Hawks make this a serious test for Bulls

The Bulls should have known by game time Sunday night that, this year in particular, anything can happen in the NBA playoffs.

The Spurs, with the West’s best record, were eliminated in the first round. The Lakers, two-time defending champions, were eliminated in the second round. Either the Heat will eliminate the Celtics, or vice versa, sometime within the next week.

So it shouldn’t surprise anybody that the Atlanta Hawks tied the Bulls at 2-2 in their best-of-seven Eastern semifinal.

“We played like a desperate team,” said Hawks head coach Larry Drew.

Now the Bulls will have to play that way even if they still have the homecourt advantage. This is a serious test now. This is a test of playoff wills. It’s a test of who can respond when challenged.

“This is a very good team,” Bulls center Joakim Noah said of the Hawks. “We’re in a battle now.”

Not often have these Bulls been in this predicament. Their season will be defined by what happens from here, starting with Tuesday night’s Game 5 in the United Center.

Hopefully for the Bulls, they won’t respond as they did in this game, like when they even called a late timeout they didn’t have and when they were outscored 16-4 down the stretch.

“(Atlanta) turned it up a notch,” Bulls forward Luol Deng said.

Most frightening for the Bulls is that if the Hawks play the way they did in this 100-88 victory, Atlanta might be the better team.

OK, maybe not the better team. But the Hawks do have players who can score, from Joe Johnson to Jamal Crawford to Josh Smith. Include Al Horford and Jeff Teague into the offensive mix as well.

The Hawks’ problem has been that they aren’t known for being the NBA’s most basketball-smart collection of players. Their court IQ normally doesn’t equal their physical ability.

Ah, but the Hawks looked like Einsteins on this night, well coached and well prepared, moving the ball, finding decent shots and then turning around to work hard on defense.

All season a concern surrounding the Bulls was whether they could prevail if an opponent matched the energy that they brought nearly every game of the regular season.

Atlanta was that opponent Sunday. From the start the Hawks actually looked like a legitimate NBA playoff team.

Some nights, maybe most nights, Derrick Rose could save the Bulls be weaving that magic he weaves so well.

“We knew Rose would try to take it over (in the fourth quarter),” Drew said, “which he is so good at.”

Not on this night he wasn’t. Rose kept shooting and shooting and shooting, but not enough of those shots went in.

No help arrived. Rose took 32 shots and made just 12 for his 34 points. No other Bulls player took more than Deng’s 14 shots or scored more than Carlos Boozer’s 18 points on 10 shots.

The Bulls let Atlanta make this a game — or more fairly the Hawks made this a game — so that an official’s inadvertent whistle could help make a difference when the outcome still was in the balance.

“They played harder than us,” Noah said. “It’s up to us to come back with a better edge.”

If the Bulls don’t, they’ll be in jeopardy of going the way of the Spurs and Lakers and Heat or Celtics.

mimrem@dailyherald.com