Bulls have no answers for beasts of the East
Anyone who bought a ticket to Saturday's game at the United Center hoping to see some good 3-point shooting from Kyle Korver was not disappointed.
In fact, the entire Atlanta roster put on a pretty good demonstration of why the Hawks are pulling away from the rest of the Eastern Conference contenders. The Bulls started slowly, struggled to stay within striking distance and ultimately lost 107-99.
Atlanta (33-8) won its 12th game in a row, 12th road game in a row and improved to 26-2 over the last 28 games. The Hawks also snapped a six-game losing streak at the UC.
No one had to come out and say it in the Bulls' locker room - this performance by Atlanta is the way the Bulls expected to be playing this season.
"They're playing great basketball," Derrick Rose said. "I think anybody would want to be Atlanta right now the way they're playing, the way the ball is hopping. You can just tell they love playing together. Don't get me wrong, we love playing together too, but we just didn't figure things out on the defensive end."
The Bulls (27-15) aren't in a bad spot, but have now lost five of their last seven. Playing again without two starters, Joakim Noah and Mike Dunleavy, they couldn't match Atlanta's confidence on either end of the floor.
"It's the truth. The way they play, I think that's the way we should be playing," Jimmy Butler said. "That's the way we can play and we're going to get to that. So why not pick up a few things from them?"
The Hawks' four best players all had good nights. Korver led the way with 24 points, hitting 7 of 9 shots from 3-point range. Center Al Horford added 22 points while knocking down 11 of 14 shots. Point guard Jeff Teague contributed 17 points and 11 assists, while forward Paul Millsap scored 16.
It's easy to say the Bulls need to clamp down on defense the way they did in recent seasons. But the key moment of this game was the first quarter, when the Bulls shot just 26.3 percent from the field and committed 7 turnovers. They fell behind 24-16 after one quarter and couldn't recover.
Twice in the fourth quarter, the Bulls closed within 5 and brought the sellout crowd to life, but the Hawks always had answers. First, it was old friend Thabo Sefolosha knocking down a baseline turnaround, then Horford buried a clean look at an 18-foot jumper to send Atlanta ahead 95-88 with 4:11 left.
Rose led the Bulls with 23 points, 10 assists and 8 rebounds. Pau Gasol finished with 22 points and 15 rebounds, while Butler scored 15.
"I'm not worried about my performance," Rose said. "My biggest thing is just winning games. I could have zero points, 20 turnovers. If we're winning, I'm happy with it. You could erase the performance tonight. We lost, so it doesn't matter.
"We've just got to figure it out. We've still got 40 games left. We've just got to get guys on the same page and put everything else behind us and go out and just try to compete."
Not long ago, the Bulls won 13 of 15 games, so there's a feeling things could turn around quickly. But besides all the injuries, the Bulls seem to display a different deficiency from day to day, sometimes quarter to quarter.
"(Coach Tom Thibodeau) can say whatever he wants to say. It's going to have to be done by us as a collective group," Rose said. "It can't be two or three on one possession or four guys on one possession and the fifth guy's like out doing whatever he wants to do. It's got to be all five guys tied together. I think we're going to figure it out."
Get the latest Bulls news via Twitter by following @McGrawDHBulls.