Postgame Comments: Charlotte Bobcats 90, Bulls 77 | 01.25.08

( 17 - 25 )

( 17 - 26 )

Boylan

"It is tough to win an NBA game when you can only score 77 points. I thought we had some good looks, the ball just wasn't going in for us. Our free throw shooting was a problem. Charlotte was very efficient with the things they did. We held them to 90 points but they shot 49 percent. We could never really get anything going. We seemed to making runs at them here and there. We should not be in that position at home against a team that we played well against before. Our inconsistancy showed again. It is difficult to understand why we have problems motivating ourselves. I know we have problems missing two of our main scorers. We should still be able to step up and fill those voids with the guys we have. We weren't able to do that tonight."

Are the player’s expectations that they will not score without the main players?
"I don't think so. They are NBA players and when they are called upon, they have to step on the floor and perform. This is a league of performance and that is what you have to do night in and night out. We go from one game to another where we look like two different teams. I thought we had guys out there who played hard, trying to compete. Hats off to Charlotte, they played a great game."

How was the defense?
"At times it was OK but for the most part we let them get to the rim and score around the basket. Anytime you do that with a team it opens up the perimeter."

On Chris Duhon and Joe Smith:
"Joe tightened up and the trainer told me at halftime that he could not go. Chris Duhon could have played in the second half but he seemed to be struggling just a little bit. We have a lot of games coming up and I'm not sure what the situation is with Ben Gordon. I just want to make sure our guys are ready."

On Thabo posting up:
"He had a little stretch with Matt Carroll on him so we tried to post Thabo up and exploit that mismatch. It worked for us and then they made a switch, took Matt out of the game. While he was matched up with Carroll it was effective for us. Thabo has good size so we can take advantage of that in the post on occasion."

On putting Nichols in the game:
"We were struggling to shoot the ball. I was searching and put another three-point shooter out there. It is kind of unfair to him but he is in the NBA sitting on the bench wearing a uniform so when the coach says go in, you go in. That's your moment."

Hinrich

On the loss:
"It's just frustrating and disappointing. We're just trying to string something together and we've struggled to string wins together all year. We won the other night and we couldn't get one tonight. We could have won the game tonight but we shot 37 percent and they shot 50 percent. We struggled against the zone. We just didn't play very well."

On the injuries:
"We do have some injuries but we're a professional team and other guys have just got to step up and play. We've just got to go out and play better. Defensively we've just been so inconsistent all year."

Vincent

What didn't happen tonight that happened in the other three games with the Bulls?
"What didn't happen tonight was Ben Gordon didn't come off screens and knock down any threes. They had some guys missing, and the guys they had missing were guys who give them a lot of offense. We can call it whatever we want to call it, but we played well enough with their big guys out to get a win. Maybe with them in we get a win anyway."

On Emeka Okafor:
"I thought Okafor played hard, [finishing with] 21 and 16. He's strung together some real nice numbers. He's getting the ball off a little quicker. He's giving us a better target on the inside so we're getting it into him a little more. He's really playing hard. We have to give him a lot of credit. He banged with Ben Wallace very well and he won the match-up on the inside. He did a good job."

Did you talk about turnovers at halftime?
"No, I talked about turnovers after the first five minutes because we had about seven of them. We got a real sluggish start. We threw the ball away too much early, then we kind of settled down and played a little better. We never really had the rhythm that we've had in some of the games that we've played very well but we were playing well enough to shoot the ball pretty good and get some things done."

Carroll

On tonight's game:
"I thought we did a better job in the second half of holding on to the lead. We were taking better shots and trying to get some stops. If you look at their field goal percentage, we played good defense tonight. Not having Ben Gordon and Luol Deng helps too."

Wallace

On playing the Bulls without Deng and Gordon:
"They kind of struggled on the offensive end without those two key guys. We tried to get them out of what they wanted to do and make it hard for them to run their offense without their key guys. It felt good to get the win. We didn't want this team to get the sweep on us for all four games of the series so this was a must win for us as far as preventing them from getting a sweep and pushing us forward for the playoff race."

On the Bulls third quarter run:
"We knew they were going to make a run. We did not want to give them run-outs and let them get on the fast break and give them easy baskets. We wanted to force them to take tough shots and force them to run their offense. I think it was difficult for them to run their offense without some of their key guys tonight."