Coby White is not a dunker.
Before Monday’s 114-110 win over the San Antonio Spurs, the guard had attempted only two dunks this year. Last season, he dunked only 14 times. It’s just not a part of his bag that White likes to dig into often. Maybe, he joked after the win, he’d try it more if he had the athleticism of Zach LaVine or the wingspan of Patrick Williams.
But in the final 30 seconds, with only a one-point lead over the Spurs, White didn’t have another choice. So he put his head down and charged the rim. And if the tallest man in the NBA was in his way? Well, all the better.
Victor Wembanyama had already blocked three of White’s shots before the final minute of Monday’s win, but that didn’t slow the guard’s approach. It couldn’t. After sinking into a 19-point deficit in the first half, the Bulls couldn’t collapse at the rim just because all 7-foot-3 of Wembanyama was waiting.
In the locker room at halftime, the entire Bulls roster shared the same sentiment: we gotta do something.
For guards like White, that something meant attacking the rim. Even if he got blocked. And in the final minute, that fearlessness paid off twofold.
White slung an up-and-under shot to arch all the way over Wembanyama’s 8-foot wingspan, giving the Bulls the lead with 47 seconds remaining. And 32 seconds later, White took an even more aggressive approach — forcing Jeremy Sochan to jump off a pump fake, crushing the ball in an angry staccato and launching himself skyward.
Wembanyama rotated over a second late. That didn’t matter either. For White, the poster-perfect shot — his arm cocked back, Wembanyama’s body crashing into his torso, the ball already searing downward toward the rim — was the only option to clinch the game.
“I just told myself the next time I was gonna go, I was gonna try to dunk it,” White said. “I knew when I was driving, if I was going to lay it in, finger roll it, anything, he was gonna block it. So I just was like — I got to dunk it. I just wanted to make sure that I got the basket.”
Wemby vs. Vooch
The toughest matchup of the game was between Wembanyama and Bulls center Nikola Vučević. From the start, it was a challenge for the veteran — Wembanyama blocked him twice in the first four minutes, enforcing his will under and around the rim.
Wembanyama did not affect Vučević too deeply on the offensive side of the ball. The veteran extended his consistent scoring, tallying 24 points despite having an off night of 2-for-9 shooting from behind the 3-point arc. But Wembanyama proved equally vexing on the other end of the court, slinging four 3-pointers to tally 23 points.
In the final two minutes of the second quarter, Vučević chased Wembanyama out to the 3-point line, staying doggedly latched onto the center’s hip until the shot clock expired. But in the final half-second, Wembanyama pulled up and fired off a 3-pointer that rattled through the rim — his second of the night. Vučević could only drop his arms and tip his head back in stupefied frustration, jogging back to answer with his own 3-pointer several possessions later.
Wembanyama closed the game with an identical play in the final 10 seconds. This time, the shot rattled out. And for Vučević, that was victory enough — forcing Wembanyama into his worst shot for the game-winner.
Zach LaVine brought the highlights
It’s hard to fly under the radar while consistently putting up 30 or more points, but Zach LaVine is achieving just that. The guard came just shy of a triple-double by tallying 35 points, 11 rebounds and eight assists — and threw down a few spectacle dunks of his own — to once again power the engine of the Bulls offense.
This scoring was vital on a cold night from 3-point range. The Bulls went only 13-for-39 from behind the arc — and LaVine and White combined for six of those makes. The Spurs were able to utilize Wembanyama’s overwhelming length around the basket to crash closeouts heavily, funneling the Bulls offense toward their center at the rim.
LaVine was the key spark to provide offense outside of 3-pointers, pushing the ball in transition to utilize the advantage of speed.
