CHICAGO — Billy Donovan couldn’t let Alex CarusoThe total impact of is ignored following the Chicago Bulls’ Home victory 110-107 against Portland Trail Blazers Monday evening.
“It wasn’t just the defense,” the Bulls coach said, “it was the decision-making.”
Like we’re watching how Caruso clamped down on the Blazers’ young stud Anfernée Simons in the fourth quarter wasn’t impressive enough, Caruso seemed like a basketball savant in the way he explained his genius.
There were several Caruso sequences late that you could point to that blew up. But the play that demonstrated just how disruptive the Bulls’ resident threat was came in the final 10 seconds.
DeMar DeRozan had just made a pair of free throws to give the Bulls a 3-point lead with six seconds left. Portland, with no timeouts, had to drive the length of the court and score a 3-point basket. There was no doubt the Blazers would get Simons the ball.
But Caruso knew what was coming and played the decisive possession almost perfectly.
It started with Caruso smothering Simons on the inbounds pass. First, he placed his body behind Simons rather than protecting his face and completely denying him the ball. At first, this seemed like a strange strategy. But Caruso knew exactly what he was doing.
“Once he really failed to get the ball in the backcourt,” Caruso said of Simons, “I knew they were going to run a type of play where they would throw it to someone one to try to make him run and hit.” Him again.”
That’s exactly how it happened.
Blazer Center Deandre Ayton received the inbounds pass and threw an overhead pass to Simons as he sprinted down the field.
“Once they did that, I just tried to follow it,” Caruso said.
A foul in this situation would not only have been enough, but it would have been a smart play. That would have put Simons at the free throw line in the final 5 seconds. With the game clock running down, Portland would not have had a high probability of winning even if Simons had made two free throws. Only Caruso didn’t like what he saw.
“Because he was square to the basket,” Caruso said. “It looked like he was getting ready to shoot. And then instinct took over. »
Simons squared up, took aim and tried to shoot. He didn’t make his shot.
Alex Caruso: dominant disruptor pic.twitter.com/qXeWBOCDiB
– Darnell Mayberry (@DarnellMayberry) March 19, 2024
Caruso punched the ball, knocking it out of Simons’ hands and out of bounds before transitioning to his shooting motion. If Caruso had been a second late or had grazed Simons’ wrist, the Blazers could have had three free throws. And if Caruso had committed a foul, it would have been his sixth, disqualifying him from the match.
“Once I saw he was shooting, it’s a pretty common play for me to be able to strip a guy as long as I’m at the right distance,” Caruso said. “So instincts took over.”
His one-on-one play put the Blazers in a much more difficult position. With less than three seconds remaining, Portland then had to safely tuck the ball in from the sideline, scramble to get a quality shot and bury a 3-pointer just to send the game into overtime.
The slippery Simons broke free, taking advantage of Caruso shutting him down following a screen, and almost managed to tie the game at 3 straight away. But the official play-by-play didn’t score the shot, meaning it came after the buzzer and wouldn’t have counted if it had fallen.
“He’s first-team defense,” Bulls guard said Jevon Carter by Caruso. “That’s what we expect from him. He went out there and did his job.
Carter, who is no stranger to applying defensive measures, cited Caruso’s experience and awareness as reasons he is able to make such stellar plays.
“Being in these situations over and over again,” Carter said. “And then I just learn the ropes.”
Caruso laughed when asked to describe what makes him so good with his hands defensively.
“I don’t know because I wasn’t very good at it when I first came into the league,” he said. “I made a lot of mistakes. So I think part of it is learning how to play defense without fouling. I told Dalen (Terry) before, when you move your feet, your hands can now become weapons rather than defense mechanisms to try to protect people. As long as I’m in the right position and I’m not beaten, I can anticipate and see what’s going to happen and try to use my hands.
Caruso credited Andre Iguodala and Jrue Vacations as players, he regularly saw games interrupted with quick hands. His timing with strips and flights is also reminiscent of former Bulls forward Thaddeus Young.
“We definitely have a lot of confidence in him,” Carter said of Caruso. “As you see, every night we put him against the best, so you can say we believe in him. And he goes and he does it more times than not.
On possession before his timely withdrawal, Caruso committed a smart foul.
With the Blazers coming in with 9.8 seconds remaining and trailing by three, Caruso chased Simons off a screen and fouled him before launching a 3-pointer with 7.4 seconds remaining.
“They had no downtime,” Donovan said. “We talked about committing three fouls, and with nine seconds left, that’s a lot. But (Caruso) found himself caught in a difficult situation coming off the screen. Just when the ball was in the air, he immediately committed a foul, which was actually a one-on-one play. And then we talked about fouls again, but it happened pretty quickly on the side of the field. And he was in a difficult situation. So active hands were really good in this situation.
“Even at the end of the game, the inbounds pass to DeMar (DeRozan) to foul and put him on the free throw line. So you look at all the elements of the defense, but also there’s a lot of IQ plays that he makes that really impact the game in a positive way.”
To top it off, Caruso was far from 100 percent. He was questionable for Monday’s game because of left toe soreness. He then rolled his ankle in the first quarter after stepping on Ayton’s foot. All night he was stupid.
“I came back (to the locker room) and got re-checked, moved around a little bit and just tried to help the team any way I could tonight, which was a little bit more defense and communication than offensive aggressiveness,” Caruso said.
Thanks to Caruso, and with substantial contributions from DeRozan, Ayo Dosunmu And Nikola Vučević, the Bulls escaped. It wasn’t the greatest competition, and the Bulls almost blew a 15-point lead in the fourth quarter. But as they have done so many times in close games this season, the Bulls found a way to hold on.
But that’s not the ideal way to end. We need more consistency.
“We learned how to come back from being down by 20,” Caruso said. “We have a little more space to learn how to play when we’re up 15, 20, which is probably harder than down 20 just because it’s human instinct to take your foot off the gas and relax a little bit .So just keeping everyone focused and making sure we know how much time we have left in the game.
(Photo of Alex Caruso fouling Anfernee Simons in the second half: Melissa Tamez/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)
