The shot that put cracks in the Heat’s hull Sunday was a Derrick Rose 3-point bomb. But that followed an errant Keith Bogans attempt from behind the arc, which followed a Luol Deng long-range miss.
All that verve and aggression at the rim turned the Bulls’ attack inside-out in Game 1, producing an unusual 10 3-pointers on 21 attempts, including the Rose third-chance bomb that kickstarted a game-changing third-quarter run.
How long that run will last depends on whether the Bulls can counter whatever the Heat do in Game 2 to address the glaring soft spot.
“We’ve shot the 3 pretty well all season,” coach Tom Thibodeau said Monday. “We got some 3s off scrambles, loose balls, second shots, that sort of thing. Sometimes you get more that way. But it was our energy that created the open 3.”
The Bulls shot 36.1 percent from long range during the regular season, averaging 6.23 3-pointers per game — figures that were notably short of the 47.6 percent efficiency on 3-pointers in Game 1, and an extra 12 points or so is no small matter against this particular opponent.
All that might bolster the Bulls’ head-scratcher of a mantra that they can be better in Game 2, simply because they’ll have to do better in other areas to compensate for long-range shooting that likely won’t be as accurate.
“They have to feel good about some of the advantages … but they need to understand they’re probably not going to make 10 3-pointers Wednesday night,” said Steve Kerr, the former Bulls guard turned TNT analyst. “It’s going to be a different game, and they have to be prepared.”
Prepared for what? If the energy isn’t as good or the Heat recalibrate things near the rim, the looks won’t be as clean, making offense a grittier proposition than hoisting from long distance.
It was a very simple formula that produced a Game 1 outburst.
“Our guards did a good job of penetrating, and our bigs did a good job of rebounding,” Deng said.
So now it falls to the Bulls to prepare for the Heat finding an antidote to just that.
Twitter @ChiTribHamilton
