A string of tough losses for second-year head coach Billy Donovan and the short-handed Chicago Bulls continued to rack up in the back end of back-to-back games on the night of Jan. 15. Down star shooting guard Zach LaVine and point guard Lonzo Ball (among many others), the Bulls still put up a good fight on the road against the Boston Celtics.
Star forward DeMar DeRozan and rookie point guard Ayo Dosunmu kept the Bulls very much alive in a spirited second-half run against a Celtics team that was essentially at full strength (at least compared to Chicago’s situation). But that wasn’t enough, in the end, to snap the losing skid for the Bulls this weekend.
DeRozan and center Nikola Vucevic missed two potential game-winning/game-tying shots in the dying seconds of the fourth quarter to let the Celtics escape with the win at home at the TD Garden. And it also looks like there was another factor at work late in this game that helped the Celtics escape with a win.
DeMar DeRozan and the Chicago Bulls don’t catch the late breaks against Jaylen Brown and the Celtics
NBA L2M report said Jaylen Brown should’ve been called for shooting foul on Malcolm Hill with 47.4 seconds left and Bulls up by 2.
— K.C. Johnson (@KCJHoop) January 16, 2022
The Celtics were reportedly supposed to be called on a foul to star wing/forward Jaylen Brown with less than one minute to go in the fourth quarter on a shot by newly signed wing Malcolm Hill. The Bulls were up by two points at the time, and then the Celtics got another call in their favor on the other end of the floor after the missed call on Brown on a shot by Hill.
Standout Celtics center Robert Williams would take advantage of the opportunity that the Bulls gave him to get to the free-throw line in the final minutes of this game to lock away the win for his team. A big man that shoots just north of 62 percent from the free-throw line this season knocked down four-of-four free-throw tries to get the Celtics the 114-112 win in this game.
Brown, Williams, and the Celtics went an 8-0 run in the final 120 seconds of this game to get the two-point win in the end. That is something that the Bulls still can’t allow to happen.
Nonetheless, it is frustrating to see this go against the Bulls when seemingly everything is not falling this team’s way of late. Brown and the Celtics could’ve had a game-changing call on them that could’ve come close to sealing up the win for the Bulls.
Granted, there are going to be games with missed calls that could change the nature of the way things go in the end that show up in the L2M report. This is not the first time this happened to the Bulls, and it won’t be the last.