BOSTON — Matas Buzelis was willing to do it himself.
The Chicago Bulls had run out of ideas Monday night at TD Garden. They were fresh off their worst offensive half of the season, a lousy 33-point effort that signaled defeat long before the halftime buzzer. Three-pointers clanked off the rim. The Boston Celtics took the shape of an angry swarm, forcing the Bulls away from the paint, snatching the ball after their own misses.
Josh Giddey was absent. Coby White wasn’t back to full strength. And that left Buzelis as the sole spark for a flailing Bulls team. So in the fourth quarter of the 115-101 loss, Buzelis put his head down and pushed.
There wasn’t an easy shot on the court. Buzelis crushed his body into center Neemias Queta, vaulted airborne and bruised his fingers mauling dunks through the rim. When the defense collapsed, he sought out a two-man dance with center Nikola Vučević. The pair racked up 23 points in the final quarter, cutting a 21-point deficit to 11 with a little more than four minutes left.
Buzelis finished with 26 points on 9-for-12 shooting, his fourth game in a row with at least 17 points — a crucial step forward as the Bulls rely more heavily on the second-year forward to fill in for White and Giddey.
“It’s just the comfort level, honestly,” Buzelis said. “It’s only Year 2 for me. I know that’s not an excuse, but I’m still getting comfortable out there playing against grown men. It was just a matter of time and learning new things every day and working hard.”
But it still wasn’t enough. Not much has been lately for the Bulls, who have tumbled back down the Eastern Conference standings as injuries rack the roster. They played Monday without centers Jalen Smith and Zach Collins, relying on two-way forward Lachlan Olbrich to pick up a 12-minute shift behind Vučević.
The Celtics didn’t even need Jaylen Brown to hit shots to carve out a double-digit lead. The Boston star went 6-for-24 in one of his worst shooting performances of the season, finishing with only 14 points. But the supporting cast was deep enough to fill in for Brown, with Anfernee Simons supplying 27 points off the bench.
Here are three takeaways from the loss.
1. Giving away points.
For the first 12 minutes, the Celtics busied themselves by snapping up free points. The Bulls turned the ball over six times in the first quarter, and the Celtics pounced on the opportunities to score 13 points off those turnovers. This highlighted the greatest disparity between the Bulls and Celtics — one team’s inability to create cohesive offensive opportunities and the other’s keen ability to strike when the iron is hot.
Turnovers weren’t the only giveaways in the game. The Bulls took 18 fewer shots than the Celtics as a direct result of their timidity on the glass, grabbing only six offensive rebounds to Boston’s 20.
Bulls players marveled at Boston’s ability to pressure the glass. White, for instance, detailed one play in which he checked twice for Brown on a box-out, then glanced back a third time to see the forward sidestepping the baseline to lunge under the basket and catch a ricochet.
By allowing 26 second-chance points and 19 points off turnovers, the Bulls dug themselves deep on their own.
“We’ve got to take care of the basketball,” coach Billy Donovan said. “That’s the formula for us. We can’t get dominated on the glass and dominated with turnovers because we don’t have other ways to get those possessions back.”
More Top Picks Sets Onion
2. Losing at the arc.
In a repetition of a familiar pattern, a dismal start from deep doomed the Bulls on offense. They went 5-for-28 behind the arc in the first half. Buzelis was the only starter to make a 3-pointer before halftime.
It’s not as if the Celtics were lighting up the arena from deep. They made only one more 3-pointer than the Bulls in the first half (albeit in seven fewer attempts). But Boston didn’t need the 3 to win.
The Bulls, meanwhile, rested all of their hopes on their ability to hit 3s, and shooting 34.8% (16-for-46) behind the arc was a death sentence. And once the Celtics inevitably warmed up — going 14-for-31 (45.2%) on 3s in the second half — the game was already long lost.
3. Coby White is back (again).
White returned to the rotation after a three-game hiatus due to another flare-up of his lingering right calf injury.
The Bulls always prefer when White is on the court. But the guard couldn’t find his typical rhythm against the Celtics, scoring only five points on 2-for-7 shooting in 25 minutes off the bench.
Midway through the season, White is trying to find himself again. His first step is still a step slow. He can’t get his bearings on defense, such as missing an assignment on Derrick White on his way to the rim for an offensive rebound. He lacked his typical punch finishing around the rim.
After the game, White admitted he struggled mentally with his minutes restriction, which kept him on shorter stints in each quarter.
White’s game-readiness will remain a cloud hanging over the Bulls for the foreseeable future. He is expected to sit out one of the back-to-back games Wednesday against the Detroit Pistons and Thursday against the Miami Heat. The calf injury likely will need to be managed for the rest of the season. And until White is back to his typical cadence, the Bulls will remain out of sync.