Bulls guard Alex Caruso had his hands full with Jalen Brunson on Sunday, but all that matters now is locking down the Hawks on Wednesday with the play-in games starting.
John Munson/AP
DeMar DeRozan is still looking for that moment for this year’s team.
Maybe it does finally arrive on Wednesday when DeRozan and his Bulls teammates host the Hawks in a first-round play-in game.
And maybe that moment catapults them into something special.
That’s DeRozan’s hope. Because at this point, that might be all the 34-year-old has to look forward to as a Bull, facing free agency and with a front office that could be forced to make some very difficult decisions this summer.
One moment would be nice.
“I mean, being honest with you, we had some lows,” DeRozan told reporters after Sunday’s 120-119 overtime loss to New York. “I am not going to give it away of when, but there was a time where things got extremely rough from my part. The bond and the closeness we had after that, it meant a lot for us to change over for the season. I don’t look at every negative that happened as a bad thing because with that we bounced back from it in a whole different way.”
The loss to the Knicks was a microcosm of Bulls Basketball 2023-24. Short-handed and with very little to play for, they competed to the end, just coming up short.
Cute if this was a Lifetime romcom, but this is the NBA, and cute gets you two tickets and a banana boat reservation for Cancun by next week.
DeRozan wants to make sure vacation can wait.
That’s why he put in 44 minutes – finishing atop the league in minutes played this season – scoring 30 points in a game that changed nothing in the scope of things.
While Tom Thibodeau and his Knicks were looking to get the win and the No. 2 seed in the Eastern Conference, the Bulls (39-43) have been locked into playing Atlanta in the No. 9 vs. No. 10 game for days. Coach Billy Donovan did rest Nikola Vucevic, Alex Caruso and of course DeRozan on Friday, but he wanted to make sure they kept a rhythm going into the play-in, and they agreed.
Vucevic put in 42 minutes in scoring 29 points, and Caruso played 41 minutes, scoring 15 points and nabbing five steals with eight assists.
“Obviously (New York was) playing for something,” Donovan said. “I felt like this was a good opportunity for us, and as I mentioned before the game, the guys wanted to play and there were a lot of good things we can take away from this game. Having a game like this going into Wednesday will be good for us.”
Especially if the game is close, considering the Bulls closed out the season with 44 clutch games – third most in the league – and a league-best 27 wins in those clutch games. They couldn’t grab No. 28, however.
After Jalen Brunson missed a prayer at the end of regulation, he did help his team grab the lead in the extra stanza with two free throws and a Donte DiVincenzo three-pointer.
The two teams traded bad possessions with just over a minute left until Precious Achiuwa grabbed a key offensive rebound and slammed it in for a four-point lead.
There’s a reason why DeRozan is up for the NBA’s Clutch Player of the Year award, and he continued to make his case with a driving layup with the foul. After he connected on the free throw the Bulls were down just one.
It was another offensive rebound that would haunt them, however, this time when Josh Hart came swooping in for the tip-in. Bulls guard Caruso had one last answer with 14.1 seconds left, but that’s where the score stayed until the final horn.