NEW YORK — For the last eight minutes of Wednesday’s 124-123 win over the New York Knicks, the Chicago Bulls just focused on trading punches.
The Bulls had already squandered a 22-point lead, a fate that seemed inevitable when matched up against one of the most efficient offenses in the league in front of a packed Madison Square Garden crowd. And the final stretch of the game was stuffed with defensive miscues and missteps.
Zach LaVine got switched onto Karl-Anthony Towns and could only stick his arms up and slide in coverage as the forward took him to the rim. OG Anunoby waltzed into the paint unmarked for a transition layup. Nikola Vučević whiffed on another Towns drive. Jalen Brunson danced around Patrick Williams on back-to-back possessions to punch in a jumper and a layup to repetitively retake the Knicks’ lead.
But the Bulls always had an antidote to their mistakes. And when the Bulls’ final offensive play — an attempted lob from Josh Giddey to a cutting LaVine — misfired with three seconds left on the clock, Coby White was there to take a 3-pointer and draw a foul off Josh Hart, sinking all three free throws to claim a final one-point advantage.
By the time Brunson attempted to float a third and final shot over Williams to win the game on a buzzer-beater, the magic of the Knicks’ comeback had worn off. The ball rolled around every curve of the rim, flirted dangerously with the net and then shotputted back into the air, earning a confused symphony of groans as the Bulls snuck out of the Mecca with a win.
“I just turned around,” LaVine said after the win. “And then I heard the crowd react and go, ‘Ahhhh.’ And I was like, ‘Oh shoot, we won.’ I thought it was going in. Sometimes the ball goes that way.”
Here are five takeaways from the win.
1. The Knicks tried to slow down a white-hot Zach LaVine.
For the final four minutes of the first half, LaVine elevated to a slightly different plane of offense. He ripped off 14 points in quick succession, firing off 3-pointers in the fast break, off the step back and in any other opportunity he could spy. LaVine’s sharp shooting — 4-for-5 from 3-point range in the second quarter — lifted the Bulls to a double-digit lead.
In the second half, the Knicks committed themselves to taking the ball out of LaVine’s hands. He was hounded on every inch of the hardwood — Brunson and Anunoby springing traps to push him toward the half-court line, Towns out with both hands held high to push him toward the baseline. This spurred LaVine into a team-high six turnovers.
Despite going 0-for-3 behind the arc in the second half, LaVine still finished with 31 points by attacking the rim and remaining persistent in transition.
2. Clashing styles favored the Bulls — at first.
LaVine’s best play of the game isn’t up for argument — it came with four minutes left in the third quarter when he blocked a shot by Anunoby, tipped the ball to White, then sprinted the full length of the court to collect an over-the-top pass for a step-through layup and a foul.
ZACH. LAVINE.@CHSN__ | @ZachLaVine pic.twitter.com/V8mmmXTJpi
— Chicago Bulls (@chicagobulls) November 14, 2024
The play highlighted the distinct differences between the Knicks and the Bulls, who operate on completely different sides of the NBA’s spectrum of pace. The Bulls are the fastest team in the league. The Knicks are the slowest. But New York’s efficient and methodical approach to the half court has garnered one of the best offensive ratings (118.6, fourth) in the NBA, providing a task for the Bulls’ underwhelming defense.
On a different night, this stylistic difference likely would have favored New York from the jump, with their efficiency allowing them to set the tempo and grind the Bulls down to a halt. But the Knicks were fresh off an NBA Cup game on the road in Philadelphia the night before, an exhaustion factor that left them on the back foot in the first two quarters.
The Bulls capitalized on this advantage, outscoring the Knicks in fastbreak scoring 14-3 in the first half and 26-14 over the course of the game.
3. The Bulls squandered a 22-point lead with a third-quarter collapse.
Any sports fan who argues momentum is a myth would have been disproved Wednesday in the final four-minute stretch of the third quarter at Madison Square Garden.
After LaVine’s dazzling full-court play, the Knicks dug their heels in — and immediately got down to the business of scoring 17 unanswered points. The flurry of scoring was fueled by Towns and Hart as the Bulls turned the ball over three times in less than four minutes. And then Towns caught a pass on the perimeter, sent Dalen Terry flying into the bench with a jerky shot-fake and drove to the rim for a thunderous dunk with five seconds remaining to punctuate the disastrous collapse.
Terry heaved a desperate pass up the court to Matas Buzelis, who couldn’t reach the ball before it ricocheted out of bounds. And the Bulls ended the quarter with their advantage diminished to only five points.
4. Patrick Williams made an impact from the start.
Aggressiveness isn’t a common characteristic for Williams — but the forward is finally beginning to find his footing on the offensive end in this recent streak of games. In New York, he opened the game with downright aggression, scoring 11 points in the opening quarter.
When Williams flushed a putback dunk off a ricocheting shot, coach Billy Donovan couldn’t contain his optimism over the visible shift in the forward’s approach to the rim.
“I was very, very excited,” Donovan joked. “I almost called a timeout and had a celebration on the bench.”
Williams reached his season high within the first two minutes of the third quarter and finished with 18 points, six rebounds and two steals.
5. Young players earned crucial — and competitive — experience.
The Bulls don’t have enough veterans to rely on a solely experienced lineup in tightly contested games like Wednesday’s win. So Donovan leaned on two of his youngest players — Julian Phillips and Dalen Terry — to bolster the rotation while the Knicks continued to mount their comeback at the top of the fourth quarter. Terry and Phillips delivered crucial 3-pointers in the first six minutes of the fourth quarter, buoying the Bulls offense with LaVine on the bench.
Rookie Matas Buzelis also played a full 12 minutes that emphasized his rapidly improving comfort on the court — grabbing four rebounds off the defensive glass, feeding outlet passes to help the Bulls kickstart their offense in transition and moving off the ball to keep the floor spaced. True to form, Buzelis delivered a vicious hammer dunk off a back door cut in the second quarter the moment the Knicks rotated off him to open up space down the lane.
MATAS BUZELIS WITH THE HAMMER.@CHSN__ | @BuzelisMatas pic.twitter.com/JIviGk2TeE
— Chicago Bulls (@chicagobulls) November 14, 2024
Donovan has consistently emphasized defense as the main area of growth for Buzelis, who delivered three blocks in the first half. While he is still struggling with screen navigation and on-ball defense, Buzelis is clearly picking up important cues for his off-ball defending, which will continue to help the rookie gain more playing time.
He also experienced an important rite of passage for any NBA player — being actively heckled by legendary director and Knicks superfan Spike Lee, who came out of his sideline seat and slightly onto the court to vehemently protest a foul called on Buzelis in the first half.
