'Childish' Bulls fall down, go boom
MINNEAPOLIS -- Back in 2001, then-Bulls coach Tim Floyd stood in the hallway of the Target Center and suggested his players couldn't have beaten "a snappy junior high team" on a night they lost to Minnesota by 53 points.
Following a different kind of ugly loss to the Timberwolves on Wednesday, coach Jim Boylan found some creative descriptions of his team's dismal performance in the second half.
"I'm really disappointed in the way that we performed in the second half and the way some guys out there just seemed to shut it off," Boylan said following an 83-67 loss. "That was disappointing to see."
Asked what he meant by players shutting it off, Boylan added colorful details.
"Just shut it off," he said. "They stopped playing with energy; they stopped playing with focus. They went into their own little world, acting kind of childish at times, instead of doing what we know we need to do against a team like this."
There were no temper tantrums or tossing chairs. But the Bulls seemed to concede defeat in the second half when they couldn't muster much offense.
At one point in the second half, Boylan did yell to his team to line up on the free-throw lane instead of complaining about a foul call.
"I think what happens in the second half is we get a little demoralized because we can't find any scoring," Boylan said. "So then we kind of got our heads down a little bit and kind of gave in to the fatigue and gave in to the back-to-back situation."
The Bulls (18-27) were missing top scorers Ben Gordon and Luol Deng for the fifth straight game, while Joe Smith stayed in Chicago with an illness. Chris Duhon returned from a bruised left knee to play 22 minutes, but he probably shouldn't have bothered.
No team is going to be in great shape without three of its top five scorers. But the Bulls ran into a bad team playing poorly and showed little desire to win the game.
In the first quarter, Minnesota hit 3 of 21 shots and scored 8 points, yet the Bulls could manage only a 14-8 edge.
The Timberwolves (9-36) eventually broke open a tie game with an 11-0 run to finish the third quarter as center Al Jefferson finished with 26 points and 20 rebounds, while Ryan Gomes scored 25 points.
These teams squared off for the second consecutive night. When the Bulls beat Minnesota at the United Center on Tuesday, Gomes didn't score at all.
"We couldn't have two games against the same team and play the same way," Jefferson said.
No one on the Bulls played particularly well. Kirk Hinrich had 14 points and 9 assists but hit just 5 of 17 shots.
Thabo Sefolosha also scored 14 but finished with 6 turnovers. Andres Nocioni had a miserable game, hitting 2 of 12 shots for 7 points to go with 5 turnovers.
Inside the visitors' locker room, no one mustered much of a response to Boylan's comments about shutting it off and acting childish.
"It just wasn't NBA basketball out there offensively tonight," Hinrich said. "It was a big game for us and we didn't have it. Offensively we were bad, obviously."
"It is what it is," center Ben Wallace added. "I saw everything going wrong. We're trying to make a playoff run and we can't afford to have games like this. Game like this sets you back."