Bulls Deliver a Body Shot to Clippers

The too few, the proud, the Clippers.

The Bulls aren’t one of the NBA’s powers, beginning Sunday night with a 21-28 record, 1-5 on this trip, but at least there were a lot of them.

The Clippers had the West’s fourth-best record and nine wins in their previous 11 games but there weren’t as many of them, and one fewer after starting forward Quinton Ross left after seven minutes because of a sore back.

With Coach Scott Skiles going 10 deep, his bench outscored the Clipper reserves, 44-14, and his team upset Mike Dunleavy’s, 97-91, before 17,365 in Staples Center.

Elton Brand led all scorers with 29 points and took a game-high 15 rebounds.

Kirk Hinrich and Jannero Pargo, a former Laker, scored 17 points for Chicago. Darius Songaila, a former Sacramento King, had 12 and Andres Nocioni, formerly of the Italian League, had nine.

The Bulls led by as many as 12 points in the fourth quarter and by eight with 1:58 left before the Clippers, who came from eight behind to beat Memphis in their last game, tried to do it again.

They got within 93-91 on Brand’s layup with 26 seconds left. However, the Bulls, who had been wearing the Clippers out with Hinrich coming off a high pick-and-roll, ran it again and Hinrich, driving into the lane, drew a foul from Chris Kaman. Hinrich made two free throws with nine seconds left, putting the game away.

“[Tyson] Chandler kept changing the angle of the pick and we could never get straight what we were trying to get to,” Dunleavy said. “They definitely burned us on it.

“Quinton Ross, who’s our best defender on pick-and-rolls getting over the screen, wasn’t there. It was a combination of things, our guards getting hung up on the screens and our bigs didn’t do a good job of containing the ball. ...

“I thought Chicago just outplayed us. We told our guys for two days, they play hard and they shoot the ball well. ... They’re one of the top three-point shooting teams in the league. They’ve got five or six guys who can shoot it and they can usually find one.”

The Bulls hadn’t played since Thursday, when they lost, 98-80, to the Kings.

“We know we’ve got our hands full,” Skiles said before the game. “We’d like to play a good game to end our trip. We didn’t play well the other night. We got blown out in Sacramento. We were never in the game. We’d like to finish the trip with a good, solid game. ...

“They [the Clippers] lead the league in defensive field-goal percentage. They’re fourth in offensive field-goal percentage. Hence their record.”

Hence, it was no surprise when the Clippers (now 30-19) began the second quarter with a 14-0 run and jumped into a 39-29 lead. However, the Bulls are nothing if not competitive. They went on a 14-0 run of their own, closing the second quarter on a 10-0 run to go in at halftime with a 51-50 lead, and stretched it to 55-50 early in the third quarter.

The Clippers got to within 61-60 but the Bulls hit them with yet another spurt, closing the quarter with a 15-7 run, this one led by Pargo and Songaila.