Bulls in need of a miracle 

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Derrick Rose wipes his face during the Bulls' loss to the Miami Heat in Game 4 of the Eastern Conference finals on Tuesday night. | Getty Images

Updated: June 26, 2011 12:40AM

MIAMI — The Bulls melted down Tuesday night. The Heat had a lot to do with that, but so did a Bulls team that seemed to seize up when the spotlight was brightest.

After fighting so hard for so long, the Bulls fell apart in overtime, ending it with what can only be called a two-minute offense to the game of basketball.

Carlos Boozer missed a free throw with his team down by two with one minute, 49 seconds left.

Luol Deng and Joakim Noah had a miscommunication on an inbounds play. Heat ball.

Derrick Rose lost the basketball taking it up court, leading to a Dwyane Wade layup. There was nobody around Rose at the scene. It was a one-car accident.

This is how it came to pass that the Heat beat the Bulls 101-93 to win Game 4 and take a 3-1 lead in the Eastern Conference finals. The Bulls need a miracle.

And to think, they had a chance to win this thing in regulation.

Something happened Tuesday night that I never thought I’d see: A referee called an offensive foul on LeBron James with a playoff game tied and eight seconds left in his own arena.

It’s proof that this really could be the end of the world. It should have been the end of the Heat.

James drove a shoulder into the Bulls’ Ronnie Brewer. And a whistle blew. It was stunning, and you couldn’t help but believe this was the Bulls’ night.

It gave them a chance to win it. Rose had the ball with James on him as the clock wound down toward zero. Does it get any better than that?

Rose put up an airball, and it was right about then that you thought maybe this wasn’t their night after all. It was the beginning of the meltdown of the Bulls on a most public stage.

Mike Miller killed the Bulls on Tuesday night. I get bored writing that all the time.

Can you believe it? If I had given you the names of players who would play a key role in the downfall of the Bulls, I’m guessing Miller would have been last. He might even have been behind Zydrunas Ilgauskas, who was in street clothes for Game 4.

Miller had 12 points, nine in the fourth quarter. That’s another sign of the apocalypse.

A game to remember

The Bulls are going to remember this game for a long time, and not just because of the final score. They’re going to remember how hard they fought and how much sweat they expended. And they’re going to remember how they gave this game away due to unforced errors.

You could feel the air escaping from the tires as the night wore on. The Heat is too fast, too strong and too good. They didn’t need the Bulls’ help, but they got it anyway.

The Bulls fought the good fight, just not the good-enough fight.

“We’re going to come out fighting,’’ Noah said of Game 5 on Thursday at the United Center.

That was the idea Tuesday, too. What was it Rose had said before Game 4?

“I have to be way more aggressive,’’ he said.

If aggressiveness is going to the basket as hard as you can and then dunking two-handed over 6-9 Joel Anthony, then I guess Rose was aggressive. He did that late in the second quarter, and if you’ve never heard 20,000 people pretend something isn’t amazing, it’s really something to behold. Sort of a low, involuntary “oooooooooooohhhhhh.’’

A minute before that, Rose had slammed home another two-handed dunk, and in the first quarter, he had thrown down a one-handed tomahawk dunk, which is extremely hard to do when you can’t palm a basketball. But Rose was on a mission to expunge Games 3 and 4 from his record. Heinous dunks can erase a lot.

But they can’t erase 8-for-27 shooting, including 0-for-3 in overtime, which is what Rose shot.

Trips to foul line add up

The Bulls didn’t roll over when it would have been easy to do. It was clear from the previous two games, both Miami victories, that the Heat had figured out the Bulls. But the Bulls are a proud bunch, and they had spent two days listening to all the opinions about What Was Wrong. They came into Game 4 shooting 39.8 percent in the series, and no matter how defense-oriented coach Tom Thibodeau might be, he knew he couldn’t win like this.

They shot 44.2 percent from the field in the first half and held the Heat to 36.1 percent. I believe this is Thibodeau’s idea of heaven.

The disconcerting thing for the Bulls was that Miami was getting to the foul line way too often — 21 times to the Bulls’ eight in the first half. The Heat ended up shooting 16 more free throws than the Bulls.

Kyle Korver was off again, meaning there was no earthly reason for his presence on the basketball court in Game 4. He missed two shots in the first five minutes of the fourth quarter and was one-for-five from the field, including zero-for-three on three-pointers, in regulation.

The Bulls have to do something, but for the life of them, they don’t seem to know what it is.