Welcome back Coby White.
And none too soon as led by White’s career-high 37 points with five three-pointers, the Bulls got off the floor at a virtual nine-count, trailing by 22 points late in the third quarter to overtake the Sacramento Kings for a gut check 113-109 victory to kick off this four-game Western Conference trip.
With their third comeback this season from at least a 20-point deficit, these take-you-breath-away Bulls inched up to 29-32. They also got 33 points from DeMar DeRozan, including a near-perfect 19 in the fourth quarter making all of his seven field goal attempts.
But then it was White spinning around the turn and down the stretch after yet another Kings turnover in another of their epic collapses. They’ve lost late 20-point leads multiple times this season. And there was no stopping White, who finished a drive from the right wing to finally tie the game at 109 with 1:13 left in regulation.
It would be following one of three Kings turnovers within a minute against a relentless and handsy Bulls defense that repeatedly picked away at Kings drivers in the lane, a Bulls specialty. Trey Lyles committed the next one seconds later passing directly to an unsuspecting DeRozan. He walked up the ball and it finally occurred to the Kings and former defensive guru Mike Brown to trap DeRozan, who handed off to Nikola Vučević. The ball got to White, who missed a three. But Vučević tipped the ball back to Alex Caruso, who fired to White. He passed to Ayo Dosunmu, who threw back quickly.
White gathered in the near errant pass near midcourt barely before it became a turnover and went right down the lane, bumping into and through Lyles for a 111-109 Bulls lead with 47.6 seconds left. De’Aaron Fox then threw the inbounds pass away after a timeout, leaving DeRozan two clinching free throws for the most unlikely Bulls win.
“We’re like a Dateline episode or something,” said DeRozan, who tortured Kings sophomore Keegan Murray throughout that fourth quarter with feints and fakes and finishes. “It’s a crazy thing. We kind of relish it in those moments and kind of take it to another level.”
White surely did after his most difficult stretch of games since he saved the Bulls season after the 5-14 start.
With injuries — Zach LaVine, Patrick Williams and Torrey Craig remained out, though Donovan said Craig is close to a return — White assumed a more significant role and moved into serious contention for NBA Most Improved Player averaging more than 22 points per game through December and January. But among the league leaders in minutes played, White came out of the All-Star break more cold than chill, averaging 16.4 points on 24% three-point shooting. White had shot better than 50% in a game just once in the last nine games before Monday, and half his games were fewer than 20 points in that stretch.
But the old/new Coby was back to checkmate the Kings, scoring 13 points in the second quarter after the Kings had a 17-1 close to the first for a 36-22 lead, and then 13 more in the third quarter to virtually alone hold off the Kings while they were running up an 89-67 lead with 3:28 left in the third quarter.
The Bulls had little answer for Kings center Domantas Sabonis with 18 points and 21 rebounds as the Kings dominated on the boards 51-32. Sabonis and Fox took the Bulls apart with their pick and roll. Sabonis finished with slam dunks four times in that third quarter run up to the huge lead.
The Kings had a 24-12 advantage in second-chance points, but the Bulls relentlessness caused 18 turnovers for 24 points (the Bulls had four turnovers the last three quarters). Caruso notched four steals to help even the playing field just enough to give the Bulls the late chance that was aided by Sabonis’ sixth foul with about three minutes left. The Bulls then closed the game 9-1 and with a 22-7 overall finish.
But it was White who was most majestic.
In perhaps the crucial run before the fourth quarter, White after Sacramento probably was thinking blowout and a feast for Kings made a three and converted a pair of driving scores to slow the Kings roll and give the Bulls some light, and hope, trailing 91-77 going into the fourth quarter.
“Coby obviously had an incredible game and DeMar in the second half made a lot of timely shots and baskets, and AC’s defense was great,” congratulated Bulls coach Billy Donovan. “Guys just were all about about trying to fight and compete, and I give them a lot of credit because there were several runs in the game we had to respond to. Then obviously starting that third quarter the way they jumped on us and we had to fix some things coverage wise and the guys responded well. We’ve had some situations where this group continued to fight, which I respect
“Coby’s going to fight, he’s going to do that,” Donovan agreed. “He’s very competitive. Coby made some great drives to the basket, some key threes. The one play got that three point play (after the Bulls trailed 108-102 with 3:05 left just before Sabonis’ fatal sixth against White). There were a lot of big play he made You can’t expect DeMar to carry it all the time, and he (DeRozan) carried his weight in that second half certainly. But I thought Coby was great in terms of being aggressive with the opportunities he had.”
The Bulls also got another excellent, offensively aggressive game from Dosunmu with 20 points, including nine in the first quarter with the Bulls typically starting slowly. Dosunmu also made a clutch three with 4:36 left after yet another Kings error to get the Bulls within 104-100. With the baton then in White’s hands, if not the glory, at least if you listen to him.
“The character of the guys in this room,” White said about the Bulls’ get-off-the-floor tendencies. “The stuff a lot of these guys went through in their lifetime and how they fought through it and how every challenge that came their way they seemed to get over it and run through that wall. The character of this room creates the resilience of this basketball team. I was just trying to let the game come to me. Not force it. Ayo really had it going in that first quarter. He was really aggressive getting downhill, catch-and-shoot. He had it going. Ayo, I was just trying to play off him. Let him keep doing his thing.”
Dosunmu quietly, which is how he approaches most things, has been doing so recently with this his fourth game of at least 20 points in the last eight with an average of more than 40 minutes per game the last six. Jimmy Butler would be proud. White is the Bulls Most Improved candidate, and he’s supposedly runnerup in the latest odds from the betting sites. But you could make almost as much of a case for Dosunmu, who is shooting more than 40% on threes for the season, 10 percentage points above last season, and more than 15 points per game since the end of January.
Have the Bulls finally found their backcourt of the future?
In the postgame on court interview with NBCSports Chicago. DeRozan came racing over to embrace both White and Dosunmu, shouting, “My youngins! My youngins! My youngins!”
“When my opportunities came, just wanted to take advantage of it,” said White. “I didn’t want to force anything. Just trying to play within the flow of the offense. We would like to play from in front, but at this point in the season however you can get wins, you got to get wins. I don’t care how it looks. At the end of the day, if we win that’s all we care about. Sometimes it’s ugly, sometimes it’s not. A lot of times for us it’s from behind, but we’re figuring it out.
“It’s a dope feeling,” White said about his output. “But it’s just one game. We got three more games on this road trip against three really good teams. So for us, be happy about this win. We got to move on to the next one. We got to go there fight and compete again. I don't really look at it as, 'Oh, man, me and Deebo are doing this and that.' I look at it as we got a good, solid team win. I'm proud of our team.”
Plenty of reason to be.
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