At times, the Chicago Bulls still play like a team getting to know one another.
For a flash in the second quarter of Tuesday’s 128-117 loss to the New York Knicks, it seemed as if they didn’t know each other at all.
Andre Drummond poked the ball free on the perimeter. Torrey Craig snatched up the loose ball and took off toward the Bulls’ hoop. Without a single Knicks defender in the area, Craig tossed the ball upward, letting it kiss off the backboard as he bounded toward the rim.
And — inexplicably, infuriatingly — Drummond followed.
The pair collided at the rim, the ball bouncing everywhere except into the net as Drummond and Craig crashed into each other and then to the ground. That snapshot of both players with their hand on the ball, eyes wide with focus, captured the truth of this season the Bulls — always close to moments of joy, always stumbling just a second too soon.
Coach Billy Donovan called a timeout immediately, laying into Craig and his teammates until the players urged him: we need to move on.
“To me, it was just really disappointing,” Donovan said. “There was a lot of self-induced things that I thought we contributed to — not only that play but other plays that maybe weren’t as loud as that — but that play was disappointing to me.”
Craig shrugged off his decision to attempt a flashy play, accepting blame but adding that he wasn’t bothered by the play after it happened. But guard Coby White acknowledged that in a game riddled with miscues and miscommunication, the Bulls gave themselves little room to succeed.
“We did some really dumb stuff tonight,” White said. “Everybody one through five, not just (Torrey) Craig, so we’re not gonna sit here and single him out. We’re a team. It was all self-induced. We all know that as a team, just the little stuff, the details. It’s too late in the season to be having those types of lapses. We’ve got to get our s— together for sure.”
The flubbed dunk was the embarrassing lowlight of a dismal loss for the Bulls. But what came on the ensuing play was far more disastrous — Drummond hustled back on defense, attempted to rebound an awry shot and in the process landed on an opponent’s foot.
Drummond immediately hopped to the sideline and flopped onto his stomach in evident pain, rolling over to hold his left ankle. He was removed from the court in a wheelchair and left the United Center before the end of a game wearing a boot and utilizing a mobility scooter. The severity of the injury is unclear. But with three games remaining in the regular season — and just a week left until the play-in tournament begins — the Bulls can’t afford to lose their backup big man.
It’s nothing new for the Bulls to be short-handed. Ayo Dosunmu missed the game with a right thigh contusion that could continue to impact his availability in the final week of the regular season. And the Bulls have been without Zach LaVine and Patrick Williams for the majority of the season.
But losing Drummond would strip the Bulls of their last remaining sense of versatility in size, forcing coach Billy Donovan to either play starting center Nikola Vučević at an increased rate of minutes or rely on undersized forwards like Javonte Green and Torrey Craig. On Tuesday, Donovan also experimented with leaning on undrafted rookie Adama Sanogo to plug in for Drummond’s minutes. The rookie recorded one rebound and one turnover in five minutes.
Even with Drummond, the Bulls defense struggled to slow the force of Jalen Brunson and the Knicks offense. Brunson dropped 15 points in the opening quarter, finishing with 45 points on 13-for-24 shooting.
The Bulls couldn’t counter with high-volume shooting of their own despite efforts from White, who broke the Bulls single-season franchise record for 3-pointers after poking away a steal and splashing a 3 to close the first half. White surpassed LaVine’s record with 205 3-pointers on the season. He finished with 24 points while DeMar DeRozan led scoring with 34 points and Vučević added 26 points.
This was the second of three matchups between the Bulls and the Knicks in the final six games of the regular season. The Bulls won the first of those games in a 108-100 victory last Friday.
Despite dropping the loss to New York, the Bulls maintained their positioning in the ninth seed after the Atlanta Hawks lost in double-overtime to the Miami Heat. This means the Bulls are still set to host the first game of the play-in tournament against Atlanta next Wednesday. With a one-game lead — and two pending matchups against non-playoff teams — the Bulls have a strong path to finish with the ninth seed in hand.
The Bulls will end the regular season on Sunday in New York with their final game against the Knicks, which will tip off at noon.
