What a difference a night makes?
One night after a season-high 27 turnovers and being embarrassed on their home floor, the Bulls redeemed themselves against the Charlotte Bobcats with a 105-75 win.
Only committing a season low 6 turnovers and assisting on a season-high 37 of their 42 made field goals, the over-passing and poor spacing that hindered them the night before wasn’t an issue against the lowly Bobcats (13-42).
Taj Gibson led the way for the Bulls (32-23) with 17 points and was one of eight of his teammates to score in double figures.
“I thought we had the right mindset,” coach Tom Thibodeau said. “I thought the ball movement was very good. I thought the screening was good, the cutting was good. We were disappointed in the way we played and we felt that we beat ourselves yesterday, so we wanted to correct that.
“There was the disappointment because we didn’t play well and the important thing was the way we approached today, to learn from our mistakes from yesterday, but be ready to play today,” he continued. “You can use the out of back-to-back, get in late, whatever and I thought we chose none of that. We chose to work and came out ready, got the lead early. We played hard, played well.”
The Bulls held Charlotte to 33 percent shooting and the final never appeared to be in doubt – even with the lapses they’ve suffered from earlier in the season when building big leads.
“When everybody’s on the same page defensively, we’re a different team,” Joakim Noah said, who scored 10 points to go along with eight assists and eight rebounds. “I think we were aggressive from the start of the game and really set the tone. We were able to get stops, get the defensive rebounds and run in transition, and get going.”
Kemba Walker led Charlotte with a game high 27 points and was the only Bobcat to get going offensively.
The Bulls will have Saturday off before taking on the Oklahoma City Thunder on Sunday.
NOTES
Kirk Hinrich missed his second straight game after a re-aggravation of the right elbow injury that caused him to miss seven straight games before the All-Star break.
Hinrich has missed 14 games this season with various injuries, but the right elbow has been the most severe.
His status for Sunday’s game is questionable.
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