It was an exciting Friday match-up between the Chicago Bulls and the Minnesota Timberwolves. Zach LaVine came through down the stretch to give the Bulls a 114-113 victory.
What the heck was that?
In a game that the Minnesota Timberwolves wanted desperately to win, and the Chicago Bulls’ front office wanted desperately to lose — a game loaded with bad feeling on both sides — the team burrowing straight to the gutter won, and the team with a top four seed in the Western Conference and a top ten MVP candidate… lost. ESPN was there, in Chicago’s only national action of the season (the similarly horrible Lakers, meanwhile, have 35 national games). Scottie Pippen and Horace Grant took in the action court side. Their former teammate, heartless VP of Basketball Operations John Paxson, took in the action from a box perch elsewhere in the stands.
On a frigid Friday night in the United Center, Tom Thibodeau, Jimmy Butler, and Taj Gibson (plus old friends John Lucas III and Aaron Brooks) planned to give Chicago a good old-fashioned beat down. We wanted that beat down. We needed that beat down. But the resilient Bulls did not get that beat down. Even without Kris Dunn, and even having lost seven straight games, Chicago was surprisingly chippy. Though Minnesota (now 34-24) led Chicago (19-35) by as many as 17 points in the third quarter, it was the late-game chutzpah of exiled Timberwolf Zach LaVine that prevailed over Jimmy Butler’s anticipated clutch heroics.
Minnesota is now two games behind the weirdly resilient San Antonio Spurs (35-21) in the race for the third seed. Though the Oklahoma City Thunder (the fifth seed) lack Minnesota’s depth, they represent an intimidating first round playoff opponent. Minnesota needs to lock in victories against lottery-bound squads if they want to secure that third seed. The Spurs, even sans Kawhi, don’t take nights off.
Chicago wanted to lose… but we were just too darn good last night.
Jerian Grant had another good-on-paper night. Grant had 14 points, 11 assists and eight rebounds. Here’s hoping he can string a few more evenings like this together to trick some sucker into trading for him this summer.
The stars of the show for Chicago, though, were LaVine, Robin Lopez and Lauri Markkanen. Lopez had 19 points on eight-of-11 shooting. Last night was Markkanen’s first game back from a liberally extended paternity leave. The Finnisher scored 12 points on just seven field goal attempts and pulled down five boards. It’s great for the development of the young pups that Chicago didn’t flip Lopez at the February 8th trade deadline. That said, it may lead to a few more random wins like Friday’s. Lopez is such a smart screen-setter and so reliable at scoring around the paint.
Zach LaVine had his best Bulls game yet
LaVine scored 15 points in the fourth quarter to go along with 35 overall. LaVine shot 12-of-26 from the field and 10-of-11 from the free throw line. He also chipped in five rebounds. Butler, who was guarding him all night, had a typically terrific game of his own. The kid from Tomball had 38 points (on 11-of-26 shooting), seven rebounds and five assists. Butler also went to the free throw line 15 times, knocking down 13 of his charity stripe attempts. LaVine also came through huge when it mattered most. In the end, it all came down to a botched buzzer-beater attempt from the former Bulls All-Star. With 21 seconds left in the fourth quarter and Chicago down 113-111, LaVine had the ball at the top right hand side of the three-point arc. He elevated, with Butler determined not to give him an inch. And LaVine drew three foul shots!
To the rapturous roars of a cheering Chicago home crowd, LaVine knocked down all three charity looks. That gave Chicago a one-point edge, 114-113, with 17 seconds left. Karl-Anthony Towns attempted an ill-advised three-point heave with plenty of time left to barrel inside. Once that clanged off the rim, Jimmy Butler had the ball back by the Chicago bench, being guarded by LaVine. His buzzer-beater effort fell short.
The Timberwolves shuffled off the court, wholly miserable, as LaVine and the young Bulls embraced. LaVine score all of Chicago’s final 11 points, including those three clinching free-throws that gave Chicago the 114-113 edge.
Chicago never appreciated Jimmy Butler
Late in the proceedings, ESPN’s Doris Roberts struggled to frame the trade of one of the best players in the NBA as somehow being necessary. It’s true that moving Butler for LaVine, rookie Lauri Markkanen, and starting point guard Kris Dunn, has looked way better than it had any reasonable right to.
But it’s also true that Chicago never gave Jimmy the team he really deserved. That team would have looked a lot like the Timberwolves did yesterday — a team loaded with some young, athletic shooters and some wily veterans with defensive moxie. Jimmy Butler was a better player than Derrick Rose or Joakim Noah at their peaks, but Chicago fans were always uneasy with him becoming the face of the franchise. He wasn’t the high-flying Sports Center Top 10 highlight reel that Rose, Chicago’s native son, proved to be. He wasn’t the utterly unique combination of defense and court vision, of demonstrative on-court fire and brimstone, that Joakim Noah was.
Butler is a prototype of players we’ve seen before — smart, defense-first wings who play their hearts out on both ends of the floor. Butler is very much in the Scottie Pippen mode, and in today’s NBA he doesn’t look very different from Paul George or Kawhi Leonard. I think that his lack of signature flash in a sports town that has been spoiled with one-of-a-kind athletes may have hurt him a bit.
It was poignant to see a visibly frustrated Butler leave with shoulders slumped yesterday, departing the United Center to the tune of “Another One Bites The Dust” when, for the first time, he was the subject of the tune.
The Chicago City Edition jerseys were a bonus W
I was skeptical when Nike took over NBA jersey duties from Adidas this season. In the early going, at least, I had good reason to be. But darn it, I could not resist the Chicago City Edition jerseys. Your Bulls rocked these home alternates against the Minnesota Thibs-ber-Bulls yesterday. These things were beyond spiffy. They do bear more than a passing resemblance to Miami’s snazzy “Miami Vice” jerseys, but no matter. Those jerseys are cool, too. I love what Nike’s been doing this season. And I especially love their total shunning of Adidas’s horrific sleeve jerseys.