Imrem: Bulls turn this one over to Bucks
The Bulls had a couple of options Saturday night in the Bradley Center.
The first was to win Game 4 of their first-round NBA East playoff series and earn some valuable rest.
The second was to commit another turnover.
Naturally, almost instinctively, the Bulls gave the ball back to the Bucks and now have to play again Monday night.
The Bucks scored at the buzzer for a 92-90 victory that drove the series back to the United Center. "Everything we do here on in is a bonus," said head coach Jason Kidd of the underdog Bucks.
The Bulls still lead the best-of-seven series 3-1 and are heavily favored to advance into the second round.
No NBA team has rallied from down 3-0 to win a series. If Milwaukee becomes the first, it would be a bigger upset than a poodle winning a Pulitzer Prize for Twitter tweets.
Game 4 was a big loss for the Bulls just the same. If any team needed a couple of extra days off, it's this one.
Derrick Rose still is rounding into shape. Joakim Noah is a walking wreck. The Bulls in general are an injury waiting to happen whenever they spend another minute on the court.
A four-game sweep over the Bucks would have given the Bulls more time to practice through their kinks, too.
"We have a lot of work to do," Tom Thibodeau, "and we have to get it done quickly."
The Bulls' head coach was talking about the next game against the Bucks. But he also could have been talking about the presumptive next series against Cleveland.
If the Cavaliers close out the Celtics on Sunday, they will be the team with the added rest that would have been so worthwhile to the Bulls.
Yet the Bulls couldn't resist the temptation to commit another turnover. No. 28 came when Rose lost the ball with 1.8 seconds left. Jerryd Bayless then scored the winner at the buzzer after when Rose lost him on an inbounds play.
"I'm not going to put it on that play," Thibodeau said. "We botched that play, but we botched a lot of others before that."
Bulls forward Pau Gasol added, "Derrick lost Bayless … Bayless laid it up … That definitely didn't lose the game."
Turnovers did. Rose's final fumble was a bigger play than his defensive lapse.
"I put that all on me," Rose said of relinquishing the possession. "I just wasn't paying attention to the ball. I messed up."
The Bulls as a whole could have said "we messed up" after turning the ball over 28 times for an average of 18 per game in the series.
"We want 13 or less," Thibodeau said, though that number appears to be a fantasy right now.
The Bulls are throwing the ball all over the gym or dribbling it off their kneecaps or concocting new ways to give it away.
"We had 20-some turnovers," Rose said. "I think I had 20 of them."
Not quite. Rose had 8 turnovers, Gasol had 5, Jimmy Butler had 4 and Nikola Mirotic had 3.
"We have to do a much better job of taking care of the ball individually and collectively," Gasol said, sounding like Capt. Obvious from the hotel website commercial.
Before failing on the game's final two plays, Rose was having a successful fourth quarter to rally his team.
Overall, the Bulls dominated the stat sheet … except for those sticky turnovers.
"It's a tough loss," Joakim Noah said. "We'll get ready for the next (game)."
The Bulls probably will be turning over in their sleep between now and Monday night.