Bulls hang on by a hair and a miss and beat the Knicks at the Garden

NEW YORK — Zach LaVine didn’t bother to watch.

He knew who took the last second and he knew his clutch gene.

Guarded by Patrick Williams with the horn about to sound, Knicks guard Jalen Brunson took a fadeaway from the right corner with the Bulls up by one.

“It hung on the rim too long,” LaVine said with a laugh. “When I looked at the ball on the rim, I just turned around. Then I heard the crowd’s reaction, “Awwww.” “Oh, shoot, we won.” I thought it was going in.”

The Bulls, who had a 22-point lead in the third quarter, held off Brunson and the Knicks to escape with a 124-123 victory.

“Sometimes the ball goes that way,” LaVine said. “We did a really good job. In the first half we went on a run and even in the third quarter we did a really good job in the first five minutes, but they’re a really good team, a playoff team, and that It’s hard to keep a team down.”

The Bulls (5-7) found that out the hard way.

Coach Billy Donovan couldn’t have asked for a better first half. His players controlled the tempo and defended well in the half, where the Knicks (5-6) are usually lethal.

LaVine made a turnaround fadeaway with 1:44 left to give the Bulls a 14-point lead in the second quarter, and they were up 12 at the half.

What could go wrong?

Donovan’s crew quickly turned a 12-point lead into a 22-point lead within four minutes of the third quarter thanks to LaVine.

Then the slide started. The Knicks used the final three minutes of the third quarter to turn the game around, cutting the deficit to five heading into the fourth.

“It was just us guarding the ball,” Donovan said of blowing the lead in the third. “As at one point, there is no coverage or arrangement. You just have to sit down and guard one-on-one a little bit, have a little bit of resistance. It was like driving in a straight line.”

When New York’s comeback wasn’t even, it was Karl-Anthony Towns who scored in the paint and from three-point range. He had a game-high 46 points and went 18-for-30 from the field.

But the quiet hero of the night — especially given the crazy finish — might have been Coby White. After Brunson gave the Knicks the lead on a layup with 4.1 seconds left, Donovan called a timeout. Josh Giddey didn’t like the initial inbound action, but the inbound found its way into White’s hands, who was fouled by Josh Hart on a three-point attempt.

All White did was step calmly to the line and make all three to give the Bulls the one-point cushion. That set the stage for Williams to be traded for Brunson and the Knicks to find heartbreak with Brunson’s heroics touching every part of the rim before rolling out.

“When Brunson kind of came off (the pick), it was a tough screen and I thought Patrick did a good job,” Donovan said. “Look, with three seconds, (Brunson) gets the ball. He has that fadeaway. We were lucky it didn’t go in. It rolled around, and if it did go in, nobody would have been surprised. Everybody was probably more surprised, that it rolled out, right?”

LaVine certainly was.