Bulls' latest loss shouldn't come as surprise

LOS ANGELES -- With the inconsistent way the Chicago Bulls have played through much of the season, the fact that they dropped a 123-118 double-overtime affair to a terrible Los Angeles Lakers squad shouldn't come as a surprise. The surprise would have been if the Bulls had actually found a way to win.

As has been the case so often this season, the Bulls allowed a poor team to get out to an early lead and gain confidence. When the Bulls finally decided to play hard in the final moments, it looked as if they would escape with a much-tougher-than-it-should-have-been win. But as usual, the Bulls ran out of gas after exerting so much effort and couldn't knock down shots when they needed them most in the waning minutes of double overtime.

As has been the case so often this season, a litany of excuses and befuddled looks followed in the Bulls' locker room. Bulls guard Derrick Rose said his team needed to find its identity again -- "on the defensive end."

"Where when people play us, they know it's going to be a tough-ass time," Rose said. "We used to have that and now it's not there anymore, and you can just tell the way that people are playing."

Where did it go? The Bulls used to impose their will on opponents, especially on the defensive end; now they just sleepwalk through long stretches of the game and hope to turn it on late.

"We're not guarding anybody right now," Bulls swingman Jimmy Butler said. "That's what you think when you think Chicago -- is how great we are on defense. We haven't been that team, maybe three, four, five, six times this year tops. We can score the ball, so sometimes we outscore teams, but we haven't been playing any defense lately."

Just a few hours after being officially named to the All-Star team for the first time, Butler offered one of the most honest assessments of the Bulls to date. Like many of his teammates, he's disgusted by the way they are playing. But, like many of his teammates, Butler isn't sure how to fix the issue.

"We talk about it all the time," Butler said. "But it's enough of the talking. We got to get it done. Guys can rah-rah-rah and say, 'Oh, we got to start playing defense,' but we've heard it for 40-something games now. One of these days we're going to get tired of getting our ass kicked and decide to play defense."

After one of the most impressive wins of the year on Tuesday night against the red-hot Golden State Warriors, the Bulls looked lifeless throughout much of this game. They took the Lakers for granted and played down to the level of their competition again. Why does that keep happening?

"I have no idea," Butler said. "I think we just sometimes don't come out ready to play. We've done it against good teams, we've done it against bad teams. But we can't do it against any team in this league because anybody can beat anybody. And that what was definitely shown here tonight in the Staples Center."

For a team that played with so much pride for the past four seasons, it's odd to see them continually sleepwalk through games. The feeling within the locker room isn't one of panic -- the Bulls still believe they can beat anyone, as they have shown already this week -- but the lingering issue is that the lack of intensity, especially on the defensive end, is more than just a trend now. It's a problem.

"You just got to look at yourself in the mirror," Bulls center Joakim Noah said. "I got to look at myself in the mirror and say, 'You know what? I got to do better.' That's all I can do."

As a group, the Bulls should all be doing that. Championship-caliber teams have bad games during the course of a long, 82-game season, but they don't have the same problems over and over again. The Bulls' biggest problem appears to be that they can't get out of their own way most nights. They aren't playing with the same fire night to night, and they are relying way too much on their offense instead of playing the type of defense that earned them such a hard-nosed reputation throughout the league.

"I think that's what it is," Butler said, offering a sentiment shared by many within the locker room. "We can score so many points now that we think we don't have to guard anybody. And that's not the case. It hasn't been working for us. It's not going to work for us, so we need to stop doing that."