LaVine strikes again as Chicago Bulls edge Philadelphia
Is it possible something about Jimmy Butler brings out the best in Zach LaVine?
Check the facts: Ex-Bull Butler has twice returned to the United Center as a visiting player, last season with Minnesota and Wednesday night with Philadelphia.
Both games ended with a 1-point Chicago Bulls victory as LaVine scored a combined 74 points. LaVine poured in 39 on Wednesday, including the game-winner with 1.6 seconds remaining, as the Bulls defeated Philadelphia 108-107.
Butler led the 76ers with 22 points. The Sixers played without center Joel Embiid, who missed his seventh straight game with a sore left knee.
The winning play began with a simple plan. LaVine threw the inbounds pass to Robin Lopez, who then set a screen as LaVine curled around the top of the key. After the screen, the Philadelphia defenders had a moment of confusion. Mike Scott took a false step toward Lopez and the lane was wide open for a LaVine layup and foul.
LaVine missed the chance at a 3-point play, but the process of rebounding the free throw knocked time off the clock, so the Sixers got it with 0.5.
"He was in a great frame of mind, he was getting downhill," Bulls coach Jim Boylen said of LaVine. "He was competitive."
The game featured a bizarre false ending. Philadelphia was in a desperate situation with 0.5 seconds on the clock. But when Ben Simmons attempted a long lob pass toward the basket, the horn went off before LaVine jumped up to steal the pass.
Both teams left the floor, the postgame interviews happened. But the referees continued to look at the replay monitor. After about five minutes, the players were called back out to the floor.
Boylen said Otto Porter Jr. was required to go into drug-testing protocol and couldn't return to the court. It didn't matter, since the second inbound pass went to Butler beyond the 3-point line. He bobbled the pass and the game ended officially.
Boylen took the strange ending in good humor.
"I kind of like that," he said. "Our table started the clock early? I kind of like that. That's like Utah in the old days, man. They did it all the time and got away with it. I'm taking our clock guys to dinner. That's how it's supposed to be, baby."
On Tuesday, the Bulls made a similar comeback against Indiana and led midway through the fourth quarter, but then fell apart and lost.
"Maybe we learned some lessons from (Tuesday)," Boylen said. "We didn't turn it over at the end. We rebounded the ball and we made some big plays. We executed down the stretch pretty well. We hope to be a competitive basketball team that learns how to win."
Boylen tried a bold experiment at the start of the contest and it backfired. After the opening tip, 7-foot Lauri Markkanen guarded Sixers oversized point guard Simmons. But Markkanen picked up 2 fouls and went to the bench less than two minutes in.
He got one for holding on to Simmons, and the other was when he tried to help on J.J. Redick. The Bulls fell behind 12-4 but caught up quickly, tying the game at 20-20.
The game was just about over when Philadelphia (41-24) opened a 10-point lead midway through the fourth quarter, but the Bulls managed to even the score with a 10-0 run.
Down the stretch, the Bulls survived a few careless turnovers, fell behind by 4, then tied it on a LaVine floater in the lane with 46.6 seconds left.
After a Tobias Harris miss, LaVine dished on the pick-and-roll to Lopez (19 points), who was fouled and hit the second of 2 free throws with 17.1 seconds left.
Butler made a smart play on the next possession, getting his arm tangled up with LaVine and drawing a foul call. Butler calmly drained both free throws to put the Sixers up by 1 with 4.8 seconds on the clock.
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