The Bulls stay close and beat the Knicks at the Garden

NEW YORK – Zach LaVine didn’t want to look.

He knew who was shooting at the last second and he knew his clutch gene.

Knicks guard Jalen Brunson, guarded by Patrick Williams as the horn was about to sound, took a fadeaway from the right corner with the Bulls ahead.

“It hung on the sidelines for too long,” LaVine said with a laugh. “When I looked at the ball on the rim, I just turned around. Then I heard the reaction from the crowd: ‘Awww.’ ‘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 and escaped with a 124-123 victory.

“Sometimes the ball goes that way,” LaVine said. “We did a really good job. We went on a run in the first half, and we did a really good job in the third quarter in the first five minutes, but they’re a really good team, a playoff team, and it’s hard to beat a team down hold.”

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 tempo and defended well in the halfcourt, where the Knicks (5-6) are usually lethal.

LaVine pulled off a turnaround with 1:44 left to give the Bulls a 14-point lead in the second quarter, and they were up 12 points at halftime.

What could go wrong?

Thanks to LaVine, Donovan’s team quickly turned a 12-point lead into a 22-point lead within four minutes of the third quarter.

Then the slip-up began. The Knicks used the final three minutes of the third quarter to turn the game around, cutting the deficit to five early in the fourth quarter.

“We just guarded the ball,” Donovan said of losing the lead in the third period. “At some point there will no longer be any coverage or regulation. You just have to sit down a little and pay attention one on one, put up a little resistance. It was like driving straight ahead.”

When New York’s comeback didn’t quite hit the mark, it was Karl-Anthony Towns who scored from the field and from three-point range. He had a game-high score of 46 and went 18 of 30 from the field.

But the unsung hero of the evening – especially given the crazy ending – might have been Coby White. After Brunson gave the Knicks the lead with a layup with 4.1 seconds left, Donovan called a timeout. Josh Giddey didn’t like the initial inbounds action, but the inbounds ended up in the hands of White, who was fouled by Josh Hart on a three-point attempt.

All White did was calmly go to the line and make all three to give the Bulls the one-point lead. That set the stage for Williams to switch to Brunson and the Knicks to feel heartbreak as Brunson’s heroics touched every part of the circle before rolling out.

“When Brunson kind of got out [the pick]“It was a tough canvas and I thought Patrick did a good job,” Donovan said. “Listen, with three seconds, [Brunson] gets the ball. He has this fadeaway. We were lucky it didn’t go in. It rolled around, and if it had gone in no one would have been surprised. Everyone was probably more surprised when it came out, right?”

LaVine definitely was.