CHICAGO (670 The Score) – In a reversal from last season, the Bulls have been abysmal in close games early this season.
The latest example came as Chicago fell 115-111 to New Orleans on Wednesday evening at the United Center, where Pelicans star forward Brandon Ingram went off for 14 points in the final 5:07 to will his team to victory one tough jump shot at a time. Bulls star DeMar DeRozan (game-high 33 points) nearly matched Ingram shot for shot, only to miss a floater with 25.8 seconds left that could've tied the game and then fumble the ball off his leg for a turnover on an inbounds pass with 17.4 seconds left as Chicago trailed by three with another chance to tie.
"It sucks," DeRozan said. "It's frustrating. It's frustrating as hell, just not giving ourselves an opportunity to see what could've happened. I think I had a turnover out of bounds that led to them getting out. It was just a couple key mental mistakes just alone, my part. It's just frustrating when we don't give ourselves the chance to see what happened by making mistakes. This one is going to eat away at me all night, for sure."
While DeRozan made several references to self-inflicted mistakes by the Bulls in the final minutes, he and coach Billy Donovan also were displeased with the officiating. DeRozan believed he was fouled on his floater attempt with 25.8 seconds left – "It is what it is," he said – while Donovan went even stronger with a more general assessment of how DeRozan is officiated.
Earlier in the game, DeRozan picked up his fourth technical foul of the young season, tying him for the NBA lead. Entering Wednesday, his 8.6 free-throw attempts per game were seventh in the NBA.
"My feeling is, just being there close to the situation, there's fouls that need to be called that are not being called," Donovan said of DeRozan's technical fouls and how he's officiated. "And I think what ends up happening sometimes, and I've had some guys that are high-volume guys that get fouled, like having Russell Westbrook for four years (in Oklahoma City), he was a guy that got fouled a lot. And sometimes those guys that score like, that are high-foul guys, a lot of times those calls aren't made. And I do think that he's getting hit in certain situations. I'm not saying they're all shooting fouls. I think what happens over a period of time … when you feel like there's calls being missed and you're getting hit, after a while that kind of builds up. That would be my response to that. I think he regathered himself, but I think there is times when he's going in there and you can see clearly there's contact, and I think he could get calls. The officials are not going to be perfect. He's not going to get every single call, but I think a lot of times when guys are high-volume free-throw shooters and have been high-volume free-throw shooters, generally probably more often than not, those guys should probably even be going to the line even more."
With the setback to the Pelicans, the Bulls are now 0-6 in games in which the margin has been within five points in the final five minutes. In that clutch time as defined by NBA.com, the Bulls are shooting 39.5% overall and 21.4% on 3-pointers while committing seven turnovers across 22 minutes in such situations.
"I can't sit there and say it's been one thing," Donovan said of those struggles while citing defensive rebounding, turnovers and a lack of organization at times as reasons that came to mind.
"Some of the end-of-game stuff has been a variety of a few things that has come back to bite us a little bit."
The Bulls fell to 6-7 with their loss. They've been competitive every single night save for one clunker in the first 13 games, and now their focus has turned to finishing better.
"We made a lot of mistakes," DeRozan said. "We competed. We did what we were supposed to do, taking their guys out of rhythm, but we got to close it out. We got to understand no matter how those guys are playing throughout three-and-a-half quarters, they're going to try to turn it up the last five minutes of the game. And that's when we've got to come together even more, learn the lesson. It sucks to lose, but sometimes you need this to really push you to be more motivated and understand how to close out games."
Cody Westerlund is a sports editor for 670TheScore.com and covers the Bulls. Follow him on Twitter @CodyWesterlund.
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