CHICAGO — Close-out night had come to The House That Michael Built, and after all the savvy, skill and almost sorcery involved in literally making the Bulls disappear, the Wizards had one question left to answer before they returned to Washington, the same question every playoff team up 3 games to 1 in a seven-game series must answer:
Could they handle prosperity?
Everybody that gets to the NBA playoffs has beat down adversity, but could John Wall and Bradley Beal in their inaugural postseason show up and get enough from their veterans to become the first team in the 53-year history of the franchise to end a seven-game series in five games.
Oh, and could a team that swiped the first games of the series on the road sweep a team at home that’s become a metaphor for NBA resilience since losing its best player to major knee surgery for all of the last two years and much of a third season?
“You have your answer,” Marcin Gortat said in a very happy but not overly jubilant visiting locker room Tuesday night, where the theme seemed to be, “Who’s next?”
The Wizards, too often an NBA punch line, arrived for good on the NBA playoff landscape, beating the Bulls at their own game for the fourth time in the series. Extra shots. Seminal offensive rebounds. And all the muscle and hustle needed to compensate for 40.5 percent shooting from the field.
Wall and Beal were equally good, combining for 41 points, 12 rebounds and 8 assists, and Nene and Marcin Gortat simply wanted it more than their big-man counterparts from Chicago in the final two minutes, accounting for five offensive rebounds that killed clocked, ensured more free throws and ultimately did in the Bulls for good.
Nene finished with 20 points, feasting on a buffet of elbow jump shots given to him by a Chicago defense that waited for him to miss all series.
Andre Miller won his first playoff series after 10 tries in 15 years, a milestone that all his teammates congratulated him on. And Randy Wittman won his first playoff series as a coach after having inherited many bad jobs over the years while trying to be the best teacher he could and hoped beyond hope the team he was with grew up before another coach was brought in.
This team did grow, exponentially the last two weeks.
“Coach, your guards are supposed to be too inexperienced to perform at this level,” a Chicago reporter asked him in the press conference. “Were you surprised?”
“With the way they handled bein’ 18 and 19 years old coming into this league, well, they’re a little different than most 18 and 19-year-olds,” Wittman said. “We’ll look back on this as this group moves forward and get a big jump from this.”
He added, “They never lost their focus, they were never satisfied.”
That was the series in a nutshell. The Wizards took the Bulls heart in Game 2, a game they had no business winning to become just the third team in NBA history to win the first two road games on the road in a seven-game series.
No call went their way, no shot seemed to fall but Beal’s in that game. But the Wizards persevered, found a way, returning home with a commanding lead they would not relinquish.
The Wizards siphoned every ounce of energy out of the building early, going up 12. But by the time Jimmy Butler rattled in a 3-pointer from the left baseline with 4:18 left in the half, the Bulls had cut the lead to one.
This game was for the taking from then on, and it was just a matter of who would step up first and deliver the performance needed to either send this back for Washington for Game 6 or end it.
Nene and Gortat effectively ended it with their hustle in the final minutes. Gortat actually had three offensive rebounds by himself on one possession, the most effective clock-killing possession without a score the Wizards have had in a millennium.
After it was over, they embraced and congratulated each other for beating a higher-seeded team and showing the rest of the country they were now a bona fide playoff team.
But they didn’t go overboard, didn’t whoop it up as if they had clinched a spot in the finals.
They seemed, as Wittman said, “greedy for more.”
“I know it’s coachspeak, but that’s what we are, we want more – we’re greedy,” he said.
They’re also very good, good as any team to close-out a formidable competitor in five games on the road.
For more by Mike Wise, visit http://ift.tt/1a95Asm.