This is the third straight season the Bulls haven’t played on Christmas Day, the league’s annual invitation to legitimacy.
That leaves fans with memories. During the dynasty, Michael Jordan playing on Christmas Day seemed as much an annual tradition as kids breathlessly awaiting presents or Uncle Ed hitting the eggnog a bit too hard.
But of more recent vintage---has it really been eight years?---Derrick Rose offered up the most enduring highlight.
The wild circumstances that made Rose’s game-winning floater to beat Kobe Bryant’s Lakers 88-87 on Christmas Day 2011 so memorable are sometimes forgotten.
The Bulls were coming off a five-game series loss to the Heat in the 2011 Eastern Conference finals. They carried legitimately high championship aspirations. Their rivalry with the Heat seemed locked for years. Rose stood as the league’s reigning most valuable player and had signed his five-year, $94 million extension four days earlier.
And perhaps wildest: The game kicked off the lockout-shortened 2011-12 season.
Yes, the Bulls opened what turned out to be a fateful 50-16 regular season in the land of palm trees and ocean breezes with a Hollywood matinee at Staples Center.
NBA
The game itself was sloppy but scintillating.
The Bulls trailed by 11 with 3 minutes, 44 seconds remaining. Rose’s floater with 4.8 seconds remaining capped a frantic comeback that had Luol Deng’s fingerprints all over it.
Deng stole Bryant’s pass with 16.9 seconds left to set up Rose’s heroics and then blocked Bryant’s shot at the buzzer, drawing a ferocious fist pump from coach Tom Thibodeau. On Deng’s steal, Rose and Joakim Noah trapped Bryant, who had eight turnovers. On Deng’s block, Noah and Taj Gibson slid over to help on Bryant, and Deng blocked the shot from behind.
"Everyone knows by now we play hard," Deng said afterward. "We stick together whether we're down 30 or down two. We're always going to play to the end."
Deng scored nine of his 21 points in the fourth. Rose finished with 22 points on 9-for-13 shooting.
“A floater is something I'm used to doing if I'm going to my right hand," Rose said afterward. "And they let me get to my right."
Bryant scored 28 points while playing through a torn wrist ligament in his NBA-record 14th Christmas Day game. The Bulls, relevant again after wandering in the wilderness, were playing in their second straight, their first two appearances since the dynasty ended in 1998.
Given that these games marked relatively new territory for so many associated with the franchise, Rose could be forgiven when asked what he got Thibodeau for the holiday.
“Nothing,” he said, smiling. “Hopefully, this win."
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