All Alex Caruso did in the Sunday win over the Timberwolves was go 7-of-8 from three, grab five steals, get bloodies up, and then blow out one of his lucky shoes.
Abbie Parr/AP
MINNEAPOLIS – There might be a day very soon when Minnesota All-Star Anthony Edwards is an elite closer.
It’s all in his bag, that’s for sure. The three pointer, mid-range, and there’s few better at the rim. Sunday wasn’t that day, however. And definitely not when facing the one true “King of the Fourth” in Bulls veteran DeMar DeRozan.
Thanks to nine points by DeRozan in the final stanza, as well as a game-high 27, the Bulls earned the season sweep over one of the top teams in the Western Conference, beating the Timberwolves 109-101.
Bulls Batman also had his Robin in the win, however, and it wasn’t the usual one in Coby White.
Bloodied, and even blowing his shoe out late in the game, all Alex Caruso did was have Edwards duty on defense, register five steals, and then shoot a career-best 7-of-8 from three-point range.
“The guy is amazing, man,” DeRozan said of Caruso. “The heart, the resilience, the passion, the will, AC is amazing, man. He’s definitely one of a kind, man. For a guy that’s been banged up for the year, every time he steps out there on the court he leaves it all out there, puts his heart and soul into the game. It’s amazing to have a teammate like that.
“It’s a sign of his greatness.”
Caruso doesn’t do self-praise, but the assessment on what was his lucky pair of shoes now going in the trash, he was all about discussing that.
“One of the late plays, Mike Conley missed three in the corner, and I was trailing (Edwards),” Caruso described. “Jumped up to try and get a contest, landed on my left foot, and my insoles and the plate that’s in there just slid out of the bottom, Zion (Williamson)-like at Duke.
“I could tell the back half of my foot wasn’t on. It was just on the bottom of the shoe. It’s probably my shoes were old, but they were good-luck shoes so now I’ve got to retire them.”
Not that the Bulls (36-39) didn’t set themselves up for success, especially in a first quarter in which they scored 33 points and did so against the league’s top-ranked defensive team.
Minnesota came into Sunday with a 108.1 defensive rating – more than two points better than Orlando’s 110.4 – and then watched Caruso rip into that top ranking with a 12-point first quarter thanks to a 4-for-4 shooting clinic from three-point range.
And Caruso wasn’t finished, hitting a fifth-straight three early in the second.
He wasn’t alone, either, as the Bulls offense ran like a well-oiled machine throughout the first half, building a lead that reached as much as 16, and shooting 25-of-38 (.658) from the field as well as a ridiculous 9-of-14 (.643) from three.
Numbers that had staying power for only so long, evident by the third quarter.
That vaunted Timberwolves defense decided to finally join the game coming out of the halftime locker room, handcuffing Billy Donovan’s crew to just 20 points in the stanza, turning them over six times and holding them to 38% from the field.
And just like that it was once again clutch-game alert for Donovan & Co.
Rudy Gobert gave the home team the lead with a put-back and foul with 5:21 left, and then the slugfest was on.
The issue for the Timberwolves? DeRozan. It wasn’t just the scoring from him on 11-of-23 from the field, it was also the play-making, as he finished with eight assists.
“It’s frustrating because we know our capabilities,” DeRozan said, when asked how the Bulls can beat the Timberwolves twice, but lose to the likes of Detroit and Washington. “We know we can beat anybody, so when we lose the games where Twitter goes crazy on us, say we’re the most confusing team, whatever they say, it’s definitely frustrating.
“When we perform like we did (Sunday), that’s who we are.”