CHICAGO -- By any and whatever means necessary, the Chicago Bulls needed to beat LeBron James on Friday night ... by a little or a lot, planned or totally random ... to prove to themselves they could, and to him. A Cleveland Cavaliers victory in Game 3 would have amounted to a Bulls playoff death certificate, probably in five games. And maybe Game 3 means little to James because he's trailed better teams in the playoffs than the Bulls, such the Spurs in the Finals two years ago, and the Pacers before that, and the Celtics before that.
But Friday's 99-96 win has to mean a tremendous amount to the Bulls, symbolically because of how they won it and practically because for the first time they have a real chance to beat James in a playoff series. If Derrick Rose needed a playoff picture to replace the one in his head from April 2012, when he crashed to the floor with that wrecked knee, then what better snapshot than a jump shot over the outstretched hand of Tristan Thompson, all 6-foot-9 of him, off glass and in, the buzzer having already sounded -- game over, Bulls win.
What sweeter feeling could there be, really, after all the talk about what Rose couldn't do anymore after one day's rest? What greater relief could a team feel, needing a victory over the best player on the planet, at the very least to put pressure not just on James, but on an untested Thompson and a limping Kyrie Irving and a coach, David Blatt, who has no familiarity with that kind of crushing defeat and the noise that comes with it in the 48 hours before Game 4 arrives?
These Bulls, the Tom Thibodeau/Rose/Joakim Noah Bulls, know all too well what it feels like to be on the wrong side of that kind of shot. And in Game 3, they were on the right end of a daily double -- James' missed layup with 23.5 seconds left and Rose's winning heave. As Taj Gibson said in the victorious locker room, "In previous years, I'm used to him [James] hitting that shot and us being the ones with our heads down at the end of the game."
People snicker when James talks about the prerequisite suffering through the NBA playoffs, as if he doesn't know what he's talking about, as if the Bulls -- who have had their share and somebody else's -- don't know what James is talking about. Now Irving knows, now Thompson and J.R. Smith and Timofey Mozgov and Matthew Dellavedova and Blatt know. A shot such as Rose's shot does that to a team, even if only temporarily, even if it was, to quote Rose, "a broken play ... I was supposed to get the ball in the corner."
The shot, in the moment, obscures so many other subplots and themes, such as Irving's injured ankle, and Pau Gasol's injured hamstring. Gasol-for-Irving is a trade the Bulls would take right now, seeing as Cleveland is already down Kevin Love, and the Bulls can go small pretty effectively with Noah, Gibson and Nikola Mirotic providing enough size. Gibson made his impact with nine points and nine rebounds; Mirotic added 12 points, most of them coming early when the Bulls couldn't throw an aspirin in a lake. If Irving's body won't let him do any better than Friday's 3-for-13, the Bulls are going to be in decent shape Sunday. Irving admitted to being a "decoy" and talked about his inability to accelerate or drive to his right, which is why all three of his baskets were 3-pointers.
This had the feel of the old days, James dunking on Noah and the two screaming at each other to earn technical fouls. As James would say later, "I love [Noah's] emotion ... but I'm a father with three kids and it got disrespectful. ... The disrespectful words he said to me were uncalled for ... I got the T ... I earned it."
But James had his own issues in Game 3, like bricking six of seven 3-point tries, and turning the ball over seven times, which undermined his 14 assists. But he added as he left the building, "No one feels sorry for us. ... No one feels sorry for Kyrie because he's hurt."
It was amazing the Bulls could stay anywhere close during those first 24 minutes, given how miserable they were at the most basic element of the game of basketball: shooting. You couldn't be any worse than the Bulls were, and we're not just talking about the 24 percent shooting the first 12 minutes. At one point, trailing 35-30, Derrick Rose, Jimmy Butler and Noah had missed 19 of 21 shots. Noah was 0-for-7 the first half, and that total included consecutive misses in one possession that didn't hit the rim.
Noah, in particular, has gotten to the point where he's 50-50 at best to make an open layup. OK, it's never been a pretty shot, but it's been effective enough -- and there is the gimpy knee that certainly this season has robbed Noah of whatever explosion he has left. Still, just two years ago Noah averaged nearly 13 points over 80 games. Four straight seasons Noah made better than 50 percent of his shots from the floor, but now he can't make a layup? And for all the groaning that now accompanies every missed shot, there's no taking him out of the game; he grabbed 10 rebounds the first half and blocked three shots, and his energy is essential on a team that has so few sources of fire.
The preposterous number of missed shots only increased the drama, gave it a 1980s playoff flashback quality, meaning a combative contest where aesthetic appeal was secondary to raw intensity. Butler, after receiving his Most Improved Player trophy, missed eight of his first nine shots. Individual honors haven't been kind to the new generation of stars this week. Steph Curry was hardly his sniper self after receiving his MVP trophy before Game 2 the other night in Oakland, and Butler, like Curry, seemed to try too hard by half.
It's doubtful either team could play any harder or more desperately. Fortunately for the Bulls, James was well on his way to a terrible shooting night, and all would agree an ugly game had to favor Chicago -- which got back, at least for one night, to its scrambling, scrappy form of 2011, when Rose and Noah were healthy and whole and James was still feeling his way from contender to champion.
And because Rose delivered them in Game 3, as the star is wont to do in these NBA playoff games, the Bulls have to enter Sunday's Game 4 with a particular optimism, even if Gasol (and Butler, it seems) limp to the starting line. They hold the lead over LeBron James and have home court after one more buzzer-beating game-winner from a place this group of Bulls has never been -- but with the largest, most able obstacle still squarely in their way.