Once again, Bulls can't deal with solid competition
A battle for first place in the East featured one-sided competition.
The Miami Heat blitzed the Bulls from the opening tip and rolled to a convincing 112-99 victory Monday in South Florida. As good as they've been this season, the Bulls dropped to 0-3 against the Heat and 2-12 against the NBA's best, teams with a winning percentage better than .600.
But rather than feel deflated by a brutal showing, Bulls coach Billy Donovan and all-star DeMar DeRozan took an optimistic angle after the game.
"I think the biggest thing for me is we have to get battle-tested in some of these games, and we just don't have a lot of guys that have this kind of experience," Donovan said. "I think it's really good for us - I look at it that way. It's not concerning as much as it's shining a light on what really goes into this."
It is true that while DeRozan has plenty of playoff experience, and newcomer Tristan Thompson and the injured Alex Caruso have won championships, the Bulls have a number of players who haven't even been to the playoffs. Or guys like Javonte Green and Derrick Jones Jr., who are playing more prominent roles than they have in the past.
"Sometimes you need adversity to really see what you're made of and how hard it really is to win in this league," DeRozan said. "It's one thing to be good, it's another thing to really win. We see it when we play against a team like tonight - well-coached, gelled, played together. Just two years ago they were in the Finals. So we learn a lot from that."
Miami set the defensive tone early with a flurry of steals in the first quarter, mostly from ex-Bull Jimmy Butler. Just like Saturday against Memphis, the Bulls started the game with a big deficit, falling behind this time 24-11.
There was a brief stretch where it looked like the Bulls might get back in the game when they got within 6 points late in the first half, then scored the first bucket of the third quarter to trail by 7. But they struggled to score and the defense was flummoxed every time Miami set a screen.
The Heat ended up with balanced scoring and beat the Bulls soundly at the 3-point line and free-throw line. The win puts Miami (41-21) two games ahead of the Bulls (39-23) for first place in the East.
"I made a comment coming out of the all-star break that what we've done up to this point is not good enough," Donovan said. "It's just not and this is my point. We're starting to see it now. We need this to really become battle-tested and almost become hardened."
DeRozan finished with 18 points, which was his lowest-scoring game since he had 17 against Golden State on Jan. 14. His streak of 10 straight 30-point games came to an end. Zach LaVine led the Bulls with 22 points.
The Heat know how to execute a helping defense, so DeRozan saw all kinds of arms in front of him, but Miami was able to rotate into position when the Bulls tried to move the ball. On the other end, once Bulls defenders got caught up in a screen, it usually resulted in an easy layup.
"We understand a lot of the teams we've been facing, they've kind of been through it," DeRozan said. "Most of us haven't. We haven't been healthy. We've been trying to figure out a lot. So with that, we understand what we need to do, how we need to be better and I've got the utmost confidence."
The Bulls will get a couple days to relax in the warm weather before facing another back-to-back with a game in Atlanta on Thursday, followed by Milwaukee at home Friday.
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