CHICAGO — In the days leading up to the team’s first road playoff games in Chicago, the Milwaukee Bucks used every opportunity they could to shower Grayson Allen with boos.

They booed Allen when he walked onto the team bus. They booed him when he arrived in the lobby of their team hotel. They even booed him during film sessions and when Allen touched the ball in practice.

So when Allen set back-to-back playoff career highs in Games 3 and 4 this weekend to help Milwaukee take a commanding 3-1 series lead over Chicago, the Bucks bench enjoyed booing him all the way.

“They have so much fun doing it,” Allen said with a laugh after scoring 27 points off the bench in the Bucks’ 119-95 victory Sunday afternoon. “I think it’s honestly hilarious. They’ve kind of turned it into a fun thing. It makes hearing it out there during the game a lot easier too because they think it’s so funny.”

Game 5 will be Wednesday night in Milwaukee.

The Bucks began jeering their own teammate earlier this season once they heard the reaction Allen received every time he touched the ball during the team’s first game in Chicago back in March. Allen became public enemy No.1 to Chicago basketball fans after his flagrant foul on Bulls guard Alex Caruso during a game on Jan. 21 resulted in a fractured wrist for Caruso, forcing him to miss two months.

Allen said Sunday that he had attempted to reach out to Caruso to apologize after the incident, but the two never connected. The Bulls downplayed any lingering animosity toward Allen leading up to the series, but fans at the United Center have not let it go as easily, responding with loud boos each time Allen approached the scorer’s table or touched the ball on offense each game this season.

Even if he has gained a reputation as a villain in Chicago, Allen insisted after the game Sunday that he does not feed off such a negative reaction.

“It’s not naturally comfortable for me,” Allen said. “I am to the point now, anytime I go out and play basketball, I just remind myself to go out and have fun with this. … My personality is naturally uncomfortable with the attention, the booing, the heckling. It’s not something I feed off of. I’m not going out searching for it.”

That hasn’t stopped Allen’s teammates from having fun with it.

Bucks star Giannis Antetokounmpo suggested Allen frame a photo from Game 3 in which the Bucks bench is in the background booing Allen as he heads to the free throw line following a converted and-1.

“He’s played amazing, maybe we got to boo him even more,” Antetokounmpo said with a smile after the game. “Maybe Milwaukee fans, we got to boo him … nah, we’re not going to do that.”

Added guard Jrue Holiday: “When we booed him during the game, and he really started hooping, I think we just stuck with it.”

After leading all scorers in Game 3 on Friday with 22 points, Allen was even better on Sunday afternoon.

Allen went 10-of-12 from the field on Sunday, including 6-of-7 from 3-point range, to outscore Chicago’s bench all by himself 27-17. He became the first Bucks player to score 25 points and knock down six 3s in a playoff game in team history and first Bucks player with at least 25 points off the bench since Tim Thomas in 2003, according to research by ESPN Stats & Information. Allen even made plays on defense, collecting three steals and holding Chicago to 3-of-8 shooting when he was the primary defender.

Allen rebounded after going 0-for-4 from 3 to start the series in the first two games. His performance this weekend helped the Bucks withstand the loss of forward Khris Middleton, who will miss the rest of this first-round series with a sprained MCL in his left knee.

“He’s kind of quiet, but confident,” Bucks coach Mike Budenholzer said about Allen. “I think this is a confident group, a group that sees a player that can help them and appreciates his competitiveness. He’s just quiet, no bulls—, and comes to play. I think our guys gravitate towards that type of mentality. It’s certainly been a good fit.”

By the time Allen checked into the game in between free throw attempts with 5:50 remaining in the fourth quarter, the boos from the crowd at the United Center had gone from full-throated to halfhearted.

Chicago had waited five years for a home playoff game here, and the fans’ reward was a weekend of uncompetitive basketball. The Bulls were outscored by a combined score of 230-176 in the two games on their home floor and must win on Wednesday in Milwaukee to extend their season.

“You got to give [Allen] credit,” Bulls guard Zach LaVine said. “He’s hitting shots. … Obviously, we know what happened [with the Caruso injury]. At the end of the day, it’s basketball too. We understand it. But it’s not like we’re going out there saying, ‘That guy can’t beat us.’ The Milwaukee Bucks can’t beat us and he’s part of their team. Them as a whole is beating us right now.

“You can’t just account for him. It’s everybody.”

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The Cubs played an almost-perfect game Saturday.

Sunday wasn’t as good.

With a chance to split the four-game series, the Cubs lost 4-3 to the Pirates. A day after the 23-hit outburst and seven scoreless innings from starter Kyle Hendricks in the historic 21-0 rout, the Cubs were forced to use their bullpen after starter Justin Steele struggled through three innings. The offense went just 3 for 13 with runners in scoring position and the defense also fell back, as shortstop Jonathan Villar was charged with one error and could’ve had another.

Left fielder Ian Happ’s eighth-inning homer off Heath Hembree pulled the Cubs to within a run and five relievers combined to throw six innings and give up one unearned run, but neither kept the Cubs from losing for the fifth time in six games.

Steele, who only lasted 2 2/3 innings during his April 19 start against the Rays, batted his command, allowing three runs and four hits while walking four. But he was given the lead early, as the Cubs offense (and Pirates infield defense) momentarily picked up where they left off Saturday.

After designated hitter Rafael Ortega led off with a double off the basket, he came around to score when Pittsburgh third baseman Ke’Bryan Hayes missed a grounder from catcher Willson Contreras. On Saturday, Pirates shortstop Kevin Newman made two errors during the Cubs’ eight-run second. This inning wasn’t as prolific for the Cubs, though they did take a 2-0 advantage when first baseman Frank Schwindel singled in Contreras.

Pittsburgh cut Steele’s lead in half in the second when left fielder Ben Gamel drove in first baseman Yoshi Tsutsugo with a single to right. The Pirates jumped in front in the third and also ended Steele’s day. Tsutsugo’s sacrifice fly tied the game, and then Newman doubled in Hayes.

Villar, playing shortstop with Nico Hoerner resting, had an adventurous fourth in the field. First, he mishandled right fielder Diego Castillo’s grounder and was originally charged with an error before a scoring change. He did get tagged with one when his throw on a Hayes chopper was wide of Schwindel, allowing Castillo to score. Villar has made four of the Cubs’ seven errors this year.

The Cubs had a chance to get back into the game in the seventh when pinch-hitter Alfonso Rivas doubled and Pirates second baseman Michael Chavis misjudged a Patrick Wisdom pop-up for a single to begin the inning. But Pirates reliever Wil Crowe recovered to strike out second baseman Nick Madrigal looking, get Ortega to pop out and induce right fielder Seiya Suzuki to fly out to center.

Happ’s homer, his first of the year, cut the Pirates lead in the eighth. Pittsburgh reliever Chris Stratton kept the inning alive when he fielded Villar’s grounder but threw the ball away for a two-base error. Rivas was intentionally walked before Wisdom struck out swinging to leave two runners on.

Facing Pirates closer David Bednar, Ortega doubled with one out. Suzuki then blooped one over first and reached second, moving Ortega to third. Contreras struck out swinging, and Happ was intentionally walked to load the bases before Schwindel struck out to end the game.

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There is no shame in losing to a better team, and we can all agree the Bucks are better than the Bulls after another 119-95 wipeout at the United Center in Game 4 of the teams’ best-of-seven first-round playoff series.

The defending champions of the NBA — now one win from the second round, with Game 5 set for Wednesday in Milwaukee — are better than the Bulls in much the same way that lounging in the sun is better than drowning in an avalanche, a warm hug is better than a knee to the groin and pizza is better than no pizza.

Which is to say, it’s not even close.

But didn’t we all know this already? We should have, considering the Bucks have been headbutting the Bulls and stuffing them into a locker since 2017, but then Game 2 came along. In that game, the Bulls actually managed to — get this — not lose for once, causing a lot of us to feel something resembling hope.

After the Bulls lost by a combined 54 points in Games 3 and 4 — on their own turf, no less — there might as well have been a ceremonial burning of that hope in the UC parking lot. There’s no shame in losing to a better team, but there is in pretending the Bucks are anything less than levels above the Bulls; not just better but in a different league. These teams could run best-of-seven series back three times, five times, 10 times, and the squad with the better talent, size, experience, depth, discipline and togetherness would just keep winning.

Is there even any point to this Game 5 business?

“Just stay positive,” DeMar DeRozan said. “First and foremost, you can’t show panic. Especially veteran guys, you can’t show panic. You’ve got to understand that where there’s a will, there’s a way.”

Sorry, but nope. Where there’s a series between a champion capable of repeating and an upstart that hasn’t known the first thing about “up” since before the All-Star break, there’s no way.

And another thing: There’s no shame in Zach LaVine saying, as he did in February, that he and DeRozan were “the best duo in the NBA.” It’s great to believe in oneself and one’s teammates like that, and back then — when the Bulls actually had the best record in the league — it sounded mighty good even if it wasn’t all that convincing.

But it would be inexcusable for the Bulls front office, led by Arturas Karnisovas, to proceed into the future without fully embracing the reality of the moment — which is that DeRozan is wearing down in this rugged series and LaVine is still closer to borderline All-Star than he is to superstar. Would you rather have DeRozan and LaVine or the Celtics’ Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown, who are young, versatile and curb-stomping everything in their path? There’s only one answer. Would you rather have Giannis Antetokounmpo and, say, a Bucks social-media intern? Please, take all the time you need.

Meanwhile, there’s no shame in booing Grayson Allen — cursing the day he was born might be a tad over the top — but there is in being unable to admit he’s the best player coming off the bench for either team in this series and that the Bulls would be incredibly lucky to have one or two guys just like him.

Be honest: Do you see Alex Caruso out there stroking threes, finishing athletic drives and getting under the skin of the opposition like Allen? Yet Caruso is a Bulls team leader and fan favorite, further indicative of the gap between these two teams.

There’s no shame in Bulls coach Billy Donovan not knowing where to turn for answers when his team is too small, not physically strong enough, far from skilled enough off the bench and with key players who are just coming (Ayo Dosunmu) or perhaps never should’ve come (Tristan Thompson) or probably have no business being here much longer (Coby White). Is there a twosome among the Bulls’ non-starters that you’d take over any two dudes in the Bucks’ rotation? The whole thing is a mismatch.

But it would be dead wrong not to demand better from Donovan, too. After all, he hasn’t gotten out of the first round of the playoffs since his first year in Oklahoma City. This almost certainly will be his fifth straight loss by first-round knockout. Two of those losses came with Russell Westbrook and Paul George on his side.

“I think that we just need to fight and stay with it,” LaVine said. “Once they give a punch, we have to respond each and every time, not just once or twice.”

Once Thanasis Antetokounmpo, Giannis’ brother and teammate, is on the floor, the last punches have been thrown and there will be no getting off the mat for the team that’s behind. Not that Thanasis is particularly good at this thing called basketball. He’s not in the Bucks’ regular rotation. No, he checks in — as he eventually did in Games 3 and 4 — only after a thorough beating has been rendered.

The Bucks have it all, even a family member of the best player in the world who is part brother, part mascot, part death knell for the other team. The Bulls? They have another game to lose. And then maybe the champs can go pick on somebody their own size.

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Bears wide receiver Byron Pringle was arrested and charged with misdemeanor reckless driving and driving with a suspended license in Pasco County, Fla. on Saturday night after a Florida Highway Patrol officer observed him squealing tires, burning rubber and “performing a donut” in his 2016 Dodge Challenger SRT Hellcat.

Pringle, who lives in Wesley Chapel, Fla. — less than a mile from the incident — was with another adult male and a juvenile child in the car at the time of the incident, around 6 p.m. EDT. A check on his driver’s license revealed it had been suspended on Feb. 10 for “financial responsibility” and also for failure to pay a traffic fine as of March 7, 2022.

According to the arrest report filed by the FHP officer, after Pringle was informed he was under arrest, he “ignored my verbal commands initially and then became verbally confrontational.” He was placed under arrest and transferred to the Pasco County Jail “without further incident.”

A Bears spokesman confirmed the team is aware of the arrest but had no comment on the Pringle arrest.

Pringle, 28, signed a one-year, $4 million contract (with an additional $2 million in incentives) with the Bears on March 20 after spending this first four seasons in the NFL with the Chiefs. An undrafted free agent from Kansas State in 2018, he missed his rookie season after suffering a hamstring injury in the preseason finale.

After being a bit player in the Chiefs’ high-powered offense in 2019 and 2020, he played a bigger role last season, with 42 receptions for 568 yards (13.5 avg.) and five touchdowns.

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MINNEAPOLIS — Finding different ways to lose becomes the thing on seven-game losing streaks.

Sunday’s awful flavor of the day for the White Sox in a crushing 6-4 loss was a walkoff home run in the 10th inning by the Twins’ Byron Buxton, a three-run blast to left against closer Liam Hendriks. It was Buxton’s second long ball of the game and it erased a one-run lead the Sox had taken in the top of the inning.

This latest gut-punching loss capped a six-game road trip in Cleveland and Minneapolis that featured awful defensive play, poor hitting and another big injury to a star player, Eloy Jimenez.

Having an off day Monday to recover seemed to be the only positive gleaned from all of it.

“I think it’s a good time for everyone to get away and clear their heads a little bit,” Sox starting pitcher Lucas Giolito said.

The Sox thought they’d enjoy it with a victory after Tim Anderson started the day with a homer on the first pitch against Chris Archer and Danny Mendick homered leading off the seventh for a 3-1 lead.

But left-hander Aaron Bummer failed to protect it, walking No. 9 hitter Jose Godoy to open the seventh before allowing an opposite field tying homer to Buxton, who had five RBI, in the eighth.

When Buxton came to bat again in the 10th with runners on second and third, first base was open. But manager Tony La Russa wasn’t keen on facing left-handed hitting Luis Arraez, a .354 hitter. So Hendriks pitched to Buxton.

“Any time you load the bases you better have a significant advantage with the guy on deck,” La Russa said. “Because you’re playing right into his hands and the guy on deck is a tough out. We had a better chance to do what Gio did to Buxton.”

What Giolito did in a four-inning, nine strikeout, one-run allowed performance coming off the injured list was strike out Buxton three times.

“I thought I threw the ball well,” Giolito said.

The Sox thought they might finally win when they took the lead in the 10th when Mendick, the designated runner, scored with two outs on Yasmani Grandal’s single off the wall against Joe Smith.

But Hendriks walked Godoy, the second walk issued to the catcher with no major league hits, before Buxton’s 469-foot homer.

“It’s not enough to say you played your hearts out,” La Russa said. “In this league there are certain executions. We did some things but not enough of them and we got beat. It’s a tough loss. But we all shared in it. Final score with the whole road trip, we’ll all wear it.”

Hendriks, who was getting treatment after the game because “his back stiffened on him a bit,” per La Russa, saw his ERA climb to 6.14 as he suffered his second loss.

“We checked him and he said he was good. He’ll get treated and get the rest tomorrow. He felt a little something but said he was good to go.”

“Just got to keep grinding it out,” Anderson said. “Nobody is going to really give us anything. It’s still early. We’ve got a whole season. We’ll take our punches now. Just keep chipping away. That’s all we can do, honestly.”

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It wasn’t “Minnesota Pat.”

Then again, the Bulls don’t need Patrick Williams to be the player that scored a career-high 35 in the season finale against the Timberwolves a few weeks back.

The guy that scored just one point in Game 3, however? That can’t happen.

That’s why there had to be some small sigh of relief with Williams’ Sunday performance, in which the No. 4 overall pick from the 2020 draft had seven first-half points on 3-for-7 shooting, and stayed aggressive to finish with an impressive 20 points and 10 rebounds in the Game 4 loss.

“When you have [teammates] telling you that you work too hard to hang your head or stop shooting, it just means the world to know that those guys have your back,” Williams said of the turnaround.

Does that mean he can be counted on for Game 5? Not exactly, as coach Billy Donovan admitted that he’s a player they definitely have to stay on about aggressiveness and decision making when it comes to his shot. And not just a few times a week, but daily.

“[This is] probably in a lot of ways a lot different than he’s played his whole entire life,” Donovan said of Williams. “That’s not to sit there and say that a certain points and time in his life that he wasn’t physical and dominant, a really good player, but he wasn’t a guy that as a freshman at Florida State was getting 25 every night, and the ball was being just directed to him and he was doing all that stuff. This is part of his evolution, this is part of his development, and it’s something that’s probably new for him.

“So does he need constant encouragement, dialogue, film? All the time. But I’m fine with it because he’s a great guy and he wants to get better, he wants to improve. I think that’s the hardest part for him – finding when and where all those opportunities are and how do I attack? And he sees it more after the moment more so than in the moment.”

The best example of how effective he actually can be in this offense came in the third, when the Bulls started to make a run at the Bucks. Williams was aggressive both with a pull-up jumper and from long range – which Milwaukee has given the 20-year-old the entire series.

His eight third-quarter points helped turn a 22-point deficit into just eight at one point.

And while it would make life easier for the organization if Williams’ latest performance would resonate with him and carry forward, that’s just not his make-up. A characteristic Donovan admitted that the organization knew when they drafted him.

“Obviously the size, the physicality, the athleticism, we all understood there would be a process for him,” Donovan said. “That he wasn’t just going to come onto the scene and take over. That this was going to be a development thing for him. But I don’t think that from the information that I had gotten before the draft even took place that after being with him going on two years, that there is anything at all that’s surprised me. From all the intel and the work, we knew exactly what we were getting.”

Caru-Show cancelled

Alex Caruso left the game in the second quarter after taking an unintentional blow to the face from Jevon Carter, and did not return.

According to Donovan, he was still being tested in the concussion protocol at the conclusion of the loss, but since he was begging to try to get back into the game after the injury, the coach was hoping it wasn’t too serious.

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