Chicago Bulls forward Torrey Craig thought he had an uncontested fast break in Tuesday’s loss to the New York Knicks.
Teammate Andre Drummond had different ideas, and now the two will forever be linked in one of the more embarrassing bloopers of the 2023-24 NBA season.
The comedy played out in the second quarter of the Bulls 128-117 loss to the Knicks, when Drummond poked the ball away from New York’s Bojan Bogdanovic on the perimeter.
Craig, who had been defending Bogdanovic, scooped up the ball and cruised in for what should have been an easy layup or dunk, only to toss himself an alley-oop pass off the backboard.
At no point were there any Knicks defenders close enough to contest Craig, who soared to the rim for what should have been an easy put-back dunk.
However, the trailing Drummond apparently thought the alley-oop was for him, so he went up and effectively blocked his teammate’s dunk attempt while grasping for the ball, which rattled off the rim and backboard.
‘I just wanted to try to create some excitement,’ Craig said of the play, which took place as the Bulls trailed by nine.
Chicago coach Billy Donovan called time after the missed dunk and let Craig and his teammates know he was not happy.
To me, it was just really disappointing,’ he said.
The Knicks went on a 13-2 run to start the second half and led 81-64 after Brunson’s three-point play. The Bulls got back into it, with DeRozan scoring 15 in the quarter, and pulled within four early in the fourth.
Jalen Brunson scored 45 in his second straight 40-point game for the Knicks. It was his 10th 40-point game of the season and Brunson joins Bernard King and Patrick Ewing as the only Knicks players with multiple streaks of 40-point games in one season. Brunson, who played at Adlai Stevenson High School in suburban Lincolnshire, Illinois, nailed seven 3-pointers.
‘Outside of the city, where I went to high school, it’s a special place,’ Brunson said. ‘I have a lot of people from there come to the game and support me. That means more to me than scoring 45.’
OG Anunoby scored 24. Donte DiVincenzo hit a heave from midcourt to end the first half and finished with 21 points, helping fourth-place New York win its second in a row after losing four of five.
Josh Hart scored 17 and grabbed 13 rebounds, and the Knicks also got some payback for a loss at Chicago on Friday. The two teams close out the regular season in New York on Sunday.
DeMar DeRozan led the Bulls with 34 points. Coby White scored 24 and made two 3-pointers, giving him a franchise single-season record 205. Nikola Vucevic added 26 points.
A dunk by Anunoby and a 3 by Brunson made it 112-103. Brunson also nailed a step-back 3 off a nasty crossover to bump New York’s lead to 117-104 with 5:45 remaining.
Brunson torched the Bulls 24 in the first half as the Knicks grabbed a 68-62 lead.
He made 4 of 5 3-pointers, including one with about a minute left to make it a nine-point game before things took a wild turn in the closing seconds. Vucevic hit one from the top of the key with six seconds remaining. White then stole the inbounds and set a franchise single-season record with his 205th 3 when he pulled up from the wing, and DiVincenzo hit a half-court heave to send New York to the locker room up by six.
Before the game, Donovan said he had not been contacted by Kentucky about replacing John Calipari and insisted his ‘total commitment’ is with the Bulls. He acknowledged he was flattered by the speculation.
‘You always are, right? But I haven’t spoken to anybody,’ he said.
Donovan was an assistant at Kentucky under Rick Pitino and coached Florida to NCAA championships in 2006 and 2007. He left in 2015 to coach the NBA’s Oklahoma City Thunder in 2015 and is in his fourth season with the Bulls.
Chicago guard Ayo Dosunmu (bruised right quadriceps) missed the game. Donovan wasn’t sure how long he will be out.
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