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First-Place Bulls Try To Fight The Hype

With the Chicago Bulls' 98-79 win over the Washington Wizards, they moved into sole possession of the Eastern Conference's top spot.

But sitting in first place with 16 games left, the Bulls will have more hype to fight off if they want to remain focused.

"Now everyone is talking about how great we are, how we have the MVP, this guy is doing this," Luol Deng said. "And human nature is really easy to fall into that and think we're just going to go out there and win."

All season long head coach Tom Thibodeau has preached to his team to stay focus on the next game and continue to improve. That's a mentality that the team has definitely picked up, starting with their MVP candidate.

"We let them come back," Derrick Rose said of Tuesday night's game. "We shouldn't be doing that, but we'll learn from that and hopefully get better."

Maybe more impressive than Rose has been this season is the way the team has played through injures. Tuesday night, like many times this season, the Bulls were without forwards Carlos Boozer and Joakim Noah. But in their place, Taj Gibson and Kurt Thomas combined for 17 points and 28 rebounds.

The Bulls' next game is on Thursday night, agaisnt the Indiana Pacers.

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