NEW YORK – Zach LaVine didn’t want to look.
He knew the man taking the last second shot, and he knew the man’s clutch gene.
Jalen Brunson guarded by Patrick Williams, horn is about to sound, fadeaway right corner for the one-point win?
“That hung on the rim too long,” LaVine said with a laugh afterward. “When I was looking at the ball on the rim I just turned around. Then I heard the crowd reaction, ‘Awwww …’ ‘Oh shoot we won.’ I thought it was going in.”
It did everything but, and just like that the Bulls might have wasted a one-time 22-point third-quarter lead, but held off Brunson, Tom Thibodeau and the Knicks to escape with the 124-123 win.
“Sometimes the ball goes that way,” LaVine said. “We did a really good job. The first half we went on a run, and even the third quarter we did a really good job in the first five minutes of playing good, but they’re a really good team, a playoff team, and it’s hard to keep a team down.”
The Bulls (5-7) found that out the hard way.
Billy Donovan couldn’t have asked for a better first half, watching his players not only control the pace but defend in the halfcourt, where the Knicks (5-6) are usually lethal.
All of that was on display in the final 4:40 of that opening half, starting with a LaVine finger roll off of a fast break. By the time LaVine connected on a free throw off the technical and then nailed another three off the break, the lead was 12 for the visiting team.
A LaVine turnaround fadeaway with 1:44 left made it a 14-point lead, eventually sending the Bulls into the halftime locker room up 12.
What could possibly go wrong?
Very little to start the third, as Donovan’s crew quickly turned a 12-point lead into a 22-point lead within four minutes thanks to more LaVine.
Then the slippage started, as the Knicks used the final three minutes of that third quarter to completely flip the game, cutting the deficit to five heading into the fourth.
“It was just us guarding the ball,” Donovan said of the blown lead in the third. “Like at some point there is no coverage or scheme. You just got to sit down and guard one-on-one a little bit, have a little resistance. It was like straight-line drives.”
When it wasn’t a straight take to the rim in New York’s comeback it was Karl-Anthony Towns scoring in the paint and beyond the three-point line, finishing with a game-high 46 points and going 18-of-30 from the field.
But the quiet hero of the night – especially considering the crazy finish – might have been Coby White. After Brunson gave the Knicks the lead on a lay-up with 4.1 seconds left, Donovan called a timeout. Josh Giddey didn’t like the initial inbound action, but the inbound found its way into White’s hands, who was fouled by Josh Hart on a three-point attempt.
All White did was calmly step to the line and make all three to give the Bulls the one-point cushion. That set the stage for Williams to get switched onto Brunson and the Knicks to find heartbreak with Brunson’s heroics touching every part of the rim before rolling out.
“When Brunson kind of came off (the pick) it was a hard screen … I thought Patrick did a good job,” Donovan added of the last play. “Listen, with three seconds, (Brunson) gets the ball, he’s got that fadeaway. We were fortunate it didn’t go in. It rolled around and if it did go in no one would have been surprised. Everybody was probably more surprised it rolled out, right?”
LaVine sure was.
