NEW YORK — Zach LaVine didn’t want to look.
He knew who was taking the last-second shot, and he knew his clutch gene.
Knicks guard Jalen Brunson, being guarded by Patrick Williams with the horn about to sound, took a fadeaway from the right corner with the Bulls up by one.
“That hung on the rim too long,” LaVine said with a laugh. “When I was looking at the ball on the rim, I just turned around. Then I heard the crowd reaction, ‘Awwww.’ ‘Oh, shoot, we won.’ I thought it was going in.”
The Bulls, who had a 22-point lead in the third quarter, held off Brunson and the Knicks to escape with a 124-123 victory.
“Sometimes the ball goes that way,” LaVine said. “We did a really good job. The first half, we went on a run, and even the third quarter we did a really good job in the first five minutes, but they’re a really good team, a playoff team, and it’s hard to keep a team down.”
The Bulls (5-7) found that out the hard way.
Coach Billy Donovan couldn’t have asked for a better first half. His players controlled the pace and defended well in the halfcourt, where the Knicks (5-6) are usually lethal.
LaVine made a turnaround fadeaway with 1:44 left to give the Bulls a 14-point lead in the second quarter, and they were up 12 at the half.
What could possibly go wrong?
Donovan’s crew quickly turned a 12-point lead into a 22-point lead within four minutes of the third quarter thanks to LaVine.
Then the slippage started. The Knicks used the last three minutes of the third quarter to flip the game, cutting the deficit to five heading into the fourth.
“It was just us guarding the ball,” Donovan said of the blown lead in the third. “Like at some point, there is no coverage or scheme. You just have to sit down and guard one-on-one a little bit, have a little resistance. It was like straight-line drives.”
When it wasn’t a straight take to the rim in New York’s comeback, it was Karl-Anthony Towns scoring in the paint and from three-point range. He had a game-high 46 points and went 18-for-30 from the field.
But the quiet hero of the night — especially considering the crazy finish — might have been Coby White. After Brunson gave the Knicks the lead on a layup with 4.1 seconds left, Donovan called a timeout. Josh Giddey didn’t like the initial inbound action, but the inbound found its way into White’s hands. He was fouled by Josh Hart on a three-point attempt.
All White did was calmly step to the line and make all three to give the Bulls the one-point cushion. That set the stage for Williams to get switched onto Brunson, and the Knicks to find heartbreak with Brunson’s heroics touching every part of the rim before rolling out.
“When Brunson kind of came off [the pick], it was a hard screen, and I thought Patrick did a good job,” Donovan said. “Listen, with three seconds, [Brunson] gets the ball. He’s got that fadeaway. We were fortunate it didn’t go in. It rolled around, and if it did go in, no one would have been surprised. Everybody was probably more surprised it rolled out, right?”
LaVine sure was.