Wallace: Bulls let attention to detail fall short this season

CLEVELAND -- As the veteran player sent to a new home, Ben Wallace wasn't about to make the first move.

When he took the court for early warmups before playing the Bulls on Sunday, Wallace went about his business and began shooting free throws.

After a few minutes of both sides sticking to their own side of the floor, Joakim Noah finally broke the ice. He strolled to midcourt and yelled something at his former teammate. Wallace stopped, strode toward Noah and the two held an animated, gesturing conversation, obviously in jest.

"I told Ben not to bring it anywhere near the rim because I was going to foul the (bleep) out of him," Noah said with a smile. And I told him I was going to let him shoot 15-footers all day. With Joe (Smith), I told him to stop fouling everybody, because he's a hack."

At that point, the floodgates opened. Aaron Gray and Chris Duhon paid their respects to Wallace, along with coaches Ron Adams and Mike Brown.

By the time Thabo Sefolosha got to midcourt, Smith joined the circle and everyone had a few laughs reminiscing about their days as Bulls teammates, which ended 10 days ago.

"It was good to see them," Noah said. "They're really good guys. I miss them being around, miss them in the locker room. It's weird, because you're used to seeing them in practice all the time and talking trash and all that. Now you're doing it in a live situation."

Trade or no trade, the result of this game would have been the same. The Bulls played the way they have all season, unable to execute on either end late in a close game.

Both former Bulls were asked prior to Sunday's reunion if they could identify how or why this season went wrong. Smith pleaded ignorance, since this was his only season with the team.

Wallace has a different perspective. The Bulls won 49 games and reached the second round of the playoffs after he jumped from the Pistons as a free agent. This year, nine of the top 11 players were back, but things were rotten from the start.

"I really don't feel that team is that far off," Wallace said. "Even when I was there, I felt like we were a couple plays, a couple of possessions away from being a real solid team. I think they're just going to have to pay a little more attention to detail.

"They've got a lot of young guys, so they're going to have to drill and drill and drill until you get your point across. I think sometime we play a little too loose. They've got to tighten it up a little bit."

The attention to detail must have been there last season, since the Bulls fell 1 win short of edging Cleveland for the No. 2 playoff seed. Hearing that, Wallace added a dramatic pause as he eyed the questioner.

"We started off this year and we came out and would play hard for stretches during the game, but we never would put it together consistently," he said. "I think now teams are doing a better job preparing for it.

"So once teams start to prepare for it, you've got to do something different. You've got to be able to execute down the stretch and get stops when you need. I think that's one thing that really hurt us."

Wallace didn't pretend to have all the answers for the Bulls' free fall this season. But he and Smith both suggested the Bulls weren't ready when opponents adjusted to last year's success.

"Me and Ben were talking about this, you can surprise a lot of people one year," Smith said. "The next year, everybody has you on their radar. It's tougher to be successful.

"I don't know if that's what happened this year, not being able to surprise teams like they did last year. The team I thought I was joining from watching the year before, it was kind of a different feel."

Now it's a different feel with different faces. Same results, though.