CLEVELAND — His game shoes were still laced and his forehead still was covered in sweat. Bulls guard Coby White wasn’t done working.
He sat at a computer screen, rewinding and fast-forwarding the play over and over again, examining each detail and where it went wrong in the Bulls’ 108-105 loss Wednesday to the Cavaliers.
‘‘Just slow down; I was sped up in the moment,’’ White said of the potentially game-changing play. ‘‘I think if I slow down, I can make the right read.’’
With the Bulls (26-29) trailing by one with 25.1 seconds left, White had just grabbed a rebound and was looking to give them the lead. He came off a screen, attacked the paint and knew he had attracted multiple defenders — including Cavaliers big man Evan Mobley — which meant teammate Nikola Vucevic would be wide-open.
One problem: White thought Vucevic would pop out for a three-pointer, but he was cutting to the rim instead. White’s pass was high and deflected off Vucevic’s hand for an untimely turnover.
Sure, White had a chance to tie the score with a three-pointer with 4.1 seconds left, but that was more prayer than anything else. The turnover was reality — an all-too-familiar one for a team that is competing but can’t get seem to get over the hump.
‘‘[Vucevic] made the right play by coming in because I had Mobley, and I knew he would be hard to finish over,’’ said White, who led the Bulls with 32 points. ‘‘If I put the pass on the money, he would have a layup or one of those little floaters that’s automatic.
‘‘My intentions were right. He was open. I was too frantic.’’
The Bulls go into the All-Star break firmly locked into the No. 9 spot in the Eastern Conference standings, but they continue to search for a way to move up.
‘‘These moments are good for us,’’ White said. ‘‘We’ve got to find a way to get over the hump. I think we will.’’
Unless the Bulls want this season to end like last season, when they couldn’t make it out of the play-in tournament, they had better figure something out — a point coach Billy Donovan didn’t shy away from.
‘‘It’s what some of our younger guys need,’’ Donovan said of a clutch moment lost against an elite opponent. ‘‘At the end, there’s these little things there, and some of these guys are just going to have to go through it.’’
Donovan couldn’t have asked for a better start, especially with the Bulls playing the final game of a four-city road trip. They looked fresh, opening an 8-0 lead and outscoring the Cavaliers 32-25 in the first quarter.
A lot of credit went to the ‘‘jumbo lineup’’ of centers Vucevic and Andre Drummond. Both started as the Bulls looked to do everything they could to limit the Cavaliers’ ability to bury them with second-chance points. They did in the first quarter, holding the Cavaliers’ big men to a zero in that category.
But there’s a reason the Cavaliers entered the game with the second-best record in the East. The Bulls would find that out in the fourth, when Georges Niang gave them their first lead of the night on a three-pointer.
It proved to be short-lived, as the teams started exchanging body blows. But the Cavaliers hit harder, as Donovan Mitchell scored nine of his 30 points in the fourth.
‘‘At the end of the day, the ‘W’ isn’t on the board,’’ Donovan said. ‘‘It’s an ‘L,’ and a month from now no one is going to remember what happened.’’
The hope is that White will — and will have learned from it.
