Raptors blow big lead, fall to Bulls in overtime

CHICAGO — There is little rhyme or reason to it, but the Chicago Bulls simply hold a confounding mastery over the Toronto Raptors.

Chicago ran its winning streak against the Raptors to 10 games Saturday night, mounting a monster comeback — they were behind by as many as 19 points — doing it again behind some brilliance from familiar Raptors foe Jimmy Butler in a 123-118 win.

Stop me if you’ve heard that last part before. Butler scored 42 on the Raptors about a year ago — a Bulls-record 40 of them in the second half — in another comeback win. Butler was slacking a bit Saturday, only piling in 32 of his 42 in the second half and overtime and Toronto hasn’t won against the Bulls since New Year’s Eve, 2013.

DeMar DeRozan helped force overtime by scoring 10 straight points for the Raptors late in the fourth and into the extra frame, but he missed a late shot. And Kyle Lowry saw an attempt roll out at the regulation buzzer, before Butler scored seven more in overtime to put away the Raptors.

“We’re doing it as a team, I made some shots tonight,” Butler said, underplaying his remarkable effort. He mentioned Doug McDermott, who once again hit several huge shots against the Raptors and added a career-best 10 rebounds after a career-best 30 points last time against Toronto. But this was Butler’s show. The Raptors got 36 points from DeRozan and 27 from Lowry but gave up way too many second chances and got obliterated 60-41 on the boards.

What makes that worse is the rebounding battle was even at the half and Chicago had one defensive rebound.

“We gave up 16 offensive rebounds in the second half, that was the ball game,” Raptors coach Dwane Casey said.

“We did a good job of getting stops … now you’ve got to come up with the rebound.”

Added Lowry: “That game will bother me for a minute.”

To make things even worse for the Raptors, the red-hot Houston Rockets and MVP front-runner James Harden were waiting in Toronto for a Sunday tipoff that will start roughly 15 hours after the team returned to Toronto early today.