05:25 AM ET  11.17 | "We need to get out of town," says Kirk Hinrich referring to the craziness and booing back in Chi-town. And they proceed to drop their first game to Phoenix. Up next...Los Angeles. Although they're up against the Clippers they'll be in the heart of Kobe-land. Everyone says that the Bulls start slow. Well, that's a goddam excuse. To say that in the NBA it's how you finish is a fallacy. There have been lots of teams that broke out of the gates from the beginning and won the championship. Need I elucidate? The difference for the Bulls this year is their psyche. I'd blame John Paxson for that. Not Kobe Bryant. If the Bulls are indeed in need of veteran help they should have traded for the right person during the summer. For sure they got Joe Smith in place of PJ Brown. But was Smith the answer? Even then people weren't convinced. Yet all that pre-season talk about Kobe going to the Bulls totally undermined the team. Then Luol Deng and Ben Gordon didn't sign their offer sheets. So they are playing for their impending free agency. I'm not even sure if another Headband-gate will help them this time around. Of course, it's still too early to pronounce the team dead on arrival when they've only played seven matches. But they are in need of CPR that's for sure. As Scott Skiles said it, they're going to see what Chicago is all about during this western road trip since they'll be in Los Angeles for three days. Three days of intense media scrutiny. When you have Raptors guard TJ Ford openly wondering what is wrong with the Bulls you know there's something wrong. He can feel it on the court. Different body language. Different game. As Hinrich said as well, "We're playing like we did several years ago."