Once again, no lead is safe for Bulls as they drop fifth straight, to Pacers
The Indiana Pacers seemed hopelessly broken in the first quarter Wednesday when the Bulls sped to a 39-15 lead. But anyone who thought the game was over hasn't been watching the Bulls lately.
It took until the fourth quarter for Indiana to take the lead, but the inevitable happened and the Pacers finished off a 117-113 victory, handing the Bulls their fifth straight loss. The Bulls held leads in the fourth quarter in four of the five losses.
The Bulls played without DeMar DeRozan, Derrick Jones Jr. and Goran Dragic due to injuries. But the Pacers started the night with a 2-16 record in their last 18 games. They've beaten the Bulls twice in that stretch and overcome deficits in the 20s both times.
"This has happened a lot to us," coach Billy Donovan said after the game. "We compete pretty hard, but what happens is the game gets ratcheted up physically, mentally, emotionally.
"You've got to be able to come down on both ends of the floor and be incredibly detailed and focused. You have to execute. You've got to be able to talk and communicate on defense, then you've got to be able to get into offense, get the ball where it needs to go."
Zach LaVine finished with 35 points, 11 rebounds and 7 assists, hitting 10 of 23 shots. Coby White scored a season-high 25 points and hit 5 of 8 three-pointers. Nikola Vucevic added 19 points and Ayo Dosunmu had 15. Following five games of miserable three-point shooting, the Bulls found the range in this one, hitting 15 of 34 attempts.
After Indiana got within nine in the second quarter, the Bulls closed out the first half with a 16-point advantage, then pushed it to 23 early in the third. The Pacers kept pushing and took their first lead with 8:51 left on a lay-in by rookie Bennedict Mathurin.
A big problem for the Bulls as the lead slipped away was keeping track of the hot-shooting Buddy Hield. He scored 19 points and hit 5 of 6 three-pointers in the third quarter.
"You've got to understand personnel," Donovan said. "Not to show any disrespect to anybody on their team, but you don't want to be leaving Buddy Hield to rotate to somebody that's not Buddy Hield. Those kind of things, in the moment we've got to be able to make better decisions and quicker decisions."
The Bulls briefly went up by six with 3:44 left after a Vucevic three. But Aaron Nesmith and Hield drained threes to tie the score. The Bulls' last lead was 112-111 when LaVine hit 2 free throws with 41.4 seconds left.
Haliburton hit a jumper to put the Pacers up by a point. On the other end, LaVine missed a tough corner jumper and the Bulls had to start fouling. Donovan thought other players could have done more to help out LaVine on that empty possession.
"I have no problem with the shot," Donovan said. "I just think there may have been something on that possession where we could have generated something coming back the other way. I really felt like the defense was being pulled toward him down to the baseline and we could have gotten something maybe in the middle of the floor."
There's been nothing new with the Bulls potentially chasing Russell Westbrook on the buyout market. Westbrook hasn't played for Utah, but hasn't settled on a contract buyout, either. LaVine was asked about it after the game.
"Russ is a future Hall of Famer, man," LaVine said. "I think you can only respect what he's done in the league. If he so happens to come on the team, we'll welcome him with open arms. If he's not, you compete against him, he's a fierce competitor, you can do nothing but respect that."
The Bulls have one game left before the all-star break, at home Thursday against Milwaukee. The Bulls' TNT win streak, dormant for six years, will be on the line. They won 20 consecutive Thursday home games televised by TNT from 2013-17.
Jordan grants another wish:
To celebrate his 60th birthday, Michael Jordan announced a $10 million donation to the Make-A-Wish Foundation, the largest ever received from an individual in the organization's 43-year history.
Starting in his early days of playing with the Bulls, Jordan has met with hundreds of Make-A-Wish kids who wanted to meet him. Jordan is now owner of the Charlotte Hornets.
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