Bulls miss their chance to advance in NBA’s in-season tourney
Most fans probably don't know what the NBA Cup is or what it does, but the Bulls surprisingly took the court Friday with playoff dreams.
The NBA Cup is the in-season tournament, which began last year; something commissioner Adam Silver and few others thought was a good idea. The Bulls could have won their five-team pool and advanced to the knockout round by beating Boston.
But the Celtics are the actual NBA champs, not just Cup contenders, and pulled away late to win an offensive-minded battle 138-129 at the United Center.
“Hopefully we can continue to get better,” Bulls coach Billy Donovan said. “This is obviously one of the better teams. I'm not trying to act like this was a moral victory. We're disappointed, because we had a chance to go further in the in-season tournament and that didn't happen.”
Celtics backup guard Payton Pritchard got red-hot in the fourth quarter, scoring 19 of his team's first 23 points. Zach LaVine missed a potential tying 3-pointer with 2:44 left, and Boston scored the next 5 points to put the game out of reach.
LaVine became the Bulls' all-time leader in 3-point baskets with 1,050, passing Kirk Hinrich by hitting 3 in this game.
LaVine finished with 29 points, while Nikola Vucevic led the Bulls with 32. They got a combined 27 points off the bench from Talen Horton-Tucker and Torrey Craig, but it wasn’t enough to match Pritchard's efficiency or Jayson Tatum's 35 points.
One interesting rotation note: With Patrick Williams still out with a foot injury, Donovan used Lonzo Ball to finish the game. Back from a two-year layoff, Ball played a season-high 22 minutes, finishing with 2 points and 5 assists.
Josh Giddey, who had a game-high 9 assists, typically does not play late in the fourth quarters and he didn't on Friday, either.
The Bulls (8-13) have competed with good teams offensively this season. One problem is, they don't have the energy to keep up their fast pace in back-to-backs games, and when the 3-point shots don't fall, they're in trouble due to their miserable defense.
One difference in this game was Boston's hustle points, keeping rebounds alive and creating more 3-point opportunities. The Celtics won the battle of 3-point baskets 23-20.
“We've got to keep looking and focusing on the consistency part of the controllables,” Donovan said. “There were some rebounds we couldn't quite come down with, a couple fouls that we probably need to be more disciplined on. We just don't have that margin of error, but I like the way our guys competed.”
Eight teams advance to the NBA Cup's knockout round. Those that don't make it, like the Bulls, get two regular-season games added to the schedule in mid-December.