CHICAGO -- Dwyane Wade summed up the feelings of his Chicago Bulls teammates with three words at the end of a disappointing 96-90 loss to the Los Angeles Lakers on Wednesday night.
"We played terrible," Wade said.
In his 14th NBA season, Wade didn't need to mince words. He knew that the first game at home after a long road trip is tough. The Bulls had just finished their annual two-week, six-game "Circus Trip" -- when the circus is in town, taking over the United Center -- and understood the inherent pitfalls that come after a long journey. Lots of teams struggle in the same situation but most aren't facing a team like the Lakers that was playing without Nick Young and D'Angelo Russell and in its fourth game in five nights.
Good teams find ways to win games they're supposed to win against teams they're supposed to beat. This is something the Bulls had done almost all season heading into Wednesday's game. But instead of finding ways to win this game, the Bulls found a way to lose it, blowing an 11-point first-quarter lead and not cashing in more from the Lakers' 24 turnovers.
Wade and his teammates weren't frustrated simply because they lost, they were frustrated by the way in which they lost.
"It was just one of those games," Wade said. "You're going to have a few of those in the season. When you're at home, you want to find a way to win those games. You're not going to play pretty all the time. It was an ugly game for us."
Bulls All-Star swingman Jimmy Butler has been one of the most dominant players in the league all season, but he shot just 4-for-18 from the field in 40 minutes of play. Butler managed to get to the free throw line 15 times, but the Lakers' game plan against him was different from how most teams have played the 27-year-old. They double-teamed him throughout the night, forcing him into either a contested look or a pass to one of his teammates.
Rajon Rondo played arguably his best game of the season, scoring 14 points, grabbing 8 rebounds and dishing out 6 assists, but the Achilles' heel for the Bulls on this night was the same one that has haunted them throughout the last few weeks: The bench just isn't very good. Nikola Mirotic, Isaiah Canaan, Denzel Valentine, Bobby Portis and Jerian Grant combined to shoot 7-for-25 from the field. Neither Bulls head coach Fred Hoiberg nor his players wanted to blame the bench after this one, but the subs' struggles are obvious.
Yes, Michael Carter-Williams (left wrist/left knee) and Doug McDermott (concussion protocol) are out, but they aren't the type of difference-makers that are going to change the consistent tenor of the bench on a nightly basis. They are young players with pronounced flaws in their respective games, like most reserves in the league.
The Bulls can't continue to rely so heavily on Wade and Butler without getting more help from other places on the roster. Aside from the consistent play of Taj Gibson and Robin Lopez, and the flashes of solid play from Rondo, Hoiberg has a slew of question marks on his team. When the group doesn't play with the edge it needs on a nightly basis, games like Wednesday's will become more the rule, not the exception.
"It goes to show you, if you don't go out there and play with energy, you're not going to give yourself a chance," Hoiberg said. "It didn't even look like the same team. You look at the glass, they outrebounded us by 16. We gave up 41 free throws -- we were No. 1 in the league in keeping teams off the line. If you look at the turnovers in the second half, [they were] just mindless, careless. And it just seemed like we couldn't get our hands to grasp those loose balls. We'd slap at it instead of grabbing it with two hands. ... Just a disappointing game, obviously."
In the short-term, the Bulls have a big challenge headed their way Friday night in the form of LeBron James and the Cleveland Cavaliers. As they go back and watch the tape, they've got to find a way to create more space and opportunities for Butler. He wasn't buying the notion of the first game back at home after a 12-day trip giving the Bulls problems, and maybe he's right. The Bulls' issues are clearer than a blip on a bumpy schedule. They need more help from outside the starting group, and if they don't get it soon, they are going to have even bigger problems.
"We just didn't play as well at basketball as we thought we were going to," Butler said. "Long season, lot of games left, we got to stop letting them slip away, because these are the ones that count at the end."
