Nets beat Bulls, close in on No. 2 seed in East
Field Level Media
16 May 2021, 05:40 GMT+10
Kyrie Irving scored 22 points as the Brooklyn Nets got a significant contribution from their reserves and pulled away down the stretch for a 105-91 victory over the visiting Chicago Bulls on Saturday afternoon in New York.
The Nets (47-24) won their third straight and moved 1 1/2 games ahead of the Milwaukee Bucks in the race for the No. 2 seed in the Eastern Conference. Milwaukee is hosting the Miami Heat Saturday night and holds the head-to-head tiebreaker with Brooklyn.
The game marked the first time Brooklyn s three stars of Irving, James Harden and Kevin Durant played in the same game since Feb. 13 at Golden State. It was the only eighth time they played together this season and the trio was on the floor together for about 16 minutes.
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Starter Kyle Hendricks had some weirdly bad luck Sunday in a 6-5 loss to the Pirates that stopped a Cubs winning streak at five games. One softly hit ball after another fell in for a hit. By the time a dazed Hendricks staggered off the mound after the top of the first his team already down four runs it was back to the drawing board for a supposed ace gone bad. Opponents are hitting .320 off the fastidious right-hander, for whom lugging around a 6.23 ERA must be both stressful and unconscionable. If Hendricks were a real professor, colleagues would be urging him to take a sabbatical.
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The Bulls had trouble putting the ball through the basket on Friday night, falling to the Milwaukee Bucks 108-98 at home. Chicago shot 38.5% from the field in the loss. Coby White scored 21 points and dished seven assists. Nikola Vucevic and Daniel Theis both had a double-double. Milwaukee s Khris Middleton and Brook Lopez scored 22 points each for the Bucks. The Bulls (26-37) will play a back-to-back when they travel to Atlanta to face the Hawks (34-30) on Saturday night.
The Bulls are playing into May. Which once was great news. It s not such great news this year. The Bulls problem, this very difficult 72-game virus-delayed season, is it s beginning to look like they won t be playing much longer following Friday s 108-98 loss to the Milwaukee Bucks.
Chicago maintained a double-digit lead for most of the second half and enjoyed a nice cushion after Denzel Valentine made three 3-pointers during a 9-0 run that pushed the lead to 96-78 with eight minutes left. Toronto, which had won 12 straight against Chicago, never got closer than 11 the rest of the night.
Norman Powell scored 32 points as the depleted Raptors, down five regulars, lost their fifth straight. Kyle Lowry had 20 points and eight assists before being ejected in the final minutes after picking up his second technical foul for arguing with officials.
Lowry said he didn’t think the pressure of fighting to stay in the playoff hunt a new experience for the Raptors after several seasons of riding in the upper half of the Eastern Conference standings or even his actions led to his ejection.
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