NEW YORK — Things were going so well.
The Bulls finally were playing like artists, and the first quarter Sunday would be their masterpiece.
The three-pointers were falling, the basketball was moving and the defense was suffocating.
But it proved too good to be true. Just like that, a 21-point lead in the first quarter was wiped away.
And in the end, all that was left was a 118-109 loss to the Nets.
‘‘It is tough when you’re 5-13 just 18 games in,’’ veteran center Nikola Vucevic said. ‘‘It’s not what we expected, it’s not what we thought it would be, but it’s the reality of it, and we’ve got to face it. The only way out of it is we stick together and try and turn it around.
‘‘It’s not going to be easy. The schedule doesn’t get easier, what’s ahead of us, but we’ve just got to find a way. We put ourselves in this position, and we’re the only ones that can get us out of it.’’
The sad part of the Bulls’ fourth consecutive loss and seventh in their last eight games was that they finally seemed to understand the urgency of a quick start.
It’s usually the Bulls who start in a deep hole, but the shoe was on the other foot against the Nets.
The Bulls opened the game with a beautifully designed alley-oop to Zach LaVine, then followed by raining down a fireworks show of three-pointers on the Nets. By the time the smoke had cleared, the Bulls had built a seemingly insurmountable 30-9 lead and led 36-19 after the first quarter.
Nothing is what it seems with this team, however.
A three-pointer by Lonnie Walker was followed quickly by a three-point play by Spencer Dinwiddie early in the second quarter, and the Nets had cut the deficit to 12. And they were far from done. They then outscored the Bulls 16-4 in the next four minutes to tie the score, mixing in a zone on the defensive end that messed with the Bulls’ offensive flow.
By the time Royce O’Neale made a three-pointer with 51 seconds left in the first half, the Nets were ahead by 10. That made the Bulls only the second team since the 1996-97 season to lead by 20 points or more in the first quarter, only to trail by 10 or more in the second. The 2015 Raptors were the other.
Poor company to join.
The Nets made 11 three-pointers in the second quarter on their way to 25 in the game. It was the most the Bulls have given up in franchise history.
‘‘We got hurt on the communication piece on a lot of their slip-outs,’’ coach Billy Donovan said of the changing momentum in the first half. ‘‘There were clearly a bunch of threes that, rotation-wise, they were left wide-open and knocked them down.’’
That ‘‘communication piece’’ was what bothered Vucevic, especially because there were key defensive breakdowns in the Bulls’ loss Friday to the Raptors, too.
‘‘We don’t do a good enough job communicating to each other on what we have to do,’’ Vucevic said. ‘‘Or honoring the [defensive] call that someone calls. Even if it’s wrong, we’ve got to honor whoever if that person feels it’s the right call.’’
The Bulls got their deficit down to five points in the third quarter and to eight in the fourth but never could regain the momentum they had in the first.
‘‘Guys are professional here,’’ LaVine said. ‘‘Obviously, we’re all frustrated because we’re losing, but we support each other in the gym every day, encouraging one another. You’ve just got to get through it. No one is going to help us do it.’’
