Josh Giddey’s half-court dagger and triple-double are signs of Bulls’ grit

Fourteen seconds before Josh Giddey stunned the Los Angeles Lakers with a game-winning fling from 46 feet, he air-balled a left-handed baseline floater from 6 feet.

But on the game’s final shot attempt, Giddey did something Chicago’s player development staff has implored him to do all season: He held his follow-through.

“As soon as it left my fingertips, it looked good,” Giddey said, holding the game ball under his arm after the Bulls’ 119-117 triumph Thursday at the United Center. “That’s kind of why I held my follow-through the whole time. I had that feeling when it left. It looked straight. It felt good.”

Giddey’s game-winner, the first of his career, sparked pandemonium inside the United Center. The Bulls trailed by 18 points in the fourth quarter and rallied from a 5-point deficit with 12.6 seconds remaining. Lakers guard Austin Reaves made two free throws following Giddey’s missed baseline floater to put L.A. ahead 115-110.

“People were leaving the stands; it’s game over,” Giddey said.

But this Bulls team is a feisty one, and on Thursday, Giddey’s buzzer-beating bucket encapsulated the resilience that has made Chicago (33-40) unexpectedly dangerous.

Giddey didn’t just bury the biggest shot of the night; he also recorded his fifth triple-double this season with 25 points, 14 rebounds and 11 assists. And in the final 12 seconds, he supplied one pivotal play after another.

Giddey delivered a cross-court inbounds pass from the opposite sideline to Nikola Vučević, who quickly swung a pass to Patrick Williams in the left corner for a 3. That basket cut the margin to two with 9.8 seconds remaining.

Giddey then stole the ensuing inbounds pass from Lakers star LeBron James and found Coby White on the left wing for another 3, putting the Bulls ahead 116-115 with 6.1 seconds left.

“He kind of just bounced it,” Giddey said of James’ inbounds pass. “I knew it was going to Reaves, and he bounced it. I was surprised at how easy I was able to grab it. I was going to go to the rim. I saw guys collapsing, and Coby was wide open on the 3-point line. He’d hit a couple; give it to him and trust him to do the right thing — and he did.”

Reaves put the Lakers back on top after beating Williams to the rim using a two-dribble, straight-line drive for a layup. But the clock still showed 3.3 seconds. One night after James beat the Indiana Pacers on a buzzer-beating tip-in, Giddey let the Lakers know how last-second heartbreak feels.

“I think you see now it’s not over until it really is over,” Giddey said.

After Reaves’ go-ahead layup, Giddey inbounded the ball to Williams along the right sideline. With a defender nearby, Williams wisely fired it back to Giddey as he started down the middle of the floor unguarded.

The game-clinching sequence was unscripted.

“I didn’t know if Pat was going to give it back to me,” Giddey said. “I was expecting him to go, but he threw it back and the defense kept backing up, and I wasn’t going to be able to drive around anybody and get closer. So I just pulled up from wherever I did and tried to let it go as best I could. The rest is history.”

Chicago made 11 of 14 3-pointers in the fourth quarter, including seven in the final 5:13.

“The probability of us winning that game was probably very low, but we defied the odds,” White said. “It was a fun game to be a part of. That’s a game I’m going to remember for the rest of my life.”

Chicago has now won four straight games and nine of their last 11. The Bulls are only two games behind the Atlanta Hawks for the Eastern Conference’s seventh seed in the postseason, and with the help of Giddey’s dramatic game-winner, they’ve officially commanded the league’s attention.

“It was a remarkable shot,” Donovan said, “but you could also be walking off the court feeling different if that shot doesn’t go in.”

Three seasons ago, when DeMar DeRozan was draining walk-off winners in his first season with the Bulls, Donovan often gave such reminders of the thin line between victory and agony. They were necessary then for a playoff roster to maintain perspective while working to achieve better results.

Now the Bulls are a starless team of scrappy underdogs, happy to steal a win by any means. On paper they don’t look like a worthy rival to the star-studded Lakers, but when the game began, the Bulls had a singular focus.

“Every game, we’re trying to win,” White said. “We play with desperation to win.”

The Bulls are 13-13 since Zach LaVine appeared in his last game in Chicago. They’ve stubbornly plowed on after the blockbuster three-team trade that sent LaVine to the Sacramento Kings — a move that was supposed to be the beginning of a step backward. The Bulls also have overcome injuries to key contributors Ayo Dosunmu, Lonzo Ball and Tre Jones.

No matter what, they just keep chugging along.

The Bulls have offset their talent, size, defense and occasional rebounding deficiencies by playing fast. They’re tied for first in the NBA in pace with the Utah Jazz since the All-Star break, and every game, whether opponents miss or make shots, the Bulls search for fast breaks.

“If we don’t run, we’re done,” Donovan said. “We’ve got to run.”

That’s been Donovan’s catchphrase all season, but the Bulls have caught on and become more confident with each bit of success.

“We’ve shown over the last month, six weeks, that we can compete with anybody,” Giddey said. “It’s just the way we play the game, I think it wears teams down. We get up and down. We run. We put heat on teams to get back, and a lot of veteran teams don’t particularly want to get back and play in transition, so we understand our game plan and our identity. When we stick to it, we’re a tough team to beat.”

White was named Eastern Conference Player of the Week for the last two weeks, joining Michael Jordan as the only Bulls players to win the honor in consecutive weeks. White had a team-high 26 points with nine assists against the Lakers on Thursday and is averaging 30.2 points on 50.2 percent shooting with 4.4 rebounds and 4.1 assists over his last 11 games.

Giddey is averaging 22.8 points on 53.1 percent shooting with 10.5 rebounds and 9.2 assists since the All-Star break. He looks like a different player than the one who got benched by the Oklahoma City Thunder in last season’s playoffs.

His perimeter shooting has improved, and he is shooting confidently without much hesitation. He’s also driving the lane more and reducing his low-efficiency midrange attempts. Defensively, Giddey has accepted the challenge of being a positive contributor. Although he’ll never be known as a stopper, he’s starting to show more physicality.

“We’re connected,” White said of the team. “You can see it on the court how connected we are in terms of not just playing, but in terms of constant communication with each other. But we also hold each other accountable.

“We miss a box out, we call each other out. We miss an assignment, we call each other out. Whatever it may be, we all have that type of relationship where we can go to one another and call each other out, and everybody is receptive to it. That’s huge when you’re on a team where you’re able to talk to someone and they don’t take it personally.”

The frenzied celebration that followed Giddey’s theatrical game-winner revealed the chemistry among the Bulls. A half-court buzzer-beater ended with the team’s security struggling to keep the players’ exuberance from spilling into the crowd in the corner of the court.

“It was a special moment,” Giddey said. “You kind of black out in those types of moments.”

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