Pistons beat Bulls in 4OT thriller for NBA’s longest game since 2012
It took 68 minutes and 147 points for the Detroit Pistons to escape the United Center with a victory Friday night.
Stan Van Gundy’s club outlasted the Chicago Bulls 147–144 in quadruple-overtime for the longest NBA game since 2012. Reggie Jackson scored 11 points in the game’s final five minutes. The two teams combined for 291 points.
Andre Drummond delivered 33 points and 21 rebounds while Jackson poured in 31 points and dished 13 assists. Marcus Morris added 20 points, Ersan Ilyasova finished with 18 points and Kentavious Caldwell-Pope chipped in 17 points of his own.
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The numbers get even crazier for the Bulls who had three players chip in 74% of their points.
Jimmy Butler scored a career-high 43 in 56 minutes. Derrick Rose followed Butler with 34 points, although he needed a career-high 34 field goal attempts to do so. Pau Gasol scored 30 points, grabbed 15 rebounds and totaled 5 blocks. Butler, Rose and Gasol were the first Bulls trio to all score 30 points in the same game since Michael Jordan, Scottie Pippen and Toni Kukoc in 1996.
With the game deadlocked at 116 in double overtime, Butler wasted no time giving the home team a two-point advantage in double overtime. Butler slithered around Morris at the left wing, launched from a step inside the foul line and tomahawk-jammed on top of Ilyasova.
[youtube:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wjISoV8JDHM]
Caldwell-Pope’s triple with 36.9 seconds remaining in double overtime evened the score at 123. The Bulls’ three looks in the final 15.9 seconds were all unsuccessful.
Each team only scored four points in the third overtime, setting the stage for an offensive flurry in the fourth and final extra period.
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The Pistons opened on a 6-0 run. Jackson probed and attacked the Bulls’ defense on each possession, en route to those 11 crunch-time points. Butler had a three-point look at the buzzer, but it rimmed short to the dismay of a loud, exhausted Chicago crowd.
The Pistons have won seven of their last 10 games and maintained the eighth spot in the Eastern Conference standings after moving to 16–12. Chicago now sits third in the East at 15–9.
