CHICAGO – If the short-handed Lakers had been pummeled on Sunday night, few would have been surprised.
But no: Losing six players to the NBA’s COVID-19 protocols and Anthony Davis to injury in the span of a few short days made the team fired up and feisty, giving the Chicago Bulls plenty of trouble for 48 minutes at United Center.
It made them just competitive enough for heartbreak.
The final sequences of a 115-110 loss to the Bulls will sting because winning was frustratingly within reach. But the Lakers (16-15) couldn’t stop DeMar DeRozan (38 points) from dropping another monster game on them, and they couldn’t keep Chicago from offensive rebounds that gave them back-breaking second chances.
There was still hope even with 15 seconds left that some game-tying magic was left in these Lakers, who won an overtime game in Dallas that now feels eons ago. But Carmelo Anthony (21 points) and Wayne Ellington each missed 3-pointers that would have tied the game in the last 10 seconds.
“A couple rebounds here down the stretch, we might be looking at a different result,” Anthony said. “But some things are just out of our control that we can’t control.”
Even though being competitive under their circumstances felt a bit like playing with house money, losing it at the end was crushing. LeBron James, who led with 31 points, declined to speak to the media after an evening that saw him fuming at the Bull’s offensive boards and the Lakers’ shortcomings on defense, where they had to make do without Davis.
It’s a scene that could be easily repeatable in the coming weeks: There’s no way to anticipate who might test into the league’s protocols, or who might test out of them. The Lakers had to do a lot on the fly in their 1-2 road trip, and didn’t even finish out the trip with their head coach on the sideline.
Lead assistant David Fizdale temporarily took on the duties of Frank Vogel, who tested into the protocols Sunday morning. Vogel sent Fizdale texts and halftime in postgame to fill the staff in on his insights.
“It’s Hunger Games,” Fizdale said. “You just adapt.”
The Lakers’ biggest change was playing small without Davis or Dwight Howard, who has missed the last three games in protocols. While DeAndre Jordan started, he played just under 21 minutes – the rest of the time, the Lakers had James or Anthony playing center. One bright side: Trevor Ariza was able to play his first game as a Laker since the 2009 championship, but he was limited in his effectiveness in just 15 minutes.
The small-ball strategy worked well: James bullied his way into the paint for buckets against Chicago’s competent but undersized defenders. The spacing also allowed Russell Westbrook to get drives into the paint, finishing on reverses or even against triple teams for a hard-fought 20 points. As late as 3:58 left in the fourth quarter, the Lakers had a slim 3-point lead.
There were two key disadvantages the Lakers could not overcome: They had 20 turnovers, which led directly to 29 Bulls points. Given that they were playing with relative newcomers like Chaundee Brown and Isaiah Thomas, there was bound to be more mix-ups than usual.
But even though they were also vertically challenged by virtue of losing Davis, Fizdale thought they could have shown more fight on the glass. The Bulls got 16 offensive rebounds, an Achilles heel that has kept re-emerging.
“I still have visuals in my mind but too many times the shot goes up and we just stand and turn and watch,” he said. “We’ve got to go find bodies, especially when we got our small ball group out there. They cannot spectate.”
Given so many chances, DeRozan helped bring it home. Like his first match-up with the Lakers, he thrashed them with his mid-range shooting and exploited every defensive flaw he could. He scored 19 points in the fourth quarter alone, and did a ton of his damage at the free throw line (16 for 17).
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James had a clean block of DeRozan for a go-ahead bucket with a minute left, but the Bulls rebounded twice to give him another look on a pull-up in James’ face seconds later. After Westbrook narrowly missed a lay-up on a drive against Nikola Vucevic (19 points), Lonzo Ball got the rebound and got the ball back to DeRozan.
The Lakers fouled to put him at the line despite that the Bulls’ shot clock would have still expired before the end of regulation. DeRozan made both free throws, giving Chicago a 113-110 lead with 15 seconds left. Fizdale said he was torn on the decision.
“Do I have enough time to get a shot on the back end of this if they run it all the way down, or do I just take the foul now and live with if he makes both or misses one and now we’ve got a lot more time to execute on the back end?” he posed rhetorically. “It ended up obviously, he made both of them but we still got two really good looks from three to tie the game.”
Unlike Ellington’s shot in Dallas, these looks didn’t fall. And now the Lakers head back home, uncertainty clouding the next week of the season and beyond.