As it turns out, not so much.

Dallas closed out the game on a 15-1 run as Chicago’s offense — which had been pretty darn good all game long — went into a coma. Here’s a breakdown of what happened over those final minutes:

3:40: Nate Robinson turnover (bad pass)
3:15: Kirk Hinrich missed three-pointer
2:48: Luol Deng missed three-pointer
2:47: Offensive rebound by Jimmy Butler
2:28: Hinrich turnover (traveling)
1:51: Deng missed 18-footer
1:28: Butler missed layup
1:08: Deng missed layup
0:41: Robinson missed layup
0:41: Offensive rebound by Carlos Boozer
0:41: Foul drawn by Boozer
0:41: Boozer 1-for-2 from the free throw line
0:15: Vince Carter is forced to foul Butler
0:15: Butler 0-f0r-2 at the free throw line
0:01: Robinson missed three-pointer

Turnovers. Missed jumpers. Missed layups. Missed free throws.

In summary: everything that could have gone wrong…did go wrong.

And while the Bulls were struggling to find the rim, Dirk Nowitzki was giving them the superstar treatment.

After missing a three-pointer with exactly one minute remaining, Nowitzki drilled a corner three seven seconds later to draw the Mavs to within 97-95. It was a dagger. A tired-looking Luol Deng — he played 41 minutes — went around a screen instead of fighting through it. That was all the daylight Nowitzki needed. You can’t go around a screen on somebody like Dirk Nowtizki. I’m pretty sure Lu knows that. But fatigue can affect decision making. It sure seemed to in this case.

After Boozer missed one of his two foul shots, Nowitzki spun baseline and knocked down a 12-footer over Butler to move Dallas to within 98-97.

As noted above, Butler could have given the Bulls a two or three-point lead had he just knocked down one or both of his free throws. But he didn’t. Obviously, that had a major effect on how the Bulls defended the Maverick’s final offensive possession.

Dallas was rotating the ball and the Bulls were switching like crazy. Nowtizki — who was stationed outside the three-point line but to the left of center — found Carter at the top of the key. Robinson had to run all the way over from the left side of the court to try and contain Carter’s drive, only little Nate slipped and fell. Carter took a few clunky steps in the direction of the basket, which forced a mini-collapse by Deng. Carter made the right move, hitting a suddenly open Nowitzki, who naturally hit the three.

Said Chicago coach Tom Thibodeau: “We had a slip, and we were in a scramble. I thought there may have been a travel there, but that’s the way it goes.”

Now the Bulls were down two points with 2.9 seconds left. And we all know how that turned out.

Of course, had Butler hit both free throws, the Bulls could have simply defended the three at all costs. That would have been the only shot that could have beaten them…and this squad is pretty darn good at defending the three (currently fourth in opponents three-point percentage). Even if Butler had knocked down only one of his foul shots, the Bulls could have covered the long-range shooters, forced Dallas to hit a contested two, and the worst-case scenario would have been overtime.

But things didn’t work out that way. And Butler was crushed.

Said Butler: “I’m not going to say I was nervous, because I was really confident. I’m supposed to be a good free throw shooter, [but I] missed two. I don’t care what anybody says; that’s the reason we lost that game. I don’t care what my teammates say; I know better. If I would have made those two, we would have been up three, and then we just make them go to the basket. This one’s on me without a doubt, and that’s that.”

I feel for the kid. But you know, it’ll make him stronger. I bet next time he’s in this situation, he knocks ’em down.

Still, this loss wasted a terrific offensive performance by a Bulls team that doesn’t have many of those. They finished with an Effective Field Goal Percentage of 55.0 and scored at a rate of 112.5 points per 100 possessions (per Basketball-Reference). Carlos Boozer (25 points, 11-for-16, 11 rebounds), Luol Deng (25 points, 10-for-17, 7 boards) and Nate Robinson (25 points, 7-for-7 on threes, 6 assists) were all on fire.

Unfortunately, Nowtizki (35 points, 14-for-17, 5-for-6 from downtown, 7 rebounds, 7 assists) was absolutely unstoppable.

Said Robinson: “He was on fire. It was like a video game.”

There’s no time to rue the one that got away though. The Bulls face the Pistons tonight.

Extras:
Recap, Box Score, Advanced Box Score, Play-by-Play, Shot Chart.

The post A punch in the gut: Mavericks 100, Bulls 98 appeared first on Bulls By The Horns.

Stats from Basketball-Reference

Mavericks Injury Report:
Dirk Nowitzki: out (knee)

Overview:
Two teams struggling without their stars (Dirk Nowitzki is still out after having knee surgery) face off as Chicago can take their first step away from that terrible loss tonight when the Mavericks visit town. Luckily for the Bulls starters, Chicago had a day off between games, because they are probably in line for a lot of minutes again tonight.

Coming to Chicago to play used to be something to fear for opponents. The Bulls were 26-7 last season at home and 36-5 in 2010-2011. So far this year, they are just 3-4 in the United Center in the early going. Dallas hasn’t been performing well away from home though, as they are 2-5 on the road this year.

The Mavs are also on the second night of a back-to-back, after losing to the Sixers by two. Dallas was 13-9 last season playing on no rest. That was the seventh best winning percentage on the second night of back-to-backs. They are 1-2 on those types of games this year.

Chris Kaman went 9-13 for 20 points and Elton Brand added 17 points off the bench against his former team as Dallas fell in Philly. Shawn Marion added 17 points and eight rebounds, while O.J. Mayo chipped in 11 points, well below his season average of 20, along with five boards and seven assists. Dallas committed eight turnovers in the fourth quarter.

Chicago’s next game comes against the Sixers on Saturday night.

The Bulls seem to be getting the Mavs at the right time. Dallas is 3-7 over their last ten games, and has dropped two straight, after starting the season 4-1. They are 21^st in defensive rating, allowing 106.1 points per 100 possessions. Their offense is right in the middle of the NBA, with a 105.2 offensive rating that puts them at 15^th.

But the real Mavs’ weakness is rebounding. They rank 26^th in defensive rebounding rate (.708) and 29^th in offensive rebounding rate (.213). Chicago should own the glass tonight, having just gone up against one of the better rebounding teams in the league.

The Bulls pulled down 34 O-boards over the two games against Milwaukee and had 18 more rebounds overall than the Bucks.

According to Stats LLC, the Bulls have out-rebounded the Mavs 52.0 to39.3 over the last three meetings. The Bulls won all three of those matchups.

Chicago needs all the extra opportunities it can get, as it has fallen to 26^th in effective field goal percentage (.458).

But there are things to build off for the Bulls, even if it was a really disappointing final 18-or-so minutes. Rip Hamilton scored 30 points for the first time as a Bull. It was the first time Rip scored 30 in a game since he scored that many against the Bulls in April 2011 as a member of the Pistons.

Carlos Boozer has also put together to straight good games. Maybe he likes playing against the Bucks, but Boozer went for 22 and 19 in Saturday night’s win and then 19 and 11 on Monday. He shot 19-34 over the two games. And with that production his minutes jumped to 37.5 over the two games against Milwaukee. He’s averaging 30.3 minutes per game this season.

Boozington isn’t the only starter that is getting extra minutes. Deng sat for 42 seconds the entire game on Monday. It’s become clear Thibs doesn’t trust the bench, but Deng cannot play those types of minutes in which the Bulls, at one point, had a 27 point lead. When it’s a 20 point game, maybe sit Deng down for three minutes. His body will break down if he plays this many minutes.

That being said, there isn’t much to work with on this bench. Marco Belinelli and Nazr Mohammed have fallen out of favor faster than their shooting percentages. And that leads Thibs with Jimmy Butler, Taj Gibson and Nate Robinson off the bench. It isn’t much, but it’s all they have to work with.

Including tonight the Bulls have five winnable games coming up. They play Philly, Indy, Cleveland and Detroit over their next five. Philly doesn’t have Andrew Bynum, Indy doesn’t have Danny Granger, Cleveland doesn’t have Kyrie Irving and Detroit doesn’t have anybody.

If the Bulls want to reel off some wins, now would be a good time to start, before their schedule gets tougher in mid-December.

The post Mavericks-Bulls Preview appeared first on Bulls By The Horns.

That 12-point lead represented a 23-point turnaround from the 11-point lead Chicago had built during the second quarter. And I bet I’m not the only person who was having flashbacks to the Bulls’ third quarter massacre in San Antonio on Wednesday.

Anyway, Dirk was having one of those nights — a game-high 36 points on 15-for-26 shooting — and I was thinking that the story of this game was going to be Taj Gibson’s inability to contain Nowitzki.

Turns out the real story was Dirk’s inability to contain Taj.

Gibson, whose shooting during the first two games of the circus trip (1-for-16) was just a few degrees above absolute zero, had one of the best coming-out-of-a-slump games I’ve ever seen. The kid hustled. He fought. He scrapped. He finished with 17 points on 7-for-12 shooting and a career-best 18 rebounds. Even more impressive was the fact that 8 of those boards came on the offensive end.

Said Taj: “Coach knows I’ve been working on my jumper, but he said don’t rely on jump shots. Attack the glass and hit the boards. I’ve struggled the last two games so he challenged me.”

That’s kind of ironic, because the Taj Gibson moment of the game happened with 2:48 left in the game. The Mavericks were leading 77-76 and putting the clamps on defensively. C.J. Watson got to the rim but had his shot thoroughly blocked by former Bull Tyson Chandler. The ball ricocheted, glanced of Nowitzki and ended up in Gibson’s hands. With the shot clock about to go off, Taj let it fly over Dirk’s outstretched hands.

Boom baby.

It was the first three-point attempt of Gibson’s career. He’s now a 100 percent three-point shooter, so look out NBA.

That trey was the biggest of several big-time shots the Bulls hit during their 32-point fourth quarter. Derrick Rose converted a tough layup and then hit a 13-footer while getting fouled on the very next possession. Kyle Korver beat the shot clock with a three from almost 30 feet out. C.J. Watson buried a three-pointer off a nice pass from Joakim Noah. Noah turned an offensive board into a layup that seemed to defy the laws of physics. Korver nailed another long jumper.

But despite all those clutch shots, the game came down to who wanted it more. And don’t misunderstand me. The Mavericks brought it. They swarmed the ball and really put it to the Bulls on the defensive end. But check out the rebounding stats: Chicago won the War of the Rebounds 59-34, including 20-9 on the offensive glass. According to the Basketball-Reference box score, Chicago’s Offensive Rebounding Percentage was 44.4 percent.

In other words, the Bulls pulled down nearly half of their available offensive rebounds. The Bulls ended up scoring 25 points off those offensive boards. Oh, and Chicago outscored Dallas 42-26 in the paint.

Huge.

Noah, who had 17 rebounds himself, said: “I can’t go through the motions. I’ve got to keep going after the ball. We fought hard even when we were behind. We’re not a team that gives up.”

You know what? I’m starting to really believe that. Even looking at that third quarter collapse against the Spurs, the Bulls played well enough in that game to build a 17-point lead in the second quarter on the second night of back-to-back road games. And even after San Antonio blitzkrieged them in the third, they fought back and made the Spurs sweat out the fourth.

Then there was last night’s performance in Dallas. Big time. Just big time.

And mind you, Rose kept getting yanked in and out of the game after getting cut on the nose by Nowtizki with less than a minute left in the third quarter. I kept thinking the “Magic Johnson Rule” was going to cost the Bulls the game.

But everybody stepped up.

Sweet Play of the Night:
See Derrick dish it, then watch Luol finish it.

TrueHoop Network:
Rob Mahoney of The Two Man Game: “Reasons why the Mavericks lost their fourth game of the season: Taj Gibson (17 points, 7-12 FG, 18 rebounds), offensive rebounding (Chicago had a monstrous 44.4 offensive rebounding rate), lack of offensive balance (Dirk Nowitzki had half of the Mavs’ field goals), and divine intervention. I don’t know how else to explain the consistently bizarre occurrences that came during the dwindling seconds of seemingly every shot clock. The Bulls worked hard enough to win, but they had some help.”

Extras:
Recap, Box Score, Play-By-Play, Shot Chart, Photos.

The post Circus Trip: Bulls 88, Mavs 83 appeared first on Bulls By The Horns.

You know, a lot of people predicted that the Bulls would come back from their Western Conference road trip with an 11-game losing streak, particularly after they kicked the journey off with an overtime loss (of the “fourth-quarter collapse” variety) to the Minnesota Timberwolves. Instead, the team will return to the United Center on Tuesday for Johnny “Red” Kerr Night after a 4-3 trip that was like a walk-off homerun in the bottom of the ninth. Or, to use a more appropriate analogy, it was like a go-ahead three-pointer at the buzzer that secures a critical win.

And make no mistake: The success of this road trip was absolutely critical. Players were rebelling. The fans were angry and losing hope. Jerry Reinsdorf was ripping the team and dissing the coaching staff. Now it looks like all that drama might have been the proverbial darkness before the dawn, because instead of the disaster everyone was expecting, the Bulls pulled off their first winning roadie since Michael Jordan was preparing to make Byron Russell the most famous poster boy in NBA history. The victories over the Clippers and Kings got things rolling. Wins at Phoenix (even though the Suns are imploding) and New Orleans (even if the Hornets were missing Chris Paul, Tyson Chandler and Mo Pete) were huge. And two of their three losses came in overtime, the first requiring a season-high 39 points from Al Jefferson and the second needing Dirk Nowitzki to summon some Promethean fire.

Speaking of which: Wow. Dirk, who hit only one of his first 10 shots, went 15-for-24 the rest of the way and ended up with 44 points. That total included the 14 he scored in overtime, during which he went 5-for-7. So yeah…I guess you could say he got it going. Joakim Noah, whose eyebrows may never grow back after Nowitzki’s scorching, said: “There were times when Dirk was shooting that I was like, ‘There’s no way he’s going to shoot.’ I felt like I was right on him. And he was just making shots that I don’t think anybody in the NBA can make. He has such a different game than everybody else. It’s hard to explain unless you’re out there guarding him.”

(In the interest of maintaining the feel-good vibe the Bulls established on their road trip, I’m not going to bring up the fact that Joakim is the guy who was used like an inflatable defender — first by Jefferson, then by Yao Ming and finally by Nowiztki — in the Bulls’ three losses. Whoops. I brought it up.)

But in all fairness, Dirk wasn’t the only Dallas player who burned the Bulls. Jose Juan Barea came off the Mavericks’ bench to score 20 points, and Jason Kidd — who hadn’t hit a shot all game, by the way — drilled a three-pointer with 13 seconds left in regularion to tie the score at 97-all and (after Derrick Rose missed a running jumper) send the game to overtime. So the Bulls were one improbable (and rather unexpected) shot and a superstar scoring explosion from going 5-2 on the seven-game road trip that was supposed to end their season prematurely? All things considered, that’s not so bad.

(One other thing worth noting. The Mavs lost Jason Terry when, early in the second quarter, he broke the the fourth metacarpal in his left hand during a collision with Barea. One could suggest that Chicago failed to take advantage of his absence, but it sure seemed to me that Terry’s injury gave Dallas one of those short-term bursts of inspiration. I mean, it wasn’t until after the injury that Dirk started Hulking-out. Coincidence? I think not.)

Some other notables from the game: Ben Gordan had a team-high 28 points (not to mention a game-high-tying 5 turnovers). Tyrus Thomas continued his exceptionally strong play — five double-doubles in the last six games! — by scoring 23 points (including a triple that pulled the Bulls to within two points with three seconds left in overtime) and grabbing 12 rebounds. Derrick Rose finished with 22 points and 9 assists, but he shot poorly (11-for-25) and had four of his shots stuffed. Speaking of misdirected shooting, Luol Deng had his second straight stinker since I deemed him “back” after the Rockets game (10 points on 3-for-15 from the field). Kirk Hinrich and Andres Nocioni chipped in their usual 20+ points of the bench — Kirk scored 10 and Noc had 13 — but Hinrich added another 5 turnovers to Chicago’s gaudy total (18). And all those TOs led to 25 points going the other way. That hurt.

Beyond the numbers, the Bulls showed — yet again — that they can be exploited by a superstar (or, in the case of Jefferson, an “almost All-Star”)…and that’s something that they’re going to have to address sooner or later. (Not by trading for Amare Stoudemire, though.) But right now, I’m all for sitting back and celebrating for a couple days. The trip improved their record only slightly, but at 22-29 they’re currently tenth in the East and only two games out of the last playoff spot. And you know what? I’ll take it.

TrueHoop Network: Go check out Rob Mahoney’s recap at The Two Man Game.

Extras: Recap, Box Score, Play-By-Play, Shot Chart, Photos.

The post I’ll take it appeared first on Bulls By The Horns.