Bulls' two-man show can't hold on against Hawks
The Chicago Bulls' two-man show was having its best night of the season, but then the home team forgot to guard the 3-point line and disaster struck at the United Center.
The Bulls blew a 10-point lead in the final three minutes and lost 119-114 to Atlanta, their seventh straight loss to the Hawks.
The lost lead spoiled the night for the Bulls' two stars. Jimmy Butler scored 40 points and Dwyane Wade added 33. They needed a little more help, especially on the defensive end.
Inside the locker room, both players unloaded on their teammates without naming names.
"I don't know that they care enough," Wade said when asked if the loss could be devastating to the team. "I wish I could say everyone in here is going to go home and not eat tonight. I can't say that. I wish I could, but I don't know if it hurts enough.
"Games like this are supposed to hurt you. You're not supposed to sleep. You're not supposed to talk to nobody. These games are supposed to hurt. I don't know if that's in the guys in this locker room. Hopefully they can prove me wrong, but I will challenge them to see if losses like this hurt."
Butler listened to what Wade had to say and gave his stamp of approval.
"If you're not (ticked) off that you lost, something's wrong. This is your job," Butler said. "I don't think that everybody looks at it that way.
"I want to play with guys that care, that play hard, that want to do well for this organization, that want to win games. Do whatever it takes, just win. Who cares who shot it? When we're winning, everybody looks great."
The Bulls led 110-100 with three minutes left when a few rough possessions caused a lightning strike. The Hawks nailed 3 straight 3-pointers - by Paul Millsap, Kent Bazemore and Tim Hardaway - to close within a point. After a Wade miss, Dennis Schroder drove past Taj Gibson for a lay-in and Atlanta had its first lead of the night at 111-110 with 1:12 left.
Butler tied it at 112-112 on a jumper with 44.3 seconds left. But the Bulls gave up an easy lob dunk to Dwight Howard, and Nikola Mirotic missed a 3-pointer with about 24 seconds on the clock. Paul Zipser also took and missed a 3-pointer late.
"I understand if you've got an open shot, take it," Butler said. "You've got to get your ball to your best players. That's how the game goes. Let it come down on my shoulders or D-Wade's shoulders. Let us be the reason why. When a guy's making shots like he was or I was, I felt like everything was going in."
Wade continued for a long time on the topic.
"My thing is if you're going to shoot those shots, you better have made that shot a lot of times and you better have put the work in," Wade said. "I don't see that enough. We've got a 10-point lead. You've got to protect the other end of the floor, too. We just did a poor job of defending what we knew they were going to do. Schroder broke us down. Give them credit; they made the shots they needed to make quick.
"We can play bad, we can miss shots, but we're having too many of these losses. This can't be acceptable. You want to do something besides have an NBA jersey on and make some money. That's all we're doing around here."
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