The fourth is with new lineup
Never-used combo puts screws to Cavs in quarter, but can it stay together?
Zach LaVine was the first stone to roll. It’s not usually his forte, but the Bulls guard and his teammates were desperate.
After LaVine’s steal to start the fourth, it was Chandler Hutchison’s turn. By the time Lauri Markkanen joined the thievery party 22 seconds later, that first stone was turning into a full-blown rock slide.
Another Hutchison steal, another LaVine steal, and just like that a 15-point summit was reduced to a four-point hill to traverse.
And all of it happened in less than five minutes.
“Played the numbers game,” guard Kris Dunn said of the improbable fourth-quarter comeback in the Bulls’ 118-116 victory Saturday against the Cavaliers. “Started the fourth quarter and tried to get it to 10. Once you get it to 10, you’re in the ballgame.”
By the time the smoke cleared, the Bulls had scored 16 points off 10 Cavaliers turnovers in the quarter, holding the Cavs to 14 points on 26.7 percent shooting from the field.
The kicker? The Bulls did it with a newlook lineup that hadn’t even played together in practice.
“We switched a little bit, changed it up on them,” Dunn said. “I love what the coaches did, gave them a different look. We were just locked in. You could see it in each guy’s face.”
Those faces belonged to Dunn and LaVine in the backcourt, Tomas Satoransky at small forward, Hutchison at power forward for the first time this season and Markkanen at center, where he hasn’t had the most success.
Markkanen, Satoransky and LaVine played the entire quarter, while Dunn and Hutchison played all but seven seconds. Coach Jim Boylen had trouble figuring out which one to credit first.
“[Dunn], we joke about a guy being a cephalopod, an extremely fast and agile being,” Boylen said. “I thought he was all over the place. We had six turnovers in the first seven possessions of the fourth. You gotta give our guys some credit. They found some juice. We were able to get a lineup there that could work.”
But will it be sustainable?
That’s what Boylen will have to figure out. The Warriors made their “Death Lineup” famous in their title runs the last five years, finishing games small but lethal. Boylen would settle for just somewhat dangerous.
There would be some collateral damage from that lineup, however. It would take more playing time away from Thaddeus Young, who was limited to just over 15 minutes anyway.
Young has been public about his unhappiness with minutes, and there has been growing momentum that the Bulls will look to trade him by the deadline Feb. 6.
The addition of Young as a free agent last offseason was solid in concept because of his reputation as a tough-minded leader. What wasn’t thought out well, though, was getting him the minutes he expected, especially with Markkanen having trouble with consistency at center and Young slowing down a bit playing small forward.
But if the Bulls want to use this lineup more frequently and keep Markkanen’s minutes up, something has to give. Expect that to be Young.
Either way, Dunn was in favor of using a defensive-minded unit to close out games.
“I just want to be on the floor,” Dunn said. “They told me early in the year, ‘We need you to be the defensive guy that we know you could be.’ I took it to heart. I take pride in it, and I can see how I can disrupt a game.”