LA Split

The Circus Road Trip has begun for the Chicago Bulls. So far, they split in LA, beating the Clippers on Saturday and losing to the Lakers on Sunday. As usual, they beat the good team and lose to the bad one. They really showed up for the Clipper game and looked like the playoff team from last year. For the Laker game, they played tough defense during the first half, then disappeared. They did a pretty good job on Bryant, but they let the scrubs beat them. So the Bulls uncharacteristically lose the 2nd game of a back-to-back. They really have to get them selves together mentally and turn around this annual Circus Trip curse or the season could really be disastrous.

It's worthy to note that Deng was out with a sore back for Sunday's game. I know that's only one player, but it makes an impact on the whole lineup. To match up against the Lakers, the Bulls needed to use a big lineup, which would require Deng to be the shooting guard and more minutes for Sefolosha. Without Deng, they had to go with their regular lineup, which is too short to defend the Lakers.