It’s revealed lately that the Chicago Bulls players are suffering from self-inflicting wounds. They like played in the snow.
It happened most egregiously in Tuesday’s loss to the Knicks when veteran Torrey Craig said he tried to create some excitement with the crowd by throwing an alley-oop pass to himself off the backboard on a 3-on-0 breakaway.
“We can’t have that at this point of the season as we’re looking at the last three games of the season and then the play-in,” the Chicago Bulls guard said late Tuesday. “Especially the guys who were here last year, we know how intense the play-in is. It’s single-game elimination. So every little thing matters. Every detail matters.”
“That” is the season-long habit of committed self-inflicted wounds which injure the Bulls’ already small margin of error for victory.
Instead, with the Bulls trailing by nine at the time, Andre Drummond thought the alley-oop was for him to reward him for a steal and went over the top of Craig, sending him crashing to the ground and the botched dunk ricocheting skyward.
“To me, it was just really disappointing,” said coach Billy Donovan, who immediately called timeout to address the issue. “I don’t care who he was throwing the ball to. We don’t need to be doing that. I’m not going to get into everything I said on the bench. That’s not what I’m about and it’s not about what we should be about.”
