The Bulls could not take the heat, so they had to get out of the kitchen.
Tyler Herro was on fire from the opening tip to the final buzzer, scoring a game-high 38 points as the Miami Heat trounced the Chicago Bulls 109-90 to keep their NBA playoff hopes alive on Wednesday night.
The Heats point guard and first-time All-Star Herro led from the driver’s seat in a wire-to-wire victory that sent the Bulls packing from playoff contention and sends the Heat into a winner-take-all clash against Trae Young and the Atlanta Hawks on Friday. The Bulls managed to stop the bleeding to a trickle in the second half and cut the lead to 13 points on a few occasions in the fourth quarter, but the first half hole was too deep to climb out before time expired.
Miami also got a contribution from veteran and champion Andrew Wiggins with 20 points and nine rebounds, 15 points and nine assists from Davion Mitchell off the bench and a 15-point, 12-rebound double-double from Bam Adebayo.
“A lot of us made big-time buckets at the right time,” Adebayo said.
Miami’s lockdown and suffocating defense stopped the Bulls in their tracks, who shot an ice-cold 27.0 percent from beyond the arc. That elite defense gave the Heat a ton of wiggle room in the second half, so much so that Miami scored just 38 points in the final 24 minutes and still won handily by 19.
In the end, this was an impressive performance for the Heat, but Herro truly showed up and showed out and delivered a first-round knockout punch that the Bulls could not overcome nor recover from. He had been on a torrid pace before then as well.
And that continued with no resistance Wednesday. ‘Heat Nation’ were impressed with the results.
The winner of Friday’s Miami-Atlanta game will advance to the first round of the Eastern Conference playoffs, where they will face a difficult challenge, the No.1 seed Cleveland Cavaliers.
Embed from Getty Images“We just came out in attack mode,” Herro told ESPN after Wednesday’s win.
“We had a couple of days off since the last game — myself, my teammates and the coaching staff put in a lot of work, and it paid off.
“We’ve got one more to go. The job is not done yet, just to get in the playoffs. So, we’ve got a long way to go.
“We have a bunch of guys who come in every day, put their hard hats on and they work. The season hasn’t exactly gone how we wanted it to, but we continue to get better. There’s a lot to look forward to.”
Josh Giddey, who is in his first year with the Bulls, had an excellent offensive game, scoring a team-high 25 points with 10 rebounds. Coby White scored 17, but went through a tough shoot night, 5 of 20 from the field. Nikola Vucevic finished with 16 points and 12 rebounds.
“We didn’t really have game-plan discipline,” White said. “We beat them in the regular season. We thought if we just do what we normally do, then we’ll be good. But obviously, they’ve got guys that have been to the finals. They’ve got guys that know what it takes. They got a head coach who’s one of the best head coaches in the league. They came in and they were the better team tonight.”
Wednesday’s win marked the third season in a row that the Bulls have been eliminated from the play-in tournament by Miami.
Miami, who finished 10th in the Eastern Conference regular season standings with a 37-45 record, were always in control after making a fast start against a Chicago line-up that did not look prepared.
Herro did most of the early damage, putting the ball in the basket on his first eight attempts to pour in 16 points in a 39-28 first quarter that left Miami in control at Chicago’s United Center.
A dominant second quarter, Miami outscoring Chicago 32-19, left the Heat leading 71-47 with the Bulls seemingly powerless to halt the onslaught of Heat scoring.
Although Chicago rallied in the third quarter, outscoring Miami 27-17, it was too little too late and the Heat closed out a comfortable win in the fourth.
