ECF Game 4: No one to blame in Bulls loss

Hurts so much more when there’s no one to blame, doesn’t it?

The Bulls’ 101-93 overtime loss might be more bearable, if heads rolled. The 3-1 deficit might sting less, if pointed fingers flew.

But they won’t.

You can try. You can burn Tom Thibodeau for not subbing more. You can scathe general manager Gar Foreman for not being active at the deadline. Lord knows Chicago could’ve used the length and depth.

The Bulls  burnt out down the stretch, after running on E for the better half of regulation. That’s why they lost, because Luol Deng played 44 minutes, Joakim Noah played 45, and Carlos Boozer and Derrick Rose 49.

It showed in overtime.

Boozer whiffed on a free throw, the Bulls down 88-91.

A Deng and Noah miscue on an inbound cost Chicago the next possession, with 1:36 in the extra period.

Derrick Rose crossed himself over, letting the ball and the game slip.

Still, how do you assign fault?

Asking any more of Boozer and Deng, who scored 20 points apiece on 50 percent shooting, isn’t practical.

Demanding more of Noah, who gobbled 14 rebounds, isn’t realistic.

Noah gave it everything, even in certain defeat, barreling down the court at the end of overtime and fouling LeBron James with 1.4 seconds left for defiance.

“We’re going to come out fighting,’’ Noah said before Game 5, the same way he’d go out.

The bench was forgettable.

Taj Gibson was a dud, summed by his botched cover on Chris Bosh nine seconds after he entered late in the fourth. Bosh pumped, Gibson bit, and the Heat took an 85-84 lead with 1:14 they wouldn’t cough up.

Gibson went 0-for-1 with no points and a minus-21 ratio, while the Heat commandeered control.

Kyle Korver’s shooting night, 2-for-6 field goals and 0-for-3 on 3s, looked like a Mike Miller line.

Korver scored five points, Miller 12, as Miller, plus-36 last night, played defibrillator — what the Bulls needed from Korver.

The only bright spot on the bench was Ronnie Brewer, but is that who’d you have man pivotal possessions? Fresh or fizzled, Rose had to be out there in overtime, even if he shot 0-for-3 in OT.

None of that falls on Foreman — co-executive of the year, remember — nor do Omer Asik’s two fouls, a minus-9 ratio and no shot attempts or points in his evening’s two minutes.

The Bulls could’ve used Asik’s height, Boozer playing statuesque D and LeBron James — worth a game-high 35 points — slashing in the paint.

Even still, the Bulls didn’t take anything on the chin they didn’t dish out, like Boozer’s fan-approved flagrant foul on Chris Bosh, clobbered on a fourth-quarter drive by Noah and Deng, too.

Bosh left with 22 points and will wake tomorrow wincing, after scoring 10 on 11 toll-taking free throws.

Dwyane Wade won’t have much of anything, memories sweet or sour. Wade was uncharacteristically irrelevant, finishing 5-of-16 with 14 points and mattering only on two overtime blocked shots.

One of them was on Rose, absolved from the scourging too.

True: he took the aggression agenda and ran with it — to the Bulls’ detriment.

He said it before: “I have to be way more aggressive,” he said after Game 4.

And during: “I’m just gonna keep attacking, trusting my teammates and getting them open,” he said at halftime. “We’ve gotta stay aggressive on both ends.”

The tunnel vision killed Chicago. Rose tucked his head and punched the Heat in the paint, but didn’t finish or get fouled often. All that scrap, and only seven foul shots to show for it.

It flickered — Rose wouldn’t go down without taking a few Heat egos with him after monster dunks — but too infrequently to matter.

Rose finished 8-of-27 with a team-high 23 points, and regulation ended with a bad shot from his hands.

“It’s extremely hard when a 6-8 guy can easily defend you,” he said of James, who volunteered to D up Rose late.

Just as tough is scolding Rose for failing to elevate or connect, MVP or not.

James might be a forward, but a genetic freak first and foremost. No way he should move like that, but defying health and exercise science is what the guy does.

Should Tom Thibodeau have gone with a pick and roll on the game’s final possession? Maybe.

But John Naismith didn’t roll over when the Bulls went iso. Thibodeau — your 2011 Coach of the Year — made a defensible call.

The Bulls have work to do, staring down the barrel of elimination and an off-season of answering questions (like, who’s on the trading block and where will Rose’s help come from).

But they don’t have explaining to do. Not after this.

Said Heat coach Eric Spoelstra: “This series is an absolute bloodbath.”

But it’s not a blame game.