DENVER — The Chicago Bulls were exhausted.

They couldn’t hide it. Less than 21 hours had passed since the final buzzer sounded on a demoralizing double-overtime loss to the Utah Jazz . The starters were gassed. Their legs were gone before they started. The team landed in Denver already prepared to hand the bulk of the game over to their bench unit.

But the Bulls also needed a win. Badly. Five losses in a row had piled up into a heap of frustration, the kind that seeped deep into the locker room. Losing is tiring in its own way. It weighs on a team, growing exponentially heavier.

In an improbable 130-127 win over the Denver Nuggets, one form of exhaustion won out over the other.

“We needed to get back in the win column,” guard Jevon Carter said after the win. “Super bad.”

The formu

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