“Don’t dance with the ball,” (Tom) Thibodeau said. “We are going to keep working on it. It was disappointing because it ended up being a two-possession game. If you want to be a good team, the first thing you have to do is eliminate all the things you do to beat yourself.”

Never has a truer Thibodeau phrase been spoken. When the Bulls face elite-level competition this season, especially without Derrick Rose and Rip Hamilton, they have to do all the little things in order to win. They have to take care of the ball, play solid defense and control the tempo and both ends.

They don’t have the luxury of waiting for their superstar to take over because they don’t have one at the moment. That was the problem for them on Tuesday against Griffin and Chris Paul. When the Bulls needed a big play or a defensive stop they couldn’t find either. Luol Deng and Marco Belinelli combined to go 9-for-36 from the field and Thibodeau’s bunch didn’t have enough to recover from that.

via Nick Friedell of ESPNChicago.com