CHICAGO — DeMar DeRozan was fuming inside.
Fouled on a 3-point attempt with 3.5 seconds remaining in the fourth quarter Thursday against the Los Angeles Clippers, the Chicago Bulls star went to the line with a chance to give them the lead. After clawing back all night long only to fall back again, hitting three free throws to end it would be a sweet way to cap the first game of a crucial five-game homestand.
But after sinking the first two to tie the game, DeRozan missed the third.
“It felt like a bomb went off inside my head,” he said.
But DeRozan composed himself in overtime, scoring 10 points in the five-minute period after a 17-point fourth quarter, finishing with a season-high 50 in a wild, 135-130 win over the Clippers.
At the end of the night, the Bulls were in sole possession of fifth place in the Eastern Conference, and four games back with five games remaining, trailing the fourth-seeded Philadelphia 76ers by 1 1/2 games. They were a half game ahead of idle Toronto, and 3 games up on Cleveland, the No. 7 seed.
DeRozan passed the 2,000 point mark for the second time in his 13-year career, and became the sixth player in Bulls history to score 50 or more points in a game, joining Chet Walker, Zach LaVine and Jamal Crawford, who each did it once; Jimmy Butler, who accomplished the feat twice; and Michael Jordan, who did it an amazing 30 times.
“The win is more meaningful,” DeRozan said of dropping 50. “I just wanted to win this game, badly. You see how tight the (Eastern Conference) race is. Every game is extremely important. We have no more room to be dropping any more games.”
In a season in which DeRozan’s heroics have become almost second nature, this game meant just a little bit more with the team struggling to find itself and the playoffs just around the corner.
“We needed a moment like that, all of us,” DeRozan said. “It was one of those fun games. You go out there, you compete. It’s the best time of the year, where everything matters. Guys stepped up. Definitely happy for Pat (Williams). He made some big plays in the game.
“Without Pat, I don’t think we win.”
The sellout crowd at the United Center was unusually quiet most of the night as the Clippers took an early 15-point lead and never let the Bulls within sniffing distance until the fourth quarter. It started to awaken when Williams hit a 3-pointer a minute into the quarter, his first shot of the night, and DeRozan followed with another 3 with 10:07 remaining.
They wouldn’t stop the rest of the night, fueling the players as they continued a comeback that helped put the last month’s struggles in the rearview mirror.
DeRozan scored 17 points in the final quarter, including the two free throws that sent the game to overtime. He wound up hitting 17 of 26 shots from the field and 14 of 15 free throws. The one he missed that set off the “bomb” in his head may have been the one that drove DeRozan to lift the team once again, sealing the deal in overtime.
Afterward, DeRozan seemed more interested in teaching Williams not to let the media in on every little thing after Williams admitted he was fined for being late to the morning shootaround.
“He said that?” DeRozan said with raised eyebrows. “I’ve got to tell him not to say that to the media. He’s tripping! He’s got to learn. Damn, why did he say that?”
Time to talk to the kid. All in a night’s work.
The last time DeRozan eclipsed 2,000 points was during the 2016-17 season, when he finished with 2,020 points with the Raptors as a 27-year-old. Five years later, DeRozan is savoring every moment of the best season of a successful NBA career.
“It means a lot,” he said of reaching the 2,000-point mark. “It means you get better with age. Just because you’re getting older doesn’t mean you’ve got to slow down in any type of way. It shows my work ethic, me just taking care of myself physically and always trying to be better than I was before.
“Just to be able to accomplish that in Year 13, this is definitely awesome.”
The “M-V-P” chants for DeRozan that typically begin in the 300 level in the first half were noticeably absent until he went to the free throw line with 1:05 remaining in the fourth quarter. It’s obvious at this point DeRozan won’t be in the running for the award for the league’s best player, not after the Bulls’ free fall in their previous 16 games, going 5-11 and falling into the second tier of Eastern Conference playoff teams.
But it doesn’t really matter whether DeRozan’s season gets rewarded with a trophy for individual excellence. He’s interested in the trophy Jordan raised six times, the one that makes great players legends.
It’s going to be an uphill battle. The Bulls enter a three-game stretch against heavyweights — Miami, Milwaukee and Boston — in the next week, facing three potential playoff foes at home. The atmosphere at the United Center should be electric, and DeRozan believes the momentum of Thursday’s comeback win can carry over into Saturday’s game against the top-seeded Heat.
“Don’t matter who we play now,” he said. “It’s going to be this type of physicality, atmosphere, aggression, being desperate to win, competing … You’re going to get everybody’s best blow. We can’t run from anything. As a competitor, I always want to play against the best of the best.”
And the best of the best want to play against DeRozan, who is aging like a fine wine.
