Matas Buzelis lunged toward the dunker spot with the urgency of a sprinter in a foot race.
Deep in the third quarter, the Bulls were on a roll. Buzelis wanted to extend it. So he dodged past a defender and stuck out his hand, rocketing straight toward Milwaukee Bucks forward Bobby Portis as he rose up to flush the ball toward the rim with one hand.
Buzelis didn’t know the Bulls were on a double-digit run. Josh Giddey was equally clueless minutes later when he lofted a lob for Nick Richards to slam down with one hand minutes later, notching the guard’s 10th assist of the game and eighth triple-double of the season. The entire team remained blissfully unaware of their 27-0 run until after the game.
That stretch of unanswered points from the third to fourth quarter defined the 120-97 win over the Bucks at the United Center on Sunday. Giddey and Tre Jones scorched their path to the basket. Collin Sexton stepped into a secondary role. Leonard Miller emerged from the bench to contribute 15 points and four assists. Without Giannis Antetokounmpo, the Bucks couldn’t muster any luck or any counter. And by the time Buzelis’ 3-point shot began to heat up, the game was packed up — and an 11-game losing streak was effectively snapped.
“Any time you go on a losing streak like that, every game becomes more and more desperate,” Giddey said. “But I thought during the losing streak — obviously wins are what you want, but there were steps in the right direction. I thought we did a lot of good things and tonight that all came together for the first time.”
There is a particular relief in dodging the worst type of history. The Bulls basked in it Sunday.
The win came on the heels of the worst month in the Bulls’ franchise history, a winless February that capped off an 11-game losing streak. Buzelis jokingly quipped that breaking the streak was a “top-two moment” in his life, but even that sarcasm couldn’t fully obscure the giddiness of finally shaking off those losses.
The Bulls suffered two true low points in the franchise’s modern history after the Jordan era — the 67 losses of the 2000-01 season and the 60 losses of the 2018-19 season. This iteration of the Bulls will not surpass either of those teams in losses. Even if they somehow lost the rest of their remaining games, the Bulls would still finish three games shy of the 60-loss mark.
Still, this most recent slump was inching this team closer to the annals of franchise infamy. The Bulls had not lost this many games in a row since February 2001. They were only five losses away from the all-time franchise record of 16 consecutive losses.
As the losing skid broke double digits, the Bulls remained insistent that it wasn’t a reflection of the truth. That even with the trade deadline turnover and the injuries and the mistakes, they weren’t this bad.
“It’s different for everybody,” Buzelis said. “We have basically a new team. Guys haven’t played in the rotations. Guys don’t know how to rotate on defense. It’s all a little different than where they came from. They had to learn that and adjust. It’s all a process. We took some great strides today.”
Column: Chicago Bulls say good riddance to February, while sports fans welcome the madness of March
Minutes into Sunday’s win, Giddey slammed on the brakes.
Giddey had already done the hard part. He transitioned a play seamlessly from a fast break into a half-court set, dropping his center of gravity to bury his shoulder into a defender and carve himself into the paint with the depth of two dribbles. But when he lifted his head, he was staring at thin air.
The moment Giddey began to press into the paint, guard Collin Sexton reacted. But instead of pulling back behind the perimeter for the dump-off pass that Giddey was planning to let loose, Sexton had curled his way down toward the baseline to clear out, leaving a painful absence in the space where the point guard anticipated his teammate to stand.
Giddey stopped, the ball cradled in his palm, shouting while jerking his hand in the rough direction of his intended pass. But by that point, it was already too late. The play had died. The last gasp of oxygen evaporated the moment Giddey dug his heels into the hardwood, abandoning the play in his frustration.
Sexton jogged back out to the perimeter to collect an exasperated pass from Giddey, who reset himself into downhill motion off the ball. The Bulls simply had to start again.
This is the new reality for the Bulls. After losing half of the original roster to trades and a few more bodies to injury, this haphazardly assembled roster is not comfortable playing together. They stop and start. Fall out of bounds with the ball still in their hands. Throw passes five inches over the outstretched fingers of their teammates. Stumble out of rhythm in their attempts to make it to the rim. Over the last 11 losses, the Bulls averaged 18.2 turnovers per game. Their 18 turnovers on Sunday were simply par for the course.
This stretch of this type of season could easily adopt a tone of futility. There is little reason to believe that most of these players will return to this roster next season. Players like Buzelis and Giddey brush this off, emphasizing their commitment toward bettering the team through the final weeks of the season.
But still, the fact of it lingers. Little of what is built in these final weeks of the season will remain next season. The Bulls are fighting for something fleeting, ephemeral. All of this will pass.
Yet perhaps the most redeemable quality of this Bulls team is the fact that they keep starting over. It might not work. Still, they must try again. And again. And in spare moments, that effort is rewarded with the relief of a spark like Sunday’s win.
“They’re working hard,” coach Billy Donovan said. “They’re trying hard. I’ve never had a problem with their effort at all. … To see them stick with it for a whole month like this — and to go through the struggles of that — I just appreciate the way they’ve stayed together.”
An argument could be made that the Bulls should have lost Sunday’s game — no matter the cost.
The Bucks are their closest competitors in the NBA draft lottery standings, sitting only two games ahead of the Bulls in the Eastern Conference standings. A loss to the Bucks would have given the Bulls a comfortable margin to both miss the play-in tournament and maintain their standings as the ninth overall team in the draft lottery. Instead, they teeter dangerously on the precipice separating useful losing and meaningless mediocrity.
But players and coaches (and, quite honestly, fans) don’t want to talk about silver linings or draft standings. They just want to win basketball games. And on Sunday — despite any long-term consequences — the Bulls got their wish for a moment.
