When the Chicago Bulls touched down in Miami for Monday’s game against the Heat, they knew what they were facing — the reality of a true juggernaut.
The Heat are a rare team that boasts a top-10 offense and a top-10 defense. There’s a reason they’ve been first or second in the Eastern Conference for most of 2022 despite the absence of Kyle Lowry — the Heat are fast, tough and efficient, and they jumped on the Bulls from the opening whistle.
Everything went wrong for the Bulls, who committed a five-second violation coming out of their own timeout in the first quarter. They coughed up eight turnovers by halftime. In the third quarter, the defense just watched as Tyler Herro chucked a full-court pass to Jimmy Butler, who snatched the ball in the paint between two defenders before dumping it off to Caleb Martin for a wide-open layup.
The 112-99 loss dropped the Bulls (39-23) two games behind the Heat (41-21) in the East. And it distanced them even further from legitimacy as a postseason contender as they fell to 0-11 against opponents with a winning percentage of .615 or higher.
“We have to get battle-tested in some of these games,” coach Billy Donovan said. “(We) just don’t have a lot of guys that have gone into this kind of experience. I think it’s really, really good for us. I look at it that way. It’s not concerning as much as it’s shining a light on what really goes into this.
“We have to face the reality of the areas that we’ve got to get better at because there’s a light shining on us right now.”
The loss snapped a 10-game streak of 30-point games for DeMar DeRozan, whose out-of-sync night headlined a sluggish performance for the Bulls offense.
DeRozan has been the proverbial Atlas for the Bulls for nearly a month, carrying them on his shoulders through injuries and absences and poor defense and off nights. But it was too much to ask Monday as DeRozan finished with 18 points on 7-for-16 shooting.
Heat defenders picked up DeRozan full-court, hanging on him like shadows from the moment the ball went in the net. Double teams pounced the moment he crossed half-court. DeRozan spun and danced and chucked up desperate shots, but he couldn’t get them to fall — or even get to the free-throw line (4 of 5).
Without DeRozan, the offense didn’t have another answer. Zach Lavine scored a team-high 22 points, Ayo Dosunmu matched DeRozan’s 18 and Nikola Vucevic scored 14. The bench offered little relief, scoring only 23 points compared with 49 for the Heat reserves.
The low-scoring night marked an entire month without a 30-point game from LaVine, who stepped in and out of the lineup in February because of a left knee injury.
“He was affected by his injury. He hasn’t been able to be himself in a little while,” Vucevic said. “It’s hard to have your rhythm and really being in it, and you have to figure out how to play with the guys. I was talking to him today. He needs to be more aggressive, more decisive with his decisions.”
The Bulls were a top-10 defensive team in the early months of the season before falling out after injuries to Lonzo Ball and Alex Caruso. But the notion of what this team might look like when Ball and Caruso return taunts the Bulls as they continue to struggle with ball containment and rim protection against the best offenses.
The Heat showcased how a top-10 defense operates. Butler snatched four steals while scoring 15 points. Bam Adebayo’s bruising presence shaped the entire game around the rim — switching every screen, swatting any pass that came within his 7-foot-2 wingspan, smacking shots off the backboard. When he wasn’t demolishing the Bulls offense, Adebayo posterized half of the Bulls starting lineup with brutal dunks.
Although the game was never close, the Bulls showed glimpses of how they might beat a team like the Heat in the future — especially in a 14-2 run in the second quarter.
Vucevic couldn’t outmuscle Adebayo, but he found gaps around the paint whenever the Heat center switched off him for screens. Dosunmu showed flashes of lock-down defense on Butler with a pair of steals.
The Bulls found their best rhythm when they pushed the pace, breaking out of their half-court offense to create in transition. But those bursts of lively offense were too few and far between to shake the grip of the Heat defense.
The Heat are 3-0 against the Bulls, clinching a potential head-to-head tiebreaker. The teams will face off one more time this season. With 20 games remaining, DeRozan said the Bulls need to build off their last two losses.
“Sometimes you need adversity versus a challenge to understand and really see what you’re made of and how hard it really is to win in this league,” DeRozan said. “It’s one thing to be good. It’s another thing to win. And we see it when we play against a team like tonight.”