Patrick Williams owns missed box-out on Mitchell putback originally appeared on NBC Sports Chicago
On a night Donovan Mitchell became just the seventh player in NBA history to score 70 points in a game, all the Chicago Bulls could do was rue another opportunity lost.
An opportunity to notch a quality road win over the fourth-seeded Cavaliers, who overcame a 21-point halftime deficit to win in overtime. A missed opportunity to kick a season-long trend of crunch-time woes by executing down the stretch.
At the center of the latter dynamic was third-year forward Patrick Williams, who whiffed on a box-out of Mitchell with 4.7 seconds left in regulation that allowed the Cavaliers guard to scurry into the lane and put back a missed free throw to tie the game 130-130.
“Differently?” Williams said after the Bulls’ Wednesday morning shootaround ahead of a matchup with the Brooklyn Nets when asked if he would change anything about his approach to that play. “Get the rebound.”
Yes, Mitchell committed an obvious lane violation on the play, which the NBA’s Last Two Minute Report for the contest confirmed Tuesday afternoon. But Williams readily acknowledged he should have taken matters out of the officials’ hands and into his own.
“I know a lot of times (in close games) their (the referees’) whistle always gets a little short, sometimes they swallow it, sometimes they don’t want to be the ones that make or break the game,” Williams said. “It was a definitely a tough situation to put the ref in. But I gotta get the rebound.”
Williams did not know that the NBA had admitted fault on that call, or Jarrett Allen’s travel with 12.1 seconds left, until a reporter mentioned it midway through the media session.
But after reviewing the clip of the putback play, he knew for certain he could have done more to prevent the Mitchell from securing the offensive rebound. With Nikola Vučević and Andre Drummond positioned on the low block, Mitchell was Williams’ responsibility.
“That one was on me,” he said. “Quite honestly, there really isn’t a lot of technicality with it. It’s just go get the ball. A lot of times, down the stretch, it’s not really something that you can draw up or kind of predetermine. It’s just kind of, go get it, mono a mono, go get it. Try to look and see where he was gonna miss it at. A lot of times they miss it either left or right, or sometimes they miss it to the front where people can just get it, go back up. Really, as soon as I looked up, he was gone. I put that one on me.”
The Bulls enter play Wednesday sixth in the NBA in defensive rebounding rate (73.2 percent) and opponent second-chance points allowed per game (12.8). But both areas have been glaring weakness of late. In 10 games since Dec. 16, the Bulls are 23rd in the league in defensive rebound rate (69.6 percent) and 29th in second-chance points allowed (16.6), including allowing 20 or more second-chance points in each of their last four games.
Williams is not the sole perpetrator of that decline. But he is worth special scrutiny because he starts at power forward, is the tallest non-center on the roster at 6-foot-7 and averages 28.5 minutes per game, a career-high.
Yet, Williams is averaging a career-low four rebounds (3.1 defensive) per contest, and, according to Cleaning the Glass, owns a career-low eighth percentile defensive rebounding rate (10.8 percent) for his position in non-garbage time minutes.
“There isn’t really a technical way to box out or do this, do that. It’s just, when the ball goes up on the rim, who wants it more, who’s gonna come down with it,” Williams said of the team’s recent rebounding woes. “Obviously we’re in scramble mode and a lot of times you have guards boxing out bigs and things like that. But a lot of times it comes down to who wants it more.
“I think we have definitely addressed that, we’ve been addressing it. I throw myself in there, I gotta be better on that, on getting the boards and just being able to push it on both ends.”
While Monday’s play was just an isolated example, that overarching truth endures, for both the team and Williams.
The key, he noted, is to not dwell on the loss, or the officials’ role in it, and be better next time.
“Not really. For us, it’s you either win or lose,” he said when asked if the NBA admitting the missed calls offers solace for the defeat. “If you dwell on that one, on that loss, on those two possessions too much, you lose opportunity to come in tonight and defend homecourt. You lose opportunity to focus on the next game and getting a win back in that win column.
“For me, it’s always tough because I love to win so much. And then to be in a play like that, where the game goes to overtime, you got a chance to win and the ball doesn’t go your way — or whatever the case may be, calls missed — and you don’t win, it always sucks for me. But I don’t want to dwell on it too much and then lose the opportunity to win the next game.”
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