Chicago Bulls: 2 studs, 1 dud, from nail-biting win over Raptors

Chicago Bulls studs from the win over the Raptors: DeMar DeRozan

Down the stretch in this win over the Raptors, the spotlight was handed to the four-time All-Star selection and veteran star shooting guard/forward DeMar DeRozan. In the return to where his career started more than one decade ago in the NBA with the Raptors, DeRozan took full advantage of the spotlight in the second.

This was by no means the best performance you will ever see from DeRozan. But it was a clutch performance when the Bulls needed it most down the stretch.

DeRozan would score nearly half of his points in this game in the fourth quarter. His 11 points in the final quarter would also be more than half of the points that the Bulls scored in the fourth quarter (19 total for the team).

This performance as a whole isn’t going to look fantastic for DeRozan on the stat sheet. He finished up this game with a game-high 26 points, four rebounds, six assists, no steals, no blocks, and one turnover. And he shot just 7-of-19 from the field.

But DeRozan was also very efficient from beyond the arc and extremely efficient from the charity stripe. DeRozan shot 2-of-4 from beyond the arc and was perfect on 10 attempts from the free-throw line. That is where DeRozan made his money on this night.

The fact that DeRozan was able to go perfect on a double-digit number of free-throw attempts, shoot 50 percent from downtown, and register six assists with only one turnover, goes to show how important he will be at times to this Bulls offense in closing time.