CHICAGO — The Memphis Grizzlies found a rare streak of mortality in DeMar DeRozan on Saturday night at the United Center, snapping his NBA-record eight-game streak of 35-point games with at least 50% shooting and ending the Chicago Bulls’ six-game winning streak.
Before the fourth quarter began, it was an off night for DeRozan. He missed his first seven shots, caroming off the rim from his typically automatic spots in the midrange.
But even on an off night, DeRozan still had a little bit of fourth-quarter savvy left. He scored 13 points in the final 12 minutes to help the Bulls cut a 17-point lead to one point in the final minute.
Down three with 14.9 seconds left, the Bulls were in the best position possible — the ball in DeRozan’s hands as he cut toward the rim.
On any other night, DeRozan might have made that shot and drawn a potential tying free throw. But on Saturday, DeRozan was swallowed up by a pair of defenders who wrestled the ball from his arms.
Furious at not receiving a foul call, DeRozan snarled at the referees until the whistle finally blew, resulting in his ejection for a second technical. DeRozan clenched his fists as he stormed toward the locker room, leaving a 116-110 loss behind him.
DeRozan finished with 31 points on 10-of-29 shooting, while Ja Morant scored a career-high 46 for the Grizzlies.
“What I didn’t want to do was to bomb a 3,” Bulls coach Billy Donovan said. “I tried to get DeMar in the middle of the floor. We got it into him where we needed to. Obviously he felt like he had gotten fouled.
“It was unfortunate the way that last possession unfolded. He’s been just incredible for us from that area the whole entire year, and it just didn’t work out.”
The Grizzlies are well-built to beat the Bulls, and they completed a two-game season sweep. It’s easy to identify two of the Bulls’ most glaring weak points: defending the pick-and-roll and allowing second-chance scoring. The Bulls give up 12.3 second-chance points per game, the fourth-most in the league, and opponents often bludgeon their defense through mismatches on switched screens.
Both of these weaknesses are exacerbated by the absence of Lonzo Ball and Alex Caruso. They’re also the bread and butter of the Grizzlies offense.
The Grizzlies lead the league with 18.2 second-chance points and 14 offensive rebounds per game, and they live off the chemistry of Morant and Steven Adams in the pick-and-roll.
Defending that connection is nearly impossible for every NBA team. Adams uses his hulking 6-foot-11 frame to set crunching screens, giving Morant plenty of space to slip into cracks toward the basket. Adams averages 5.5 screen assists per game, which ranks fourth in the league.
Bulls guards struggled to fight through those screens, but switching didn’t offer any relief — it just placed a vastly undersized defender on Adams as he crashed through the paint like a wrecking ball. Adams pulled down 21 rebounds, eight of them offensive boards.
Bulls center Nikola Vucevic stood at the core of this offensive storm, and he didn’t have the right answer on either side of defending screens — not light-footed enough to track Morant blazing downhill on switches, not quite physical enough to win a one-on-one duel with Adams in the paint.
Morant is a player teams work to slow, not stop. Donovan admitted that before the game. The slippery third-year guard is an All-Star for a reason, averaging 26.7 points while dominating the league’s weekly highlight reels.
Bulls rookie Ayo Dosunmu locked down Atlanta Hawks guard Trae Young two nights earlier, but the matchup with Morant was different. Morant showcased his singular style in the second quarter, launching skyward to pirouette midair and dish a backhanded layup off the backboard.
Donovan pulled Dosunmu out of the rotation in the second half, using Coby White in his stead. Dosunmu played only 22 minutes. Zach LaVine also guarded Morant in the final minutes, bellying up to the younger guard in an attempt to force the ball out of his hands.
None of it worked as Morant finished 15 of 28 from the field and 13 of 15 from the line in his career-high performance.
“He’s really good at those in-between shots that you kind of want to give up your defense — the contested floaters, especially in between midranges,” White said. “And he’s really good at getting downhill. We honestly could have done a better job of being more physical, getting into the ball more. ... He’s a really good player. Once he gets it going, he’s hard to stop.”
Despite Morant’s rampage, the Bulls still nearly stole the game. They scored 14 unanswered points in the fourth quarter to pull within two at 101-99 with 4:38 to play and later cut their deficit to 111-110 with 25.5 seconds left.
LaVine found a more up-tempo rhythm in the second half as he continues to work back from a left knee injury, scoring 28 points. Javonte Green scored 13 and Vucevic added 11, while White hit three 3-pointers for 15 points off the bench. In his second game with the Bulls, Tristan Thompson provided a valuable boost of physicality off the bench to match Adams.
But it wasn’t quite enough with the Bulls’ big three of DeRozan, LaVine and Vucevic shooting a combined 37% from the field (24 of 65). For the Bulls, this is the challenge for the final 21 games of the regular season: how to win when their top stars can’t provide the heroics.
“There’s going to be nights where you don’t shoot the ball particularly well,” Donovan said. “We were always playing catch-up. We were trying to get back in the game. I give our guys a lot of credit for fighting the way they did to get it within one point, but the offensive rebounds and the fouling allowed them to create some separation for us.”
