A History of the TNT Bulls
Game 6: Mike Dunleavy is nourished by your doubts
Basketball-Reference box score.
This might be my favorite game in this whole streak, and that is really saying something. It started off like a normal game until early in the second quarter, when Mike Dunleavy Jr. took an elbow to the face and had to leave the game. The hit caused a gash above his eye, and there was a scary amount of blood as Dunleavy left for the locker room. He wouldn’t return for the rest of the half, and it was questionable whether he would return at all after receiving 10 stitches.
He started in the second half, scored 21 points and led the team to victory.
Ball Don’t Lie’s Dan Devine described the rationale behind Dunleavy’s return best when he wrote, “this is Chicago, and this is Tom Thibodeau’s team, and if you’re not bleeding so much that you can’t make sure to tag the roll man and make the right cut, then you’ve got enough blood to win.” Dunleavy had enough.
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There were other aspects of the game that helped lead to the victory. The Bulls shot 50 percent from the field and made 14 3-pointers, including five from Kirk Hinrich and one from Chinese shadow legend Jimmer Fredette. But if we’re being honest, none of that matters when we remember that Dunleavy outscored the Houston Rockets by himself in the third quarter mere minutes after another man used string to HOLD HIS FACE TOGETHER.
There are a lot of crazy things in this story, but I’m not sure anything is crazier than this one.