ATLANTA — Zach LaVine was laid out on the training table, draped in towels and disbelief
“What the (bleep) just happened?” he said, half frustrated, half trying to lighten the moment with some sort of humor.
What he did remember was feeling like a tidal wave was building, and once it hit there was no getting out of its way.
That’s not far off.
LaVine gave the Bulls a seemingly insurmountable 17-point lead with a three-pointer at the 6:32 mark of the third quarter, and then he and his Bulls teammates spent the next three-and-a-half minutes drowning as Atlanta tied the game.
By the time the water drained the Bulls had suffered a third-straight loss 141-133 and had to try and explain how they surrendered a 50-point fourth quarter.
“They do a good job causing havoc, but I just felt like we gave the game away,” LaVine said. “They amped up their physicality, I made a bad pass out of a double-team one time, but we couldn’t rebound, we couldn’t score, and it just compounded. When it happens that fast you just keep looking up and you’re like, ‘Damn!’”
A feeling shared by everyone in the visiting locker room, including his coach.
“The fouling was a huge issue,” Donovan said. “We got them into the bonus early in the fourth. I think the other issue was the rebounding. And then I thought the other part of it was the physicality, which they played with defensively, and the officials letting that stuff go was obviously a huge discrepancy. We had a hard time playing through it, quite honestly.”
The Bulls (13-18) had a hard time with a lot that final stanza.
The Hawks shots 62.5% from the field (15-of-24) in the fourth, went to the free throw line 17 times to the Bulls’ zero times, outrebounded the Bulls 14-3, and then finally figured out how to break the “Trae Young Rules” that Donovan has used to stifle the three-time All-Star the past few seasons.
Coming into the Thursday showdown, the Bulls had a sample size of nine-straight games of keeping Young ineffective and frustrated, evident by his scoring average of just over 22 points per game and his 37% field goal shooting over that time.
“The biggest thing with (Young) is he’s such a complete offensive player in the fact that he has a great ability to get everyone else involved, so it’s not even his scoring,” Donovan said. “It’s his ability to assist, throw lobs, generate threes. What all starts with him is how good you can defend him without fouling. He gets in the lane and he understands how to stop, draw fouls, sweep-throughs, those types of things, so it starts there.”
And it continued there for three quarters. Lost in Jevon Carter coming off the bench in the first and cooking for 19 points on 6-of-7 from three-point range, was Donovan’s “Young Rules” carried out to perfection.
Young entered the fourth just 4-of-12 with 11 points.
Donovan’s mindset has always been as Young goes, his team goes.
“Where he really creates a lot of problems is when he gets 12-15 assists, he’s getting to the free throw line 8-12 times, he’s getting himself 20-25 points,” Donovan said. “And then what happens is everybody kind of feeds off of him.”
In the final six minutes of the game, Young got going and everyone was eating.
The Hawks point guard finished the fourth with 16 points on 4-of-5 shooting.
As for LaVine, he finished with a season-high 37 points, but still felt empty post-game.
“That was a game we beat ourselves,” LaVine said. “That sucks because we’re not in position to give games away. To give up 50 points in a quarter is a lot, man. We’re going to have to look at that and figure out what we need to do to weather the storm.
“That just can’t happen. It’s unacceptable.”
