ATLANTA \u2014 Zach LaVine lay on the training table after the game Thursday night, draped in towels and voicing disbelief.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat the [expletive] just happened?\u201d he said, half frustrated, half trying to lighten the mood. He remembered feeling like a tidal wave was building, and once it hit there was no getting out of its way.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s not far off.<\/p>\n
LaVine gave the Bulls (13-18) a seemingly insurmountable 17-point lead with a three-pointer at the 6:32 mark of the third quarter, then spent the next 3\u00bd minutes drowning with his teammates as the Hawks tied the game on their way to a 141-133 victory. It was the third straight loss for the Bulls, who had to explain how they surrendered 50 points in the fourth quarter.<\/p>\n
\u201c[The Hawks] do a good job causing havoc, but I just felt like we gave the game away,\u201d LaVine said. \u201cThey amped up their physicality. I made a bad pass out of a double-team one time, but we couldn\u2019t rebound, we couldn\u2019t score, and it just compounded. When it happens that fast, you just keep looking up, and you\u2019re like, \u2018Damn!\u2019\u2009\u201d<\/p>\n
Everyone in the locker room, including coach Billy Donovan, shared that feeling.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe fouling was a huge issue,\u201d Donovan said. \u201cWe got them into the bonus early in the fourth. I think the other issue was the rebounding. And then the other part of it was the physicality, which they played with defensively, and the officials letting that stuff go was obviously a huge discrepancy. We had a hard time playing through it, quite honestly.\u201d<\/p>\n
They had a hard time with a lot of what happened in the fourth quarter. The Hawks shots 62.5% from the field (15-for-24), went to the free-throw line 17 times to the Bulls\u2019 zero and outrebounded the Bulls 14-3. They also figured out how to get three-time All-Star Trae Young out from under the Bulls\u2019 thumb after nine straight games of them keeping Young ineffective and frustrated \u2014 as evidenced by his scoring average of just over 22 points per game and 37% field-goal shooting in those games.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe biggest thing with [Young] is he\u2019s such a complete offensive player in the fact that he has a great ability to get everyone else involved, so it\u2019s not even his scoring,\u201d Donovan said. \u201cIt\u2019s his ability to assist, throw lobs, generate threes. What all starts with him is how good you can defend him without fouling.\u201d<\/p>\n
Jevon Carter came off the bench in the first quarter and cooked for 19 points, including going 6-for-7 from three-point range, but Young entered the fourth qurter just 4-for-12 with 11 points. In the final six minutes, however, Young got going. He finished the quarter with 16 points on 4-for-5 shooting.<\/p>\n
As for LaVine, he scored a season-high 37 points but still felt empty.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat was a game we beat ourselves,\u201d he said. \u201cThat sucks because we\u2019re not in position to give games away. To give up 50 points in a quarter is a lot, man. We\u2019re going to have to look at that and figure out what we need to do to weather the storm.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat just can\u2019t happen. It\u2019s unacceptable.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
After putting together one of the more impressive games of the month through the first three quarters, the Bulls watched the Hawks storm back in the final six-plus minutes, stealing the game and leaving most of the visiting locker room in disbelief.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":21020,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21019","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-nba"],"yoast_head":"\n