The Chicago Bulls played the Victor Oladipo led Pacers in Indianapolis on Saturday in the second half of a back to back. The Bulls might as well have stayed in Dallas last night as they ended up losing by 39.
You can chalk it up to the rigors of the NBA schedule if you want, but the Bulls head coach Fred Hoiberg is having none of that excuse.
“We were awful, we were awful.”
There’s no misunderstanding that message. And he wasn’t finished.
“The bottom line is they were comfortable all night, we weren’t,’’ Hoiberg said. “They brought the fight to us. They got into us right away, we didn’t handle it well. We had 11 first-half turnovers, [Indiana led] points in the paint 46-36, second chance [points] 19-4, fast break points 17-9. That’s really all you need to know about [Saturday].’’
“The things that made us a successful team, we need to do it. We didn’t do that. They came out and just laid the wood to us start to finish.’’
Regardless of how important you think tanking for a draft pick is, it’s also important for Hoiberg to stay on his team and push them to give their best effort every night.
I don’t think that Hoiberg is worried about his team’s effort going forward, but I applaud him for being publicly vocal after the terrible effort we saw tonight. The best way to get a message across is often to be firm and direct, which is exactly what Hoiberg was.
We’ll see how the Bulls respond Monday at home against an excellent Houston Rockets team, but I’d imagine we’ll see a better effort than the one we saw tonight.
