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For the Chicago Bulls, it's very hard to take anything positive away from Saturday night's 125-86 blowout loss on the road to the Indiana Pacers. According to an article by Joe Cowley of the Chicago Sun-Times, Bulls power forward Nikola Mirotic was insistent that the team shouldn't panic, simply forget about that game, and move on.
‘‘We can’t lose our confidence now,’’ Nikola Mirotic said after the lopsided defeat. ‘‘We’ve been playing better. We need to put this game behind us, focus on the next game and just stick together. We need a little bit more urgency. Some games we start like, ‘OK, let’s see what’s going to happen.’ And then you’re losing by 10 and then you start losing by 20.’’
The lackadaisical loss, which dropped the Bulls to 14-26 on the year, was the team's fourth defeat in five games. As for Bulls head coach Fred Hoiberg, it's safe to say that he was not pleased one bit with his team's performance, and rightfully so.
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‘‘The bottom line is they were comfortable all night; we weren’t,’’ Hoiberg said. ‘‘They brought the fight to us. They got into us right away, and we didn’t handle it well. We had 11 first-half turnovers. Points in the paint, 46-36; second-chance [points], 19-4; fast-break points, 17-9. That’s really all you need to know.’’
For the Pacers, Saturday night marked the inspired return of shooting guard Victor Oladipo, who missed the team's previous four games with a right knee injury. He put up a team-high 23 points in just 24 minutes of action.
In Chicago's defense, they were on the second night of a back-to-back and have been in the midst of a grueling stretch in which the team played eight games in the last 12 days.
