We interrupt the playoff fever enveloping the Bulls for this brief announcement from Kirk Hinrich.
“We haven’t been a good road team this year,” Hinrich said.
Ah, yes, that.
The Bulls leave their cocoon of the United Center, where they’ve won seven straight and 14 of 15, for the hostile, annoying environment that is the Palace of Auburn Hills. Monday night’s road game against the Pistons has huge seeding implications for the Bulls’ first-round playoff series that will start, well, on the road.
“It’s definitely going to be tough,” said Hinrich, ever the realist.
“We have to play with more toughness if we’re going to have any success.”
Indeed, those fourth-quarter comebacks that seem so natural now at home haven’t happened on the road, where the Bulls are just 12-28 overall and 0-5 in overtime games. That’s why Monday’s game can serve as a litmus test.
“It seems like on the road sometimes we get down a little bit,” coach Vinny Del Negro said. “We start rushing things. When we get down at home, we have more toughness, grit and resiliency. On the road, we have to guard better. We can’t always rely on our offense. And that’s the next step for us.”
If the Bulls win, they capture the season series 3-1 from the Pistons and are guaranteed to avoid finishing eighth and facing the Cleveland LeBrons in the first round.
Philadelphia’s loss Sunday at Toronto dropped the 76ers into a sixth-place tie with the Bulls, and the 76ers close with a home-and-away back-to-back against Boston and Cleveland. However, the 76ers own the tiebreaker over the Bulls.
The Bulls have no chance at the fifth seed after Miami’s home victory Sunday. Cleveland, Boston and Orlando are now locked into the first, second and third seeds.
“Avoiding LeBron [James] would get us the Celtics,” forward John Salmons said. “Avoiding the Celtics would get us Orlando. It doesn’t really matter at this point. We know we can beat good teams, and we’ll have to do so on the road.”
The Bulls average 4.3 fewer points per game on the road and allow five more points.
“When we get on the road, we’re not going to have the crowd to feed off of so we need the intensity right away,” guard Ben Gordon said. “We’ve been turning it up in the fourth quarter lately, but we need to have better starts.”
———–
kcjohnson@tribune.com
