Warriors Fight in Fourth Quarter to Pull Out Narrow Win Over Bulls

Each of the first three quarters in the United Center on Friday night had the exact same feel: the Golden State Warriors played strong at times, but the Chicago Bulls used a late run to wind up with the lead. The fourth quarter felt like it could be much of the same. The Warriors, who entered the quarter trailing by six points, played well for most of the quarter, going back and forth with the Bulls until they were able to take a lead with 5:30 remaining in the game. It was too familiar: the Bulls were going to pull off another run, weren’t they? They’d hit a couple of threes and pull away, turning the Warriors into the NBA’s first 20-loss team.

But that didn’t happen. Instead, the two teams more or less traded buckets down the stretch, Glenn Robinson III threw down a dunk off a lob from Draymond Green with 1:03 to go and the defense held strong in the final minute for a closely-contested 100-98 win and the Warriors avoided that 20-loss fate for at least one more game.

The defense deserves most of the credit for the win. In the third quarter, the Bulls players, especially Zach LaVine, began to find a rhythm en route to 32 points. They regularly got open looks and converted. The Warriors made sure that didn’t happen again. They put the clamps on in the fourth quarter and allowed just 15 points. Down the stretch, the team stepped up as a whole to turn in several strong possessions. They covered tightly as the Bulls got almost no easy shots late in the game. On LaVine’s last-second three-point attempt, which would have given the Bulls a one-point lead with about two seconds left, Robinson attached himself to LaVine and forced LaVine into a tough shot which he missed.

Furthermore, the Warriors never let two Bulls go off at the same time. In the NBA, it’s often acceptable to let one player get hot — as long as he’s the only player doing so. The Warriors played that to perfection with regards to Chicago’s two offensive stars of the game, LaVine and Lauri Markkanen. Markkanen scored 17 points in the first half, but only three in the second half. On the flip side, LaVine scored 16 in the second half, but the Warriors held him to six in the first half. Had both of them played two strong halves of offense, the Bulls probably would have won. The Warriors didn’t let that happen.

This is not to say that the Warriors played a complete game by any stretch of the imagination. If they had lost, it would have been very clear why. For too long, they played sloppy basketball and seemed lazy and sluggish. They turned the ball over 19 times, including on each of their first three possessions of the game. But many of the turnovers came on bad passes, which can be at least somewhat attributed to active Chicago defense. The far uglier aspect of the game for Golden State was rebounding. The players were on the final game of a five-game road trip, and it showed. The effort on the glass for the Warriors was often abysmal. They failed to box out and were careless when going up for the ball. Wendell Carter Jr. grabbed five offensive boards for the Bulls and the team as a whole picked up 10, which they turned into 19 second-chance points.

The good news is that the Warriors turned up the effort in the final few minutes, leaping high for rebounds and taking Carter out of the picture. Willie Cauley-Stein deserves much of the credit for this. He only snagged seven rebounds of his own, but in the fourth quarter he made sure his teammates, and not Carter, got the ball following Bulls misses. He was assigned to box out Carter and did just that.

Cauley-Stein added 10 points, scored in a variety of ways, for one of his best games of the season. Eric Paschall added 13 and Robinson picked up 20, including the game-winner, to lead the way for the Warriors offensively.

That game-winner was very familiar to anyone who has watched the Warriors over the last five seasons. Green set a screen for D’Angelo Russell well behind the three-point line and both Bulls defenders jumped at him. A now-open Green moved to the elbow. Russell passed him the ball, Green caught it, took one dribble to draw the help defenders and threw a perfect lob to Robinson for the flush.

It was like watching a stage play or movie based on the glory days of the Warriors offense. Russell played Stephen Curry, Green played himself, Robinson played Andre Iguodala. Yes, it was a reminder that this team is now a far cry from what we have become accustomed to from the Warriors. But it also provided hope that sooner rather than later, this team will have a chance to make some noise in the league once again.