CHICAGO — As LeBron James sat in front of his locker, still in disbelief about what transpired 20 minutes earlier, he held the box score in his hands, as he often does postgame.

Only this time, the box score was torn cleanly in half.

And as James relived his miscues down the stretch — rotating too far away from Patrick Williams on a sideline out-of-bounds play, carelessly inbounding the ball and having it stolen by Josh Giddey, failing to pick up Giddey in the backcourt before his improbable game-winning 47-foot buzzer-beater — he shuffled the papers on top of one another.

Back and forth. Back and forth.

His frustration with the result and disappointment with himself was apparent, even if he downplayed the Los Angeles Lakers’ stunning 119-117 loss to the Chicago Bulls on Thursday.

“That’s the NBA,” James said.

At the end of his postgame availability, James crumpled up the paper and shot it into a nearby garbage can.

It wasn’t just James. The Lakers’ locker room was as quiet and dejected as it’s been all season. Players stared blankly into the void, spoke curtly during interviews, and quickly left the locker room. This was a gut punch of epic proportions.

The Lakers’ elation one night earlier, after James tipped in the game-winning basket at the buzzer for a 120-119 win over the Indiana Pacers, eluded them on Thursday in a rematch with the Bulls, who had beaten them by 31 points last Saturday. After Giddey’s heart-ripping shot, Los Angeles felt a different emotion.

“Devastation,” Lakers coach JJ Redick said. “It’s a hell of a way to lose a basketball game.”

Following their inspiring win over the Pacers, and the locker room also rallying around James’ ongoing beef with ESPN commentator Stephen A. Smith, the Lakers appeared on the verge of breaking out of their recent slump and picking up some much-needed momentum late in the season.

“Sometimes your group just needs a win,” Redick said before the game Thursday.

The Lakers led by 16 points (91-75) entering the fourth quarter. The third quarter, when they outscored Chicago 32 to 17, was their best quarter since James returned. Their defensive verve and competitive spirit were back. They were flying around the perimeter, rotating to ballhandlers driving downhill and protecting the defensive glass.

Then they stretched their lead to 18 points early in the final frame. After some prevent offense — a bad habit of the Lakers for years — and hot shooting from Chicago, the Bulls provided the Lakers a momentary scare. But Los Angeles led by five with 12.6 seconds left after two free throws by Austin Reaves, who led them with 30 points.

Then they completely collapsed.

On the next possession, Jarred Vanderbilt and Dorian Finney-Smith had a slight miscommunication on a switch, causing Nikola Vučević to shake free and James to shift over too high toward Vučević. Once Vučević caught the ball, he fired a bullet pass to the left corner to Williams, who drained a 3 with 9.8 seconds left to cut the Lakers’ lead to 115-113.

James then went to inbound the ball with Redick electing not to call a timeout. James tried to find Reaves in the corner, but he recklessly threw the ball and was intercepted by Giddey. Giddey took a dribble, pivoted and found a relocating Coby White for a left wing 3 with 6.1 seconds left that put the Bulls up 116-115.

“Horrible turnover by myself,” James said. “Bad miscommunication play before that.”

Reaves also took accountability for the turnover.

“I think the miscommunication might’ve been I was trying to hold (his defender) off instead of popping to the ball,” he said. “I take just as much responsibility as I’m sure he did.”

Giddey said afterward that he was shocked at the play.

“He kind of just bounced it,” Giddey said of James’ pass. “I was surprised at how easy I was able to grab it.”

After a timeout and a brilliant play design, Reaves caught the inbounds pass with momentum toward the basket, scoring over Williams and Giddey to push the Lakers back ahead 117-116 with 3.3 seconds left.

Giddey then inbounded the ball to Williams, who immediately passed the ball back to Giddey, who took a dribble, a couple of steps and let it fly. James, who had been assigned to Giddey in crunchtime, contested the shot but gave Giddey enough of a runway to get a clean look. It was the ninth-longest buzzer-beater in NBA history, according to Basketball Reference.

“It sucks,” Reaves said. “We probably had a high-percentage chance of winning after my layup went in. There’s not many half-court buzzer-beaters to lose a game. And it’s just, it’s frustrating.”

The final 12.6 seconds of Bulls-Lakers pic.twitter.com/ahMIjnwxby

— Chicago Bulls (@chicagobulls) March 28, 2025

Chicago shot 11 of 14 from 3 and 15 of 19 overall in the final quarter. Redick noted there were several instances the Bulls pulled up in 3-on-1 and 3-on-2 situations and made 3s.

“I mean, 11 of 14 in an empty gym is really good,” Redick said. “So that’s unreal shooting.”

The loss dropped the Lakers to 44-29 — a squandered opportunity to make up ground in the Western Conference standings, considering the Memphis Grizzlies (44-29) had lost to the Oklahoma City Thunder earlier in the evening.

The Lakers have lost eight of 12 games and are just 1-3 since James and Rui Hachimura returned from their respective injuries last week (Hachimura did not play Thursday). Los Angeles is trending in the wrong direction, with the worst record over the past 10 games of the top eight teams in the West.

The Lakers close their four-game road trip in Memphis on Saturday, a potential preview of a first-round playoff series, before returning to Los Angeles for a three-game homestand and the final two weeks of the regular season.

This isn’t the first time this season the Lakers lost on a game-winning shot. Redick, who is big on reference points from earlier in the season, noted that the Lakers lost to the Orlando Magic on Nov. 21 and to the Atlanta Hawks on Dec. 6. After the Magic loss, the Lakers briefly spiraled, losing six of their next eight games, with four of those coming by 25-plus points. However, following the Atlanta loss, Los Angeles won eight of the next 11.

Only nine games remain for the Lakers, and the tight West playoff race will likely come down to the final day of the regular season. They are running out of time to reconnect and reestablish their level of defense from several weeks ago.

They have 48 hours to regroup, assess where things went wrong against the Bulls and make sure it doesn’t happen again against the Grizzlies.

“There’s another game in two days, less than two days, that’s how you do it,” James said. “That’s the NBA. You can’t go into a game on Saturday thinking about what happened on Thursday.”

Sign up to get The Bounce, the essential NBA newsletter from Zach Harper and The Athletic staff, delivered free to your inbox.

(Photo of LeBron James: Michael Reaves / Getty Images)