With his Indiana Pacers facing elimination from the NBA playoffs in Game 5 of their first-round series with the Bulls Tuesday night, coach Frank Vogel was asked if he had used the Blackhawks as an example of never-say-die resilience to inspire his troops.
The Bulls’ United Center co-tenants had fought hard to keep their season alive, rallying from an 0-3 deficit to force a Game 7 in their first-round series with the Vancouver Canucks in the NHL’s Stanley Cup playoffs.
Vogel demurred. “I don’t think our guys really know what hockey is,” he said.
Just as well. The Hawks ran out of magic in Vancouver, and their reign as Stanley Cup champions came to an end when they fell to the Canucks 2-1 in overtime. Corey Crawford had been remarkable in goal all night, but Alex Burrows forced a turnover in the Hawks’ end and blasted a slap shot past him at 5:22 of the extra period to send the Hawks home for the summer.
The top-seeded Bulls, meanwhile, rolled on to the Eastern Conference semifinals by drilling the Pacers 116-89, claiming the series 4-1 and finally asserting their superiority over a team that had refused to perform like a No. 8 seed.
“It always nice to advance,” Tom Thibodeau said after taking the Bulls beyond the first round in his first year as their coach. “All year long we’ve done a good job of taking one step at a time. You have to. If you try to take shortcuts you can get lost.”
Vancouver knew the feeling, on the brink of elimination by a No. 8 seed after compiling the best record in the NHL and earning the No. 1 seed for the playoffs. Burrows’ goal at 2:43 of the opening period had given the Canucks a 1-0 lead and beleaguered goaltender Roberto Luongo doggedly protected it, having reclaimed his All-Star form after the Hawks had chased him from Games 4 and 5 with a 10-goal barrage.
Luongo had been benched for Game 6, but he was pressed into service when backup Cory Schneider was injured and wound up allowing a series-tying goal in overtime. Luongo’s fragile psyche was thought to be a serious drawback to the Canucks advancing, but he turned back everything the Hawks threw at him until the final two minutes of regulation.
The Hawks were killing a penalty to Duncan Keith when Brent Seabrook poked the puck loose at center ice. Teammate Jonathan Toews gathered it in and fed Marian Hossa breaking toward the net. Luongo stopped Hossa’s shot, but Toews controlled the rebound in the slot and slipped it past Luongo at 18:04 to force overtime with his first goal of the series.
Shortly after the Hawks failed to convert a power-play opportunity, Burrows stole the puck from Chris Campoli and beat Crawford to the stick side, negating what had been a splendid performance by the rookie goalie. Crawford stopped 15 shots in the second period alone, several of them from right on his doorstep. In the third he denied Burrows on a penalty shot, one of his 36 saves for the game.
“One of the greatest performances you’re going to see in a clutch situation,” Hawks coach Joel Quenneville said. “The kid was great.”
The Bulls weren’t half bad.
They might have known it was their night when Keith Bogans, a shooting guard who doesn’t shoot very well, found the range on a three-pointer for the first basket of the game. Energized, or perhaps surprised, the Bulls ran out to a quick 12-2 lead, forcing Indiana to call a timeout just 2:32 into the game.
“They threw the first punch,” Vogel said, “but we took it and got back in the game.”
The Bulls’ 10-point lead was their largest of the series to that point. They went up by 11 when the suddenly hot-shooting Bogans hit another three-pointer shortly after halftime, but it took the Pacers just two-and-a-half minutes to climb within four (61-57) after Derrick Rose went to the bench with his fourth foul.
“The game was going in the wrong direction for us,” Thibodeau said.
Rose quickly reversed it after returning with 6:17 left in the third period. Playing on a sore ankle he twisted in Saturday’s Game 4 loss, Rose hit three three-pointers and added a free throw on a foul he drew after stealing the ball from Darren Collison. He fed Bogans for two more three-pointers. And in his most spectacular play of the evening, the 6-3 point guard leaped to engage Roy Hibbert at the rim and emphatically blocked a shot by the Pacers’ 7-foot-2 center.
The Bulls’ four-point lead was a 19-point lead by the end of the third period. Rose was able to take a seat and watch the fourth, calling it a night with 25 points, six assists, two blocks and two steals in just under 30 minutes. Never were the United Center’s “M-V-P!” chants more appropriate.
“He’s spectacular,” Vogel said. “A great player and a great kid. I don’t know if anybody can stop him.”
Luol Deng had 24 points, six rebounds and seven assists in a typically solid performance. Bogans hit five of seven three-pointers for a series-high 15 points, one more than Joakim Noah, who delighted his visiting African grandfather with his relentless energy while collecting 14 points, eight rebounds and three assists, with four blocks.
The Pacers weren’t amused. Josh McRoberts was ejected for throwing a wild, retaliatory elbow at Noah after an exchange under the Bulls’ basket in the fourth quarter.
Kyle Korver contributed 13 points, and fellow Bench Mobster Taj Gibson played his best game in a month in relief of foul-plagued Carlos Boozer. Gibson finished with 10 points and seven rebounds while playing an active brand of defense that had Thibodeau smiling.
“Taj was terrific,” he said.
But the star of the evening, yet again, was Rose, who described himself as “speechless” after reaching the conference semifinals for the first time in his three pro seasons.
“It’s great, man. I feel like I’m back on a winning team. The front office did a great job of picking the right guys. It’s paying off.”
The Bulls await the winner of the Orlando-Atlanta series, headed for a Game 6 on Thursday with the Hawks holding a 3-2 lead.
The Hawks await next year.
“The last few years we’ve had some great stretches of pretty amazing games,” Quenneville said. “I know how tough this league is, how balanced. The start we had, we just couldn’t overcome it.”