With the Bulls-Pistons series finally starting this weekend, coach Scott Skiles acknowledged some “boredom” had set in for portions of Thursday’s practice.
“It’s time for us to get there and play a game,” Skiles said.
The Bulls will travel to Michigan on Friday after one more practice. There’s plenty to focus on, because the ease with which the Bulls established tempo against the Heat figures to be harder to achieve against the Pistons.
“With them switching from man to zone defenses and trapping and things like that, they can have a little more control of the tempo theoretically than Miami did,” Skiles said. “If we’re stopping the ball and rebounding and outletting the ball and getting into our running game, we can have control. But after made field goals we still like to push it, and they could be switching defenses and slowing us down. A lot of it will depend on getting stops.”
Skiles confirmed that the Bulls had installed some new looks and wrinkles to their offense during the layoff, which began after Sunday’s game.
“But we’re not going to stray too far from the way we play,” he said. “We need to be ready for them to play zone and trap us in the half-court and mix up their defenses, which is the way they play. A couple of the games against them this year, we’ve been very good at it. Another game, we weren’t.”
Layups
Andres Nocioni participated in his first full practice of the week, and Skiles said the forward showed no ill effects from the plantar fasciitis in his right foot and a strained right quadriceps. … Adrian Griffin played only one minute in the Heat series. But Skiles noted that he ably defended Detroit’s Richard Hamilton in the regular season.
