Zach LaVine on Wednesday led a second-half fightback as the Chicago Bulls eliminated the Toronto Raptors from the NBA’s play-in tournament.
LaVine scored 39 points — 30 of them scored after halftime — in a 109-105 road victory for the Bulls, who face the Miami Heat today with the eighth seed in the Eastern Conference playoffs up for grabs.
LaVine and former Toronto star DeMar DeRozan showed superb composure down the stretch as Chicago fought back from a 19-point third-quarter deficit to snatch a win that left Toronto’s Scotiabank Arena in stunned silence.
Photo: AFP
DeRozan finished with 23 points, while Nikola Vucevic finished with 14 points, 13 rebounds and four assists. Patrick Williams also chipped in with 10 points off the bench.
Chicago coach Billy Donovan hailed LaVine’s role in the comeback as “extraordinary.”
“He was phenomenal,” Donovan said. “What he did in that third quarter and going into the fourth quarter — it would have been very difficult for us to have won that game had he not done that.”
Photo: AFP
“His performance was extraordinary. It gave us life, and it gave us hope,” he said. “And I give him credit — he had that mentality where he was going to do whatever he had to get us back in the game.”
Toronto, who looked to be in complete control for long periods of the game as Chicago struggled to find their offensive and defensive rhythm, were left ruing a litany of missed free throws.
The Raptors shot only 18 of 36 from the foul line, a 50 percent success rate that was in stark contrast to the Bulls, who made 18 of their 22 free throws.
“That’s a lot of misses,” Toronto coach Nick Nurse said afterward. “We left a lot of points on the floor there for sure. Okay, you’re not going to make them all, but if you miss more than 10 free throws in a game, it’s hard to win.”
Pascal Siakam (32 points) and Fred VanVleet (26) were both outstanding for Toronto, with VanVleet electrifying the home crowd with a buzzer-beating three-pointer from near halfway as the second quarter ended.
That gave Toronto a 58-47 lead at halftime and the Raptors kept up their scoring momentum early in the second half, extending their lead to 19 points as Chicago’s offense sputtered.
However, the pendulum swung back in the visitors’ favor once LaVine found his range, and as Chicago’s defensive fine-tuning stifled the Raptors, the Bulls began to steadily whittle away the deficit.
A Pat Beverley three-pointer put Chicago ahead for the first time in the second half at 98-95 and Toronto never got back in front thereafter.
Toronto were thrown a lifeline with 12 seconds remaining when a contentious foul call went their way with the Bulls leading 107-104, but Siakam missed two of his three shots from the foul line before Vucevic won a foul and nervelessly drained his two free-throws to seal the win.
In New Orleans, Louisiana, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander highlighted his 32-point night with a go-ahead baseline jumper and four clutch free throws in the final 29 seconds as the Oklahoma City Thunder beat the New Orleans Pelicans 123-118 to remain alive in the Western Conference play-in tournament.
Josh Giddey had 31 points, 10 assists and nine rebounds for Oklahoma City, the only Western Conference team still playing with a losing record.
“We’ve been battle tested. We’ve played in a lot of close games all year, for the past couple of years,” Gilgeous-Alexander said. “Even when the season wasn’t going our way, we played in a lot of close games and we have good habits and we know what gets it done down the stretch.”
The loss eliminated the ninth-seeded Pelicans, while 10th seed Oklahoma City advanced to play against the Minnesota Timberwolves for the right to enter the NBA playoffs as an eighth seed and meet No. 1, the Denver Nuggets.
Additional reporting by AP
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