Butler, Wade Can't Do It All in Late Collapse to Hawks

Jimmy Butler and Dwyane Wade are the only reasons to pay attention to the Bulls this year.  They play the best basketball of anybody on the team and happen to be very good at what they do.  In Wednesday's game against the Atlanta Hawks, they were poised to carry the Bulls to victory by themselves.  But their supporting cast couldn't help them protect a lead that lasted almost four quarters and the Bulls lost, 119-114, for their seventh consecutive loss to the Hawks.

Though Atlanta never really went away, it seemed like its effort wouldn't be enough to stop Butler (40 points) and Wade (33 points) either.  The two combined to get the Bulls to a 110-100 lead with 3:02 left.  That's when the Hawks scored 12 unanswered points for their first lead en route to a 19-4 run that ended the game.  Not helping in the final few minutes were ill-advised 3-point attempts by a trio of Bulls bigs:  Taj Gibson, Paul Zipser and Nikola Mirotic.

All five Hawks starters, plus Tim Hardaway Jr., scored in double figures:  an effort led by Dennis Schroder's 24 points and game-high nine assists.  Paul Millsap scored 21, Thabo Sefolosha had and Hardaway poured in 17.  Dwight Howard and Kent Bazemore totaled 16 points apiece and for good measure, Howard hauled in 12 rebounds and Bazemore dished out seven assists.  Schroder and Hardaway each knocked four 3-pointers while Millsap and Sefolosha each made three.

Even more telling than the Hawks' successful reliance on the long ball was leading the Bulls, 29-18, in the assists category.  They were smarter and better offensively while making just enough defensive stops.  The Bulls, as they have done far too often this season, tried to play hero ball more than they should have and didn't run the proper offensive sets when the tough got going.  In other words, they took a crack at more challenging opportunities when they should have simplified things because nobody besides Wade and Butler was contributing much of anything.

The Bulls fell back to a game below .500 with this loss and the more we see these types of games, the greater the chance they'll finish the season at that mark.  Yet remarkably, that might still be enough to reach the playoffs in the East.  Even at 23-24, they lead Milwaukee for the conference's final spot.  Maybe reaching the postseason is all the organization cares about, but everyone and their mother knows it will just be a bandage over a wound that will continue to grow until a clear direction is determined.

The second of a three-game homestand will be played Friday against the Miami Heat.  The Bulls have won the first two meetings of the series this season and can earn the sweep with a win.  They'll need to put this latest disaster behind them though.  And for the sake of Wade's future, let's hope he lets this roll off his back as well.

Bulls More Magical Team in Orlando

The news early Tuesday revolved around Dwyane Wade indicating the rest of the Bulls' season would determine whether he'll stick around for the second year of his contract or opt out.  There was still a game against the Orlando Magic to be played though.  Regardless of if Wade has been thinking about this for awhile and just needed to get it off his chest, he didn't let it affect his play.  In fact, the Bulls put the comments behind them long enough to earn a 100-92 win.

The Bulls came out shooting poorly, but remedied that before the Magic could pull away.  From there, the teams went back and forth until the Bulls slowly extended their lead.  Though they never put it out of reach, they got to a point where they kept Orlando on the precipice between threatening the lead and completely dropping off.  Helping was the Magic missing three players due to injury, including ex-Bull D.J. Augustin.

Wade scored a game-high 21 points and recorded seven steals (tied for the most in the NBA this season), picking up right where he left off in Saturday's win over Sacramento.  Jimmy Butler was just behind with 20 points and a team-high four assists.  Cristiano Felicio continued his ascent with a double-double of 12 points and 10 rebounds.  Doug McDermott scored all 12 of his points from 3-point range.

The Bulls will take a win however they can, even with the distraction of Wade making his departure after this year a possibility.  They created opportunities for themselves and converted on just enough of them.  They also showed the defense that allows them to get the better of inferior teams, at least on certain nights.  In this case, they forced Elfrid Payton into eight of Orlando's 19 turnovers.

This and pretty much every game for the rest of the season will be critical in determining what the 35-year-old Wade does next year.  True, his mere presence has gone against the younger and more athletic route that Gar Forman pledged, but he's also provided the good basketball he has left to the city.  What would it say about a future Hall of Famer in the twilight of his career bolting from his hometown team after just one season of a two-year deal?  Whatever the answer is, Forman and John Paxson might soon learn they've been going about the way they do business all wrong.

A Wednesday meeting at the United Center with the Atlanta Hawks means a quick turnaround.  The way the Bulls start has no place to go but up after Friday's clunker.  At least the bench was ready to put the Hawks on their heels toward the end.  If the Bulls are going to play like that though, they need to do it for a full 48 minutes instead of 12.

Butler Voted as All-Star Starter

While Jimmy Butler might be downplaying Thursday's news on the outside, he's gotta be ecstatic somewhere on the inside.  For the third straight year, Butler will be joining basketball's elite at the NBA All-Star Game.  And this will be the first time he gets to start for the Eastern Conference.  Thank the revamped voting process in which fans account for half the vote's weight while players and media members get a quarter each or we'd be talking about Joel Embiid starting instead.

Before Butler heads to New Orleans for this glorified exhibition without any defense, he should soak in all the congratulations he's getting.  A player who has worked hard to elevate his game and done just that since he first came into the league deserves the spoils.  People have recognized the payoff of that work and this is Butler's reward.  It helps that he's putting up career-best averages in points (24.8) and rebounds (6.8) while also tying for his career high in assists (4.8).

It's almost cliche at this point to recount Butler's underdog tale, but it only makes you appreciate him even more.  A teenager who got kicked out of his home in the Houston suburbs and had to go to junior college to draw attention from Division I schools would probably have his basketball success stop there.  But he accepted an athletic scholarship from Marquette and played well enough for the Bulls to take him as the last first-round draft pick in 2011.  You know the rest.

This year, Butler's star keeps ascending at a time when the Bulls are uncertain about their future direction.  Without him, they wouldn't be holding onto the last playoff spot in the East, albeit with an unimpressive 21-22 record.  The presence of future Hall of Famer Dwyane Wade has helped him and the Bulls as well.  Wade has credited Butler as a major reason he bolted from Miami, so the appreciation and helpfulness goes both ways.

As time goes on, we have to appreciate Butler for the great player he is.  His hard work, the fruits of said work, the way he looks out for his team and his personality are all attributes people look for in an NBA player.  Few are able to back up their talk with walk the way Butler is.  Sure, some might not like how he called out Fred Hoiberg last year or forcibly grabbed leadership among the players, but you can't look me in the eye and expect me to believe he hasn't earned it.

This is his time and his moment.  We in Chicago should be lucky to have him.  Otherwise, we'd be watching some pretty bad basketball with little to no excitement.  Congratulations Jimmy!

More Lackluster Play as Mavericks Defeat Bulls

Sure, Taj Gibson missed Tuesday's game against the Dallas Mavericks with left ankle soreness, but would it have made much of a difference?  The Bulls have been average both with and without him in the lineup.  So you never know which team is going to show up.  The bad version showed up in this game and Dallas came away victorious, 99-98.

The Bulls scored the game's first seven points, but it was very much an up-and-down contest from there.  Though the Mavericks outscored their hosts, 30-19, in the second quarter, they couldn't pull away and it came down to the final seconds.  A Jimmy Butler field goal broke a tie with 22.8 seconds left and Dallas, electing not to call its final 20-second timeout, ran a sequence that culminated in Wesley Matthews hitting a wide-open 3.  That gave the Bulls 11.7 seconds to salvage the game, but Matthews played tight defense on Butler, so Butler passed off to birthday boy Dwyane Wade, who missed a corner shot he really wasn't ready to take.

All five Mavericks starters reached double figures.  Harrison Barnes did the most damage for the victors by scoring 20 points.  Seth Curry was close behind with 18 and joined Matthews in shooting 3 of 5 from 3-point range.  Dirk Nowitzki achieved a double-double of 10 points and 10 rebounds while Deron Williams fell an assist short, though he scored 11.

Butler was one rebound shy of a triple-double, though 24 points and 12 assists while shooting 14 of 16 from the free-throw line is pretty good.  Robin Lopez came ready to play and showed by scoring 21 and grabbing all five of his rebounds on the offensive end.  Wade, now 35, scored 17 and Michael Carter-Williams added 10.

It's baffling how the Bulls can get swept by the worst team in the Southwest, making it five losses in their past six meetings.  But this is what you get with a club that's both average and plays to the level of its competition.  The defense comes and goes on a regular basis and that's not how you win in the NBA.

The Bulls played well enough to win and most definitely should have.  Sadly, it comes down to when a team makes the big plays and even the most statistically sound game can turn out wrong if you can't shut an inferior opponent down.  Then again, it might come down to the Bulls simply not having the talent to limit playmakers in the clutch.  Until they build a team that can do that consistently, losses to teams that shouldn't happen will continue.

After two days off, the season continues Friday against the Atlanta Hawks.  That's not very comforting considering Paul Millsap just blocked a potential game-winning layup from Derrick Rose in New York on Monday.  The way this Bulls game just ended, it's practically a given he'll make a similar stop in this upcoming contest if it comes down to the end.  Oh the joys of being 21-22.

Bulls Stretched Out, Unable to Finish Wizards

No Jimmy Butler or Dwyane Wade for Tuesday's game against the Washington Wizards should have spelled disaster for the Bulls.  A team they have struggled with a lot these past few years would surely have their way with them.  Surprisingly, that trend was reversed for awhile.  But the Bulls couldn't keep it that way and lost, 101-99.

An even first quarter turned into a 10-point Bulls lead late and that ballooned to as much as 18 in the second.  But the sloppy Wizards were replaced by the cold and sloppy Bulls in the second half and it turned into a nail-biter down the stretch.  The Bulls held a two-point lead in the final minute, only to see John Wall tie it up and then, make the winning basket with five seconds left.  Doug McDermott went for the winning 3-pointer on the final possession and you can guess what happened on a night he shot 0 for 5 from beyond the arc.

Wall led all scorers with 26 points and all passers with 14 assists, which isn't a surprise given he was the only pure star playing in this game.  Bradley Beal and Markieff Morris each poured in 19, though Morris fouled out before he could play a key role in the waning minutes.  Rounding out the starting lineup were Otto Porter's 11 points and Marcin Gortat's 10.  You're probably sick of reading these names as a Bulls fan, but they'll continue to come up until the Bulls can figure them out.

Denzel Valentine came off the bench and had the game of his short NBA career, leading the Bulls with 19 points, including five 3-pointers.  Michael Carter-Willliams and Robin Lopez each hustled to score 14, Bobby Portis hit a trio of treys in a 13-point effort and Taj Gibson completed a double-double of 10 points and 12 rebounds.  Rajon Rondo, earning some of the minutes normally allotted to Wade and Butler, scored 12 and gave out six assists, which might be enough to come back into the rotation after missing the last five-and-a-half games.

While it was a better game than expected under the circumstances, the Bulls still couldn't close the deal.  It happens way too often:  they build a nice lead in the first half only to completely squander it in the second.  They earned a little bit of slack here with their two best players out, but as we've learned many times over the years, no NBA team is ever really out of a game.  That lesson showed itself yet again here.

The other cruel reminder this game served is that the Bulls have very streaky shooters.  They can get hot at just about any time, but when they really need to put an opponent away, the shots simply stop falling.  This is especially true from downtown, where they were 10 for 27.  The number of treys is impressive, but to paraphrase a certain White Sox announcer, tell me when you make those shots, not how many.

The Bulls will meet the newly found Derrick Rose and the New York Knicks at Madison Square Garden for a nationally-televised tilt on Thursday.  Wade should return to the lineup and hopefully, Butler will too.  They'll hope to avenge the loss at the United Center when these teams first met.  They almost always play well on TNT though, so don't rule out a game in which they run the Knicks right out of the World's Most Famous Arena.

Bulls Largely Ineffective Against Thunder

Talk about a day in which Jimmy Butler experienced both the highs and lows of NBA life.  Monday started well for him when he was named the Eastern Conference Player of the Week for last week.  But it wasn't known until shortly before tipoff whether an illness would keep him out against the Oklahoma City Thunder.  Though he tried to play through his condition, he was unsuccessful, making just one free throw and none of his six field-goal attempts before leaving prior to the fourth quarter of a 109-94 loss.

With Butler's condition a prevailing storyline, more drama was added when Dwyane Wade ran into Nikola Mirotic and lay flat on the court, but he walked off on his own and returned to action shortly thereafter.  Though the Thunder led for most of the contest, the Bulls kept it competitive until midway through the third quarter.  That's when the bottom fell out and Fred Hoiberg eventually emptied his bench save for Rajon Rondo, who sat during his entire bobblehead night.  By the end, many Bulls fans had turned their attention to Derrick Rose's bizarre absence from Monday's New York Knicks game.

Russell Westbrook finished one rebound shy of his latest triple-double, though 21 points and 14 assists were just as impressive.  It's become standard to talk of Westbrook in that regard.  The story for the Thunder involved centers Steven Adams and Enes Kanter.  Both lay claim to the paint with many close layups and dunks, combining to score 42 points and shoot 20-of-25 from the field.

With Butler hampered, Wade took the bulk of the on-floor responsibilities and led the Bulls with 22 points.  Michael Carter-Williams scored 15 in the latest proof that his hustle and play earned him the job of starting point guard.  Cristiano Felicio has been an asset with his athleticism and Jerian Grant is developing nicely as a shooter.  Both used those qualities and more to score 11 apiece.

This game did more expose how bad it can get for the Bulls against quality teams, especially when they're not totally healthy.  After Butler and Wade, the drop in talent on this roster is steep.  So if anyone still wants Butler traded now, just know what you'd be watching more regularly without him.  And don't say it would be beneficial in the long run because rebuilding is not as simple as the Cubs have made it out to be, especially in the NBA.

The daunting task of playing the second of a back-to-back  on the road Tuesday against the Washington Wizards became more challenging after Monday's loss.  Butler will not travel with the team, at least not to our nation's capital.  Wade won't play either so he can rest.  As optimistic as I love to be as a Bulls fan, a victory in this game couldn't be called anything except a miracle.

Bulls Get By Ailing Cavs

Sometimes in sports, it's all about catching a great team at the right time.  In Wednesday's case, the Bulls benefited from a pandemic that's hit the defending champion Cleveland Cavaliers.  Kyrie Irving missed his third straight game with a hamstring injury, Kevin Love is dealing with food poisoning and even LeBron James was a question mark until 20 minutes before tipoff thanks to a cold.  None of that mattered to the Bulls, who took it to their hosts and won, 106-94.

It initially looked like a blowout the other way might happen when the Cavaliers opened the game on a 15-2 run.  But the Bulls cut the deficit to seven at the end of the first quarter and from there, commanded most of the contest.  A hot offense outscored Cleveland by 13 in the second quarter and got the lead up to 17 in the third.  The Cavs, led by James' game-high 31 points, made a final push in the fourth and got to within one, but that came during a stretch in which Jimmy Butler scored 10 consecutive points for the Bulls to put the game away.

Butler, fresh off his 52-point performance against Charlotte on Monday, was considerably colder at first, missing nine of his first 11 shots from the field.  Luckily, it doesn't matter so much how you perform as when you do it.  He scored 14 of his team-high 20 points in the final frame.  It was just in time to be one of four Bulls with three treys in the game.

Taj Gibson shot 9-of-10 from the field to end up not far Butler with 18 points.  Doug McDermott made all six of his field-goal attempts in the second quarter en route to a 17-point game.  The good version of Nikola Mirotic showed up and scored 16.  Michael Carter-Williams started again while scoring 13 and Dwyane Wade added 10.

Once again, Rajon Rondo was left on the bench.  The longer this goes on, the more it's worth questioning what exactly his role will be from here on out.  Not even Rondo himself knows as a meeting with Gar Forman and John Paxson answered no questions.  For now, all he can do is support his team from the sidelines while perhaps realizing he's becoming more expendable.

People won't look at this as a defining win for the Bulls because of the fewer Cavs superstars they had to face.  But at a time when they desperately need wins to make up for a bad December, they'll take them even if it means kicking a top dog when it's down.  They almost always show up against great teams on national TV anyway, so as far as they were concerned, this was no different.  And if you're going to stay mediocre, you might as well do it while beating championship contenders.

The Bulls welcome the second-best team in the East to the United Center, the Toronto Raptors, on Saturday.  It will be the first time these teams meet this season after the Bulls swept all four games a year ago.  Will the team that represents our northern neighbors have better luck this time around?  Or are the Bulls in their heads, as is often the case when you just can't top a team you should be all accounts?