MILWAUKEE (AP) — DeMar DeRozan made sure the Chicago Bulls altered their painful recent history against the Milwaukee Bucks and gave this first-round series a fresh new start.
Now it’s the defending champion Bucks who are suddenly hurting as the teams head to Chicago all tied up.
DeRozan scored a career playoff-high 41 points and the Bulls outlasted the Bucks 114-110 on Wednesday night in Game 2. Nikola Vucevic added 24 points and 13 rebounds, while Zach LaVine had 20 points as the sixth-seeded Bulls beat the third-seeded Bucks for just the second time in their last 19 meetings.
“No matter what you did in the regular season, this is a brand new start and new mindset,” DeRozan said. “You could see it in all the guys. It doesn’t matter if we’d lost 20 times to those guys. This is an opportunity for us to compete. We’ve got to take advantage of it.”
The big question now is what shape the Bucks will be in when this series resumes Friday.
Bobby Portis left the game with a right eye abrasion after the first quarter and Khris Middleton exited with 6:49 left after his left leg gave out while he tried to plant on a spin move.
Bucks coach Mike Budenholzer said after the game that Middleton has a sprained medial collateral ligament and will undergo an MRI on Thursday.
“He’s always been positive and he knows the type of team that we are and how resilient we are,” Bucks guard Jrue Holiday said. “We just want him to get back as quickly as possible and be healthy so he can come out here and help us win games.”
Budenholzer said that Portis “should be fine with some time.”
Giannis Antetokounmpo led the Bucks with 33 points, 18 rebounds and nine assists, putting him one assist from his second career playoff triple-double. Antetokounmpo increased his career postseason point total to 1,715 to overtake Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (1,692) for the most in Bucks history.
Brook Lopez had 25 points for the Bucks. Middleton scored 18 and Holiday 15.
DeRozan scored eight points during a 13-0 run that began late in the third quarter and gave the Bulls a 96-80 lead with 9:47 remaining. The Bulls still led by 15 before Milwaukee rallied in the final 7 ½ minutes.
Lopez converted a three-point play to cut Chicago’s lead to 112-109 with 56 seconds left.
“We expected those guys to make a run,” Vucevic said. “They’re a championship team for a reason. They’ve been there before, so we expected them to make a run.”
But after Alex Caruso and Vucevic got offensive rebounds on the Bulls’ ensuing possession, DeRozan’s driving layup made it 114-109 with 18.2 seconds remaining.
Chicago bounced back from a 93-86 Game 1 loss and continued to show the grit that had been missing late in the regular season, particularly when the Bulls were facing top teams.
