DEERFIELD, Ill. – Dwyane Wade was hurt. Shaquille O’Neal was in foul trouble, but the Chicago Bulls didn’t take advantage.

Now, they’re on the verge of elimination.

The Bulls will try to avoid it when they host the Miami Heat on Thursday in Game 6 of their best-of-seven first-round playoff series.

“If we win tomorrow, they have the pressure,” Chicago forward Andres Nocioni, averaging 22.8 points and 9.6 rebounds in this series, said after Wednesday’s practice.

For now, the pressure is on the Bulls, who trail 3-2 after losing 92-78 at Miami. Game 7, if necessary, would be Saturday in Miami.

The Heat have lost three previous playoff series against the Bulls and are 0-9 in postseason games at Chicago.

“I know Miami hasn’t won in Chicago ever in the playoffs,” said Chicago native Wade, who scored 28 points in Game 5 despite bruising his left hip late in the second quarter. “So to go up there and make history doing that, it’d be great.”

Wade was taking painkillers and expected to play in Game 6.

He landed awkwardly after Bulls center Michael Sweetney blocked his layup, and writhed in pain on the court before being helped to the locker room, where he was injected with a painkiller.

Wade returned midway through the third quarter, and the Heat dominated the Bulls from there.

A five-point Chicago lead quickly melted away as Miami went on a 21-6 run to grab a 71-61 lead. After the Bulls closed to within 77-73 with 4:47 left in the game, the Heat put them away with 15-point run.

And Wade was impressive after he returned. He hit 4-of-6 shots, including a 3-pointer that finished off the Bulls, was 6-for-6 from the foul line, and scored 15 of his game-high 28 points.

“Initially, he was limping a little bit, I thought, and then played well at the end,” Bulls coach Scott Skiles said.

The Bulls, simply, did not play well.

They shot just under 35 percent and committed 19 turnovers.

Ben Gordon, who’s had an up-and-down series, shot 3-for-16 and scored 10 points in Game 5. And Kirk Hinrich – who scored at least 19 in the first four games, was as bad – finishing six turnovers and nine points on 3-for-13 shooting.

“(James) Posey did a great job of not only giving Ben Gordon a different look, a longer guy on him defensively, but on the offensive end he really got some key tip-outs for us to get us some second chances and he hit some key 3s,” Wade said.

But when the Bulls looked at the video, they saw plenty of forced shots. They saw little ball movement.

Mostly, they saw a missed opportunity.

“They didn’t stop us; we stopped ourselves,” guard Chris Duhon said.

“From an energy standpoint, (Miami’s) defense was a little bit better,” Skiles said. “But we had people open all over the place. We were taking bad shots. We didn’t share the ball enough. We had too many one-pass, shot situations.”

The ball movement the Bulls showed in taking Games 3 and 4 – and during their 12-2 run to end the regular season – was not there. Instead of driving and passing out to the open man, they forced shots.

“The heat was on,” Skiles said, no pun intended. “And we didn’t handle it very well.”

The Bulls fought back from 10 games under .500 late in the regular season to grab the seventh seed and reach the playoffs for the second consecutive year. They’ve shown a poise that belies their youth.

“We’ve been in these situations throughout the season and have usually had a good effort and responded,” Hinrich said.

The experienced Heat seemed to be coming apart before Game 5, complaining about the officiating and bickering with each other. Udonis Haslem served a one-game suspension for throwing his mouthpiece toward an official, and Posey got one for knocking down Hinrich in the open court. Wade and Gary Payton exchanged harsh words near the end of the first half of Game 4. And O’Neal can’t seem to avoid foul trouble.

The Heat were seething after Sunday’s game, when they attempted five free throws to the Bulls’ 31 in a six-point loss.

“We’ll definitely have to go to school on what happened when we went there last week,” Miami coach Pat Riley said. “Lack of energy, they were on a real attack mode, turnovers, we put them on the free-throw line. We gave them pretty much everything they earned.”