Bulls find right balance in win over Wizards
If there was ever a night to get right, this was it for the Bulls. After finishing their West Coast trip on a sour note, the Bulls were back at home against the Washington Wizards, who were missing top scorer Bradley Beal with a hamstring injury.
The Bulls finished with a season-low 17 assists while securing their third-straight loss at Sacramento on Sunday. So the first order of business was proving they care about each other.
That issue was solved pretty easily. The Bulls finished with 29 assists on Wednesday, their fourth-highest total of the season, and had 18 by halftime. But they needed some clutch stops down the stretch to finish off a 115-111 victory over Washington.
"I didn't know, actually, but that game was just a poor game all around, so there wasn't much to take from that," center Nikola Vucevic said of Sunday's low assist count. "Obviously the ball movement, trying to make plays for others is something we talk about all the time. So I thought tonight was better than it was in general."
The biggest problems for the Bulls in this game were sloppiness on offense and slippage in their defensive awareness.
Midway through the fourth quarter, there was a stretch where the two teams combined to hit 10 consecutive shots, including six from 3-point range. From the 8:35 mark, the teams knocked down 16 of 20 field-goal attempts until the Bulls finally got three consecutive stops.
A post hook by Vucevic put the Bulls ahead 106-105 with 2:48 left. DeMar DeRozan followed with a jumper, then a 3-point play to make it a 6-point lead.
Washington 7-footer Kristaps Porzingis made 12 of 16 free throws in the game, and hit a pair to get the Wizards back within 4. Then off a turnover, Kyle Kuzma's lay-in made it a 2-point game. Zach LaVine missed a driving layup, but Alex Caruso managed to tap the rebound out to DeRozan, who hit 2 free throws with 8.9 seconds left to put the Bulls up 113-109.
DeRozan led the Bulls with 27 points, while LaVine and Vucevic scored 25 each. The Bulls did a slightly better job early in the game of keeping others involved, though that waned as the game wore on. Patrick Williams was the only other player in double digits with 11 points,
"Vuc I thought, really played a great game tonight, really from start to finish," Bulls coach Billy Donovan said. "He was really efficient, I thought he had everything going. I give DeMar and Zach a lot of credit because they struggled to shoot the ball at the level they normally are used to, and they stayed in the game as competitors. They just kind of stayed with it."
The Bulls (10-14) finished with 19 turnovers and many led to fast-break layups going the other way. The Bulls had 4 giveaways in the third quarter that led to 9 Wizards points.
Longtime Bull Taj Gibson played some good minutes and helped the Wizards take a 6-point lead at 90-84 with eight minutes remaining. Porzingis finished with 28 points, while Kuzma had 21.
"I think we need to be a little more detailed on both ends of the floor, just execution offensively it's not at the level it needs to be to be a good team," Vucevic said. "Then defensively, the attention to detail, the scouting, being there for each other. A lot of times it comes with our approach.
"We know what we need to do, it's up to us to go out there and do it."
Javonte Green missed his second straight game with right knee soreness.
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