John Lucas III shines as Chicago Bulls trounce Cleveland Cavaliers 107-75: NBA Recap
On Thursday night, the No.1 seeds in the East, Chicago Bulls played their last match of the regular season with Cleveland Cavaliers.
Bulls with nothing to lose rested their assets, Derrick Rose and Luol Deng along with reserve Kyle Korver.
In their absence, John Lucas III took over the responsibility scoring his career high 25 points to help his time surpass Cavs, 107-75 here at United Center. The major damage was done by the Chicago’s 2nd unit, including
Lucas, 4 players came off the bench and scored in double figures.
Joakim Noah had a double-double with 13 points and 12 boards while Jimmy Butler netted 12 coming off the bench. Reserve Taj Gibson tallied 10 points to go with 12 boards while Richard Hamilton and Mike James shared 10 apiece.
Bulls have the No.1 seed in hand and playoffs are beginning from Saturday. Noah reflected back on the season.
"We've been through a lot this year, a lot of adversity, a lot of guys being injured. We fought hard throughout. It was a tough season. A lot of games in a compressed season, but we put ourselves in the best position possible,"
Chicago out-rebounded the Cavs 60-38 and the minnows never stood a chance against the best in East. They played without Kyrie Irving (front runner for rookie of the year award) as he was resting his injured shoulder.
Tristan Thompson scored 13 points and had 12 rebounds for Cleveland. Antawn Jamison, Donald Sloan and Luke Harangody shared 12 a piece. Cavs are already out of the playoff picture and this was their last game of the season.
Coach Byron Scott summarized the season as.
"The season is over. It was a tough year but I'm impressed with a lot of positives we have and I'm excited about the future."
The Cavs showed some fight in the opening frame as they took an early 17-11 lead. Chicago rebutted that with an 8-2 sprint and tied the scores at 19 each late in the frame. The game remained close afterwards as Bulls capped off
the frame with a fragile 26-25 advantage.
Bulls started to charge in the 2nd and opened the segment with an 8-3 run to claim a 34-28 advantage. Shortly afterwards, they converted it into a double-digit 47-37 lead. By the end of 1st half they were
leading the scores with a margin of 13 point, 58-45.
Cavs went ice cold and Bulls kept on piling points in the third. With 3:15 left in the frane, they had ballooned their advantage to 78-56 and faced no difficulty in stretching it to 80-62 by the end of period.
The hapless visitors couldn’t harness the raging Bulls in the final stanza as well and as a result late into the 4th Bulls were up with 99-69 lead. They concluded the game after augmenting it to 107-75.
Bulls will now be facing Philadelphia 76ers in the 1st round of playoffs.
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