Tom Thibodeau: ‘We beat ourselves’
That summed up the entire feeling in the Chicago Bulls’ locker room after a 100-99 heartbreaking overtime loss to the New York Knicks. (Derrick) Rose, (Kyle) Korver, (Joakim) Noah, they all knew they could have played a lot better and that’s what made this particular defeat so difficult to swallow.
“We had to make a lot of mistakes there to lose that game, and we did,” Korver said. “We did. We made a lot of mistakes. We gave them certain shots, we missed some free throws, I missed a 3. We had a lot of opportunities to put the game away and each one of them went their way. We got to learn from it.”
It’s rare to see words like that after a team comes back from a 21-point deficit, but it was apropos on this day. After getting completely outworked for most of the first half, the Bulls clawed their way back and managed to establish a 10-point lead with 3:45 left to play in fourth quarter. That’s when the Bulls are supposed to be at their best, but, this time, that’s when things completely fell apart. The Bulls couldn’t find any kind of rhythm late and didn’t score another point in regulation. Rose, who was playing in his first game in nearly a month because of a groin injury, and Luol Deng each missed two free throws and mentally the Bulls never quite recovered.
“We beat ourselves,” Bulls coach Tom Thibodeau said.
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