Luol Deng exhaled emphatically as he slowly pulled on his socks while sitting at his locker.
“I’m done,” Deng said. “I’m ready to go home.”
His Bulls teammates longed for the same following Friday night’s exhausting effort against the Hornets.
This final game of a grueling seven-game trip could have been a recipe for disaster. Instead, the Bulls dug deep to extend their winning streak to five with a 108-106 overtime victory.
“Like I told the guys, you have to play the whole game out,” coach Vinny Del Negro said. “Anything can happen in these games. I don’t care how much you’re up, how much you’re down. You have to play every second, every minute.”
Del Negro’s words proved to be prophetic.
The Bulls carried an 11-point lead into the fourth quarter but were outscored 25-14, allowing the Hornets to take and hold the lead going into the final stages of regulation. After David West put his team up 102-100 with 30.8 seconds remaining, an odd sequence led to West throwing a bad inbound pass to Chris Paul, who tried to save it but did so to Kirk Hinrich.
Without a timeout and with just 7 seconds remaining, the ball eventually got into Derrick Rose’s hands. He drove to the basket and appeared to be fouled by West, leading to a missed shot. Fortunately, Deng, who scored a team-high 26 points, was there for the rebound basket that sent the game into overtime.
“They turned it over, saw Derrick Rose on the wing, just gave it to him,” Deng said. “I knew he was going to go to the basket or shoot it, so I just crashed the rim, and the ball came out.”
Super-sub Brad Miller, who scored 14, made the biggest shot of overtime, hitting a 21-foot jumper to put the Bulls up 108-104.
But the game wasn’t sealed until Deng tipped the ball from Nick Collison, who frantically tried to get off a tying shot attempt.
The Bulls survived 12 3-pointers by the Hornets — including 30-footers by West (game-high 29 points) and Paul — by outscoring them 60-36 in the paint.
The Bulls finished the trip 5-2. Friday’s victory, the 1,800th in franchise history, put the Bulls (23-22) above .500 for the first time since they were 6-5 after a Nov. 19 loss to the Lakers.
“It just shows how close we’re getting to each other,” said Rose, who scored 18. “This trip was a great one. At the beginning it was kind of bad, but we stuck it through.”
The Bulls have three days to recuperate before returning Tuesday night to the United Center to face the Clippers.
“When you’re winning, everything is positive,” Deng said. “We’re going into games expecting to win. A game like this, if we had lost four in a row, we might have lost it.
“But the mentality right now, we feel like we can win every game.”
vxmcclure@tribune.com
