The dog days of January are often rough for teams to get through, as they countdown the trade deadline and All-Star Game, but that may have changed in the loss to the Bucks, as the Alex Caruso-Allen incident should fuel a team that’s already close and playing with chips on the shoulders.
Like this Bulls roster needed yet another reason to become even closer.
But there it was on Friday, provided by the bad boy of the Bucks, Grayson Allen, in the third-quarter of the eventual loss to the defending champions.
A Flagrant 2 that had dangerous and excessive written all over it, as Allen hooked the arm of an airborne Alex Caruso, sending him spiraling hard to the ground and landing on his wrist.
Caruso did say after that his wrist was sore, he called the play “bulls—t,’’ and added that at no point did Allen come over to at least check on him.
As a matter of fact, while the play was being reviewed the sideline cameras clearly showed Allen smirking, offering up very little remorse for what took place.
None of it sat well with Bulls coach Billy Donovan, who also brought up Allen’s history of cheap shots and tripping opponents back in his days as a Dukie.
“I have a lot of respect for ‘Bud’ [Bucks coach Mike Budenholzer] and these guys are all professional athletes,’’ Donovan said. “Nothing towards ‘Bud’ at all. But I just think to do that to a player is just really … you could have really, really jeopardized his career in a lot of ways. I don’t know what his response would be to it, maybe he didn’t mean to do it’ I don’t know. I just know the play looked really, really bad [for] a guy that’s got a history of doing that, all the way back to college.’’
But beating the Bulls, knocking them out of the top seed in the Eastern Conference, and coming close to taking out the heart and soul of the team in Caruso wasn’t enough for the Bucks obviously.
The final tongue-out moment was provided Saturday, when the team went to its Twitter account, sending out a GIF of Allen showing off a donut, before taking a chomp out of it, with “Good Morning’’ as the text underneath it.
It was a promotion for Bucks-Kings, but felt more like a middle finger to the Bulls and the fan base. Then again, when Milwaukee – at least publicly – felt that Allen did nothing wrong, trolling the Bulls the next day just comes with the territory.
“I think Grayson, nothing malicious, went to block the shot,’’ Budenholzer said. “I think it’s a close call. They went with Flagrant 2 and I’m not going to disagree. It’s right on the border and that’s the direction they went. Hope for Caruso to be healthy and fine coming out of it, he played a lot after. It’s unfortunate for Grayson, unfortunate for us to finish without him. It’s a tough call but that’s the way they went.’’
As far as Milwaukee was concerned, the Allen who was suspended for a whopping one game at Duke and lost his title as team captain, was not the same guy that plays for them.
It was just his second career Flagrant 2, and he was booted from a Summer League game back in 2019 when he picked up two flagrant fouls in eight seconds, all but punching a Boston player in the back of the head, but they had their guy’s back.
“I don’t think Grayson’s a dirty player,’’ Milwaukee forward Khris Middleton said. “He’s been great with us all season long. Competing, defending, never really crossing the line. So I think we’re all disappointed to see him ejected for that foul.’’
So how will – and should – the Bulls react? Just like they have with adversity throughout the entire season. To a man, even the veteran players have gushed that this is one of the tightest groups they’ve played with, enough so that the front office is actually concerned with making a trade just because of how it will mess with chemistry.
Let this incident simmer. They’ll see the Bucks three more times, with the next coming Mar. 4 at the United Center.
Having a common enemy until then is a good thing.
And when they do play in Chicago, well, “close calls’’ happen.
from Chicago Sun-Times - All https://ift.tt/3KzwJYv
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