MIAMI — Nothing good lasts long for the Chicago Bulls this season.
Less than 24 hours after a short-handed roster recorded a galvanizing win over the Miami Heat, the Bulls returned to the Kaseya Center to receive a crushing 134-91 smackdown in the teams’ third consecutive meeting.
The Bulls should have been better equipped to fend off the Heat after regaining Coby White and Nikola Vučević, who sat out Saturday for injury and load management. Center Jalen Smith (calf) and guard Josh Giddey (hamstring) remained sidelined and guard Kevin Huerter (lower back) joined the injury report, but the Bulls inched closer to full strength with the return of White and Vučević.
The pair combined for 28 of the Bulls’ 91 points as the rest of the roster seemed to come up empty in the final game of a grueling stretch of four games in five days played in three cities.
The Bulls scored only 13 points in the first quarter, slipping into a double-digit deficit that ballooned as the game wore on. They spent most of the fourth quarter lofting a white flag while playing deep rotational players such as Yuki Kawamura, Lachlan Olbrich and Julian Phillips.
“They came into the game really physical, really took it to us, and it didn’t help that we couldn’t make a shot,” Vučević said. “We just never really found a way to respond.”
Here are three takeaways from the loss.
1. Frigid finishing in chilly Miami.
Outside the arena, Miami experienced its coldest day since 2010 as temperatures dropped into the lower 30s early Sunday. Inside, that same cold crept into the Bulls roster, which failed to ignite any vestige of its typical perimeter shooting acumen.
The Bulls made only one 3-pointer in each of the first three quarters. Ayo Dosunmu was the only starter to make a 3. Matas Buzelis went 0-for-5, White 0-for-6 and Patrick Williams 0-for-7 behind the arc. Phillips and Dalen Terry were the only players to make multiple 3s, all of which occurred in garbage time during the fourth quarter. The Bulls finished with a 14.6% clip (6 of 41) from 3-point range.
While the Heat’s 36.8% shooting wouldn’t have been particularly notable on any other night, they went 14-for-38 behind the arc to outscore the Bulls 42-18 from 3-point range.
2. More minutes for Yuki Kawamura.
After making his Bulls debut Saturday, the two-way guard played nearly 27 minutes Sunday, including 10 minutes, 30 seconds in the fourth quarter.
He finished with six points and six assists as one of only two Bulls players with a positive plus-minus.
3. Another lost season series.
The Bulls dropped to 1-3 against the Heat in their final matchup of the regular season. The teams played each other three times in four days because of a rescheduled game caused by excessive condensation on the United Center court on Jan. 8.
That could be crucial for the Eastern Conference standings, which currently feature a familiar cast — the Heat, Orlando Magic, Bulls and Atlanta Hawks — in position for the play-in tournament. The Heat would hold the head-to-head tiebreaker against the Bulls for potential seeding. The Bulls hold the tiebreaker against the Hawks (3-0) and are 2-1 against the Magic with one game remaining.
