? No. I think I can go out there and still be me even if I miss some shots. But that’s his decision. He has to stand on it. I’ve missed a lot of shots, but I’ve had a lot of games where I played terrible and in four to five minutes, I can get 15, 16 points. I just wasn’t able to shoot the next shot.
“Probably ask what his decision was, what made him think that way,” LaVine said about conferring with Donovan. “Obviously, he wanted to go with some other guys. I wasn’t having the best night shooting. But it’s a tough one. Obviously, I want to be out there. It’s the reason I’m here. Go out there and be Zach LaVine. But it’s coach’s decision. I can’t just run out there and jump on the court even if I want to. That’s why he’s the coach. He makes those decisions. Obviously, I have to do a better job at the beginning of the game.”
But so does everyone else in that starting lineup, which again was the problem as the Bulls had yet another enigmatic first quarter, trailing 37-24, poor shooting, multiple turnovers, outhustled and muscled.
“A lot of the game (commentary) will come down to Suggs’ last second shot or Vooch’s missed free throws, being up four,” noted Donovan. “But in the NBA, it’s very difficult to play a half of basketball and expect to win. I’ve said this to our team before and I don’t mean it maybe how it’s going to come out, but we let luck come into play. I don’t want to say he made a lucky shot, but you left yourself open to be beat. It had less to do with his shot and more to do with the entire first half.”
So much so and such an annoyingly regular occurrence that Donovan before the game almost named names. He doesn’t do that, but the Bulls have been having their own red scare with so many poor first quarters led by the veteran starters that Donovan finally felt he had to point some fingers.
“We’ve got a lot of respect on a lot of levels for Vooch, DeMar and Zach, of who they are as players,” Donovan said. “We’re never going to be as good as we can be as a team until, in my opinion, those three guys really drive the opening part of the game. I think it’s very, very easy to look at maybe Ayo being a young player or Patrick not being aggressive enough. I don’t mind saying this because I don’t look at it as pressure on them. It’s just what we’ve got to do as a basketball team. That’s the expectation, the standard. Those three guys... they’ve got to raise the level of everybody else around them. For us to be the team that we want to be, those guys have to really, really drive it. That’s not to sit here and say it takes any responsibility off myself as a coach or any of the other players on the team. It’s all of us. But those (poor) starts, I think it’s got to be driven by those guys.”
And then Dosunmu had one of his better starts with three driving scores, and Williams made both his shots and the Bulls’ only three of the quarter. But as we’ve seen repeatedly, the other guys rained threes all over the Bulls, Orlando with five in the first quarter and a dozen for the game to five for the Bulls.
And another double digit first quarter deficit.
The Bulls got Coby White back from injury, but he played just four minutes and missed his only shot. And so Donovan continued to expand the auditions, going with Derrick Jones Jr. early because he played well the previous two games, but then Green after halftime instead of Jones. And that worked when Green finally ignited the home crowd with a lob dunk score from Caruso to close a 6-0 run that got the Bulls within 13.
That finally was the ignition with the Bulls pushing their way into the paint for free throws and harassing the young Magic ballhandlers into forced long and late shots. The Bulls closed the third quarter with an 18-4 spurt to get within 87-79 going into the fourth quarter.
And then hitching their wagon to the horse they call DeMar, the Bulls tied the game at 92 with 7:15 left.
And you know how these things generally go in the NBA, the young, athletic guys starting to slow down and doubting themselves while the been-there-done-that veterans haughtily pull away for victory.
“We just can’t keep putting ourselves in a hole, playing down 17, 19 points. It’s too tough,” said DeRozan. “The margin of error is slim to try to make a comeback. You’ve almost got to play perfect to win a game like that. We’ve got to understand we can’t keep putting ourselves in a position like that.”
The Magic made one more push ahead behind Wagner, whom the Magic drafted with one of the selections from the Vučević trade. But Vučević was having a heck of a game posting up for 14 points, 16 rebounds, seven assists and three blocks. Dosunmu with 13 points and Williams with 12 were the only other Bulls scoring in double figures.
After Orlando went ahead 101-94 with 4:44 left on a Bol Bol driving baseline dunk among his 15 points and 10 rebounds, DeRozan went back to work with a three-point play. Vučević scored again in the post, Caruso scored on another terrific pass from Vučević. And then DeRozan again got the tie at 103.
How could the Bulls lose this one with so many comebacks, so much excitement in the building, so much hustle?
“I’m a big believer in the game of basketball you get what you earn and your record says exactly who you are,” said Donovan. “I think that’s where we’re at. We’re a 6-10 team. Tonight was a tough loss, but it’s hard to play 24 minutes and expect to win. I’ve got great affection for this team, but we as a group are going to have to pull ourselves out of it and we have to invest more and put more into it. I think we have a long way to go. We have to be a lot better, really, at both ends of the floor.”
That's right, ouch!
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