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Bulls Stop Knicks Winning Streak at 13

Suddenly, Chicago is the place where long winning streaks go to die.

This time, it was Carmelo Anthony and the New York Knicks going down. Late last month, it was LeBron James and the Miami Heat.

Nate Robinson scored a season-high 35 points and Chicago rallied for a 118-111 overtime victory to stop New York's 13-game run. Anthony missed a potential winner at the end of regulation, and Robinson took over, scoring eight points in overtime to lift the Bulls to another streak-breaking win on a charged night that had the feel of a postseason game.

"Crazy. Playoff atmosphere, to tell you the truth, against a playoff team," Chicago's Jimmy Butler said. "I feel like it's helping us."

The Bulls broke a long run for the second time in two weeks, after ending the Heat's 27-game streak — the second-longest in NBA history — on March 27.

They put the Knicks' longest streak in nearly two decades to rest with a huge surge in the second half, offsetting Anthony's 36 points.

"For us, we're not focused on stopping streaks," Robinson said. "We're just trying to get better as a team going into the playoffs."

Robinson appears to be in gear. He's scored 18 or more in four straight games, and he put the Bulls over the top against his former team after two ugly losses to Detroit and Toronto.

In the end, all the Knicks could do was shrug it off.

"It would have been nice if Melo knocks down that shot," Knicks coach Mike Woodson said. "We could have walked out of here with a win."

The loss ended the Knicks' longest win streak since a 15-game run from March 1 to April 2, 1994, and left them two games ahead of Indiana for the second seed in the Eastern Conference with four games remaining. New York plays the Pacers on Sunday.

"The crazy thing is they're only getting better," Chicago's Carlos Boozer said. "The more talent they put around (Anthony), the better his team is. This year, they went from being kind of a mediocre team in the East the last few years to ... top in the East for a very long time."

Anthony, trying to become the first Knicks player since Bernard King in 1985 to win a scoring title, was off target. He hit just 13 of 34 shots after averaging 40.6 points in the previous five games.

The Bulls swept all four games against New York this season.

"They can have it," Anthony said. "They can have the regular-season wins. They did a great job at beating us four times. We're not worrying about them at this point."

Source: Associated Press


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