BOSTON — Matas Buzelis was willing to do it himself.
The Chicago Bulls had run out of ideas. On the court at TD Garden, they were fresh off their worst offensive half of the season, a lousy 33-point outing that signaled defeat long before the halftime buzzer. The ball clanked off the rim and sank past the net whenever the Bulls slung shots from three. The Boston Celtics took the shape of an angry swarm, forcing the Bulls away from the paint, snatching the ball away after their own misses.
Josh Giddey was absent. Coby White still wasn’t back to full strength. And that left Buzelis as the sole spark for a flailing Bulls team. So in the fourth quarter of Monday’s 115-101 loss to the Celtics, Buzelis put his head down and pushed.
There wasn’t an easy shot on the court. Buzelis crushed his body into center Neemias Queta, vaulted airborne and bruised his fingers mauling dunks through the rim. When the defense collapsed, he sought out a two-man dance with center Nikola Vučević. The pair racked up 23 points in the final frame, cutting a 21-point lead down to 11 points with just over four minutes left in the fourth quarter.
Buzelis finished with 26 points on 9-for-12 shooting, marking his fourth game in a row with at least 17 points — a crucial step forward as the Bulls rely more heavily on the second-year forward to fill in for White and Giddey.
“It’s just the comfort level, honestly,” Buzelis said. “It’s only year two for me. I know that’s not an excuse, but I’m still getting comfortable out there playing against grown men. It was just a matter of time and learning new things every day and working hard.”
But it still wasn’t enough. Not much has been lately for the Bulls, who have tumbled back down the Eastern Conference standings as injuries rack the roster. Chicago played Monday’s game without centers Jalen Smith and Zach Collins, relying on two-way forward Lachlan Olbrich to pick up a 12-minute shift behind Vučević.
The Celtics didn’t even need Jaylen Brown to hit shots to carve out a double-digit lead. The star went 6-for-24 in one of his worst shooting performances of the season, finishing with only 14 points. But the supporting cast was deep enough to fill in for Brown, with Anfernee Simons supplying 27 points off the bench.
Here are three takeaways from the loss.
1. Giving away points.
For the first 12 minutes of the game, the Celtics busied themselves by snapping up free points. The Bulls turned the ball over six times in the first quarter. The Celtics pounced on each opportunity by racking up transition 3s off each mistake, scoring 13 points off those six turnovers. This margin highlighted the greatest disparity between the Bulls and the Celtics — one team’s inability to create cohesive offensive opportunities and the other’s keen ability to strike when the iron is hot.
Turnovers weren’t the only giveaways in the game. The Bulls took 18 fewer shots than the Celtics as a direct result of their timidity on the glass, grabbing only six offensive rebounds while Boston secured 20 offensive boards.
Bulls players marveled at Boston’s ability to pressure the glass. Coby White, for instance, detailed one play in which he checked twice for Jaylen Brown on a box out, then glanced back a third time to see the forward sidestepping the baseline to lunge fully under the basket to catch a ricochet.
By allowing 26 second-chance points and 19 points off turnovers, the Bulls dug themselves deep into a loss on their own.
“We’ve got to take care of the basketball,” coach Billy Donovan said. “That’s the formula for us. We can’t get dominated on the glass and dominated with turnovers because we don’t have other ways to get those possessions back.”
2. Losing the arc.
In a repetition of a familiar pattern, a dismal start from deep doomed the Bulls on offense. Chicago went 5-for-28 behind the arc in the first half. Buzelis was the only starter to make a 3-pointer in that stretch.
It’s not as if the Celtics were lighting the arena up from deep. They made only one more 3-pointer than the Bulls in the first half (albeit on seven fewer attempts). But Boston didn’t need the 3 to win.
The Bulls, meanwhile, rested all of their hopes on their ability to hit shots from deep. That was the only way they could ever muster enough offense to make a reasonable bid against Boston. Shooting below 35% from behind the arc was a death sentence. And once the Celtics inevitably warmed back up behind the arc — going 14-for-31 in the second half — the game was already long lost.
3. Coby White is back (again).
Coby White returned to the rotation in Boston after a three-game hiatus due to another flare-up of his lingering right calf injury.
The Bulls always prefer when White is on the court. But the guard still couldn’t find his typical sense of rhythm against the Celtics, scoring only five points on 2-for-7 shooting while playing 25 minutes off the bench.
Midway through the season, White is trying to find himself again. The guard’s first step is still a step slow. He can’t get his bearings on defense, missing assignments like Derrick White on their way to the rim for offensive rebounds. He lacked his typical punch finishing around the rim. After the game, the guard admitted that he struggled mentally with his minutes restriction, which kept him on shorter stints throughout each quarter.
White’s game readiness will remain a cloud hanging over the Bulls for the foreseeable future. He is expected to sit for one game of the team’s upcoming back-to-back series against the Detroit Pistons and the Miami Heat. The calf injury will likely be a factor to be managed for the rest of the season. And until the guard is back to his typical cadence, the Bulls will remain out of sync.