As recently as Monday night, the Chicago Bulls’ chances of figuring into the Eastern Conference’s playoff picture seemed to slot in somewhere between slim and none. They’d lost four straight — including both ends of a home-and-home to the cratering New York Knicks, and a 22-point blowout at the hands of the lottery-bound Orlando Magic — to fall to 36-37, three games out of the East’s No. 8 spot with nine games left.
And yet, as they head into the weekend, the Bulls remain alive, thanks largely to their reserves’ refusal to go down without a fight and to some timely dysfunction from their scheduled competition. On Tuesday, Chicago benefited from the Indiana Pacers’ predilection toward fourth-quarter collapses; on Thursday, it was the Houston Rockets’ turn to do the Bulls an inconsistency-based solid.
Two nights after erasing a 20-point deficit to knock off the (admittedly LeBron James-less) Cleveland Cavaliers, the Rockets turned in the latest installment in their season-long struggle to string together quality performances, allowing the Bulls to climb out of a 14-point third-quarter hole and pull off a come-from-behind 103-100 win. Chicago outscored Houston by 17 points over the final 16 1/2 minutes of regulation, ripping off a 32-20 fourth quarter behind strong play from its second unit, which was fueled once again by the hot shooting of power forward Nikola Mirotic.
Mirotic poured in 28 points off the bench for the second straight game, making eight of his 14 field-goal attempts and shooting 5-for-10 from 3-point land to help All-Star shooting guard Jimmy Butler (21 points, eight rebounds, six assists, two steals) carry the scoring load.
On a night when Taj Gibson was sidelined by a fractured rib and Derrick Rose was limited to 12 scoreless minutes by his hyperextended left elbow and didn’t play after halftime, Chicago’s reserve corps once again came up big, outscoring the Rocket bench 67-31. Doug McDermott chipped in 15 points, nine rebounds and three assists in 37 minutes, including a big second-effort putback that gave the Bulls a one-point lead near the halfway mark of the fourth quarter. Rookie center Cristiano Felicio, veteran swingman E’Twaun Moore and trade-deadline acquisition Justin Holiday nearly equaled Houston’s final-frame offensive output by themselves, scoring 18 fourth-quarter points on 6-for-8 shooting.
On the other end, the flow Houston had found through three quarters — James Harden leading the way, Patrick Beverley and Trevor Ariza providing secondary shooting and playmaking, and wild-card acquisition Michael Beasley chipping in off the bench — all but disappeared. The Bulls dug in defensively and the Rockets obliged, with the offense devolving into a series of isolations and the Rockets struggling to handle Chicago’s attack when the Bulls had the chance to push off stops. Houston went more than five minutes without a field goal and shot just 6-for-21 in the fourth.
With the loss, the Rockets fall to 37-39 and drop to ninth place in the West behind the Dallas Mavericks and Utah Jazz, both of whom are a half-game up at 37-38. (Dallas actually moves up to the No. 7 spot for the moment, since they hold the tiebreaker as a result of having a better in-conference record than the Jazz, who sit eighth.) With the win and another Pacers loss, this time to Orlando, Chicago moves just one game behind Indiana for the East’s No. 8 seed, and owns the head-to-head tiebreaker over the Pacers after Tuesday’s win.
That said, it still seems likelier that the Rockets crack the postseason than that the Bulls wind up there. Houston’s got the West’s second-easiest go-home slate, finishing up with the Phoenix Suns, Los Angeles Lakers, Minnesota Timberwolves and Sacramento Kings, and has a chance to put the injury-plagued Mavs behind the 8-ball by clinching their head-to-head series with a win in Dallas next Wednesday. Indy’s still got an easier closing schedule than Chicago, and with Gibson and Rose ailing, Fred Hoiberg’s going to have to hope he can continue counting on monster games from his reserves.
Given the form both teams have shown over the course of the season, it wouldn’t surprise anyone in the slightest if their fortunes flip-flopped at least another couple of times over the final two weeks of the season. For the time being, though, the Rockets continue to look uncomfortable with prosperity and unable to function unless they’re attempting to make a frantic comeback, and Chicago seems to have rediscovered at least a bit of the grit that characterized the previous, more successful iteration of Bulls basketball.