Dec. 11--The Bulls' first back-to-back since Oct. 27-28 meant no Thursday shootaround or film session, just a closed evening walk-through at the United Center.
But coach Fred Hoiberg also met with Derrick Rose about pushing the ball upcourt quickly with more consistency with Rose saying the coach has instructed him to get ball past halfcourt by 21-second mark on shot clock.
"Hopefully, we'll continue to clean that up as far as how we want to get the ball down the floor," Hoiberg said.
Rose said late Wednesday in Boston that he feels he's doing so. But despite the Bulls ranking seventh leaguewide in pace, Rose often walks the ball into half-court sets.
"We're just not very efficient on the offensive end right now," Hoiberg said. "A lot of that, you know we need to put pressure on the rim. We need to run to the rim better in transition. We need to get to the corners (and) we have to flatten out the floor."
Status quo: For Thursday's 83-80 victory over the Clippers, Taj Gibson started ahead of Nikola Mirotic for the second straight night.
"I thought we did a little better job of putting pressure on the rim early in (Wednesday's) game -- that's what we have to do with that group," Hoiberg said. "Pau (Gasol) is obviously very good with his back to the basket, but in the pick-and-roll he's more of a pop guy, getting in the pocket. So we have to have somebody putting pressure on the rim in there, hopefully opening up some stuff for our perimeter guys."
House call: Clippers coach Doc Rivers was asked if Tom Thibodeau, his former associate head coach in Boston, ever talks to him.
"Other than every day, I would say no," Rivers said, laughing.
Rivers had close to a year off from 2003 to 2004 between the Magic firing him and the Celtics hiring him. He thinks Thibodeau's forced sabbatical after his firing from the Bulls could be good for him.
"I'm sure at the time I didn't think a year off was good for me, I will say that," Rivers said. "But after going through it I thought it was probably the best thing that ever happened to me. It let me take a look back at what I needed to do better and what worked. I'm sure he's doing the same thing.
"He watches more games than I did, I can tell you that. I was golfing."
Layups: Jimmy Butler posted a steal in his 28th straight game, a career best. ... Hoiberg on Butler publicly revealing he wanted to play the whole fourth quarter Wednesday in Boston but Hoiberg told him he needed a rest: "It's easy to look back after the game and say, 'Oh, we should have kept him on the floor.' But that would have put him over 40 minutes and I wanted to get him a couple more minutes rest so he would be a little fresher down the stretch." ... Hoiberg on whether he's following the social media grilling the Bulls are receiving was predictable: "What's social media? No, I used to tweet when I was in college, but I gave up Twitter."
