The Chicago Bulls dropped their second in row to the New York Knicks in as many nights Thursday, and Taj Gibson’s frustration with his squad boiled over.
Gibson says he’s tired of losing to “trash teams”, and that people now look forward to facing Chicago.
Derrick Rose was the lone bright spot for the Bulls last night, finishing (often acrobatically) with 30 points.
Per ESPN:
“Hell yeah, I’m embarrassed,” Gibson said after the Bulls’ 106-94 defeat. “I take pride in wearing this jersey. I love wearing the Bulls jersey. Especially what we’ve been through, I take pride in playing for Chicago. When I wear that jersey, I try to go out there and play my heart out. And it’s frustrating when we come up short, and we look at ourselves, we’re losing to … I don’t want to criticize any[body], [but] trash teams. Everybody’s in the NBA for a reason, but we’re playing against teams that are not playing for anything, and we’re just laying down. It feels like now we’re a target. It feels like teams are not taking us serious.
“Teams are more eager to play us. [In years prior,] it was vice versa. They knew we were coming in to punch people in the face and keep playing. It’s just, it’s hard, man. It really eats me up inside. It’s really hard to sleep at night knowing it’s coming down to the wire, and our effort isn’t there. It’s really frustrating.”
Gibson’s emotion came on the heels of another dismal performance against the lowly Knicks. The Bulls now find themselves 1.5 games out of the final playoff spot in the Eastern Conference with 11 regular-season games left. […] “Tonight, I’ve never been so frustrated and mad before,” Gibson said. “It was disappointing, man, just real disappointing. I’m just tired of having these same talks with [the media] every night. About how we got to do better. … [Bulls coach Fred Hoiberg’s] right. We got to look ourselves [in the mirror]. I look at myself in the mirror every night, and I try to do different things every night. Still got how many more games left? We’ve got 11 more games left. It’s really do or die, and it’s really frustrating. We got to want it. We got to want it. Sometimes I feel we want it, sometimes I don’t know if we’re kidding ourselves or not.”
