Del Negro calm after the storm of 42-point loss

Vinny Del Negro has demonstrated one constant, sometimes maddening, behavior so far this season. The first-year Bulls coach absolutely refuses to criticize his players in the media.

This is quite a change from Scott Skiles, who was brutally honest when describing the state of the team. One often-repeated story is Skiles' response when asked what Eddy Curry could do to improve his rebounding numbers.

"Jump," was the reply.

Of course, some of Skiles' comments helped escalate the turmoil last season when the Bulls went in the tank. He probably figured he was on the way out when he offered the "Tyrus Thomas has never run the floor once" rant during last year's circus road trip.

So it will be interesting to see how Del Negro responds to the crisis of Wednesday's effortless 116-74 loss at Portland - the Bulls' worst defeat in more than five years. He canceled Thursday's scheduled practice in San Francisco with a game looming tonight against the Golden State Warriors.

"For us, I'm curious every night how we're going to respond," Del Negro said following the late-night contest in Portland. "We have to be on guard, we have to be together, we have to play at a high level to give ourselves opportunities, especially on the road."

Even though the Bulls were missing two key players - Luol Deng sat out with a sore hamstring and Kirk Hinrich (thumb surgery) won't be back until mid-February - and were playing a tough back-to-back after losing to the Lakers on Tuesday, they were supposed to be better than this.

"They were the aggressive team," said Larry Hughes, who started in place of Deng. "They jumped on us early, got what they wanted to get. They scored the ball in the paint, outrebounded us. We're small and we understand that. We just couldn't get a rebound. We didn't do anything to stop them."

"It seemed like the game was over before it even started with the way we came out," said guard Ben Gordon, who has hit 10 of 34 shots in the past two games.

Del Negro will talk about what the team as a whole needs to do better. But when asked about poor individual performances, the coach tends to point the finger at himself.

Such was the case when Joakim Noah was removed from the starting lineup in favor of Aaron Gray for the Portland game. While starting the four previous contests, Noah averaged 2.3 points and 5.3 rebounds.

"I have to do a better job of trying to help him to understand things and find areas where he can help us," Del Negro said of Noah, repeating the same theme he used when Thabo Sefolosha was pulled from the starting lineup six games into the season.

Noah actually showed signs of life against the Blazers. Even though he had 5 fouls by halftime, Noah blocked 2 shots by Blazers 7-foot center Greg Oden and was called for several fouls that were tough to spot on video replays.

"The thing about the NBA is we've got a game (Friday)," Noah said after the loss. "We can't feel sorry for ourselves. We've got to see what happened tonight, learn from it and move on."

Noah's blocks were pretty much the lone highlight for the Bulls, who trailed 12-1 shortly after tip-off and were down by 30 before halftime. Not surprisingly, rookie guard Derrick Rose, who had his worst game as a pro with just 6 points and 1 assist, couldn't remember being on the losing side of such a lopsided score.

"Probably in practice, but not in an official game," he said. "You've just got to take it for what it is. We lost. We've got to work hard. I've got to be more assertive right from the beginning for my teammates and try to compete harder."

The Bulls seemed confused on offense all night, often standing around and watching somebody go 1-on-1. Defensively, it usually took one simple screen to create an open look for the Blazers, since the Bulls put little effort into rotating to the unguarded players.

"When teams are that much bigger than us and we're in their building, we have to figure out ways to work against the odds," Hughes added. "We need to maybe slow it up a little bit, maybe run some different sets and try to figure out some things to keep those guys guessing rather than trying to go up and down with them. It's tough trying to do that."

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