DALLAS -- Joakim Noah knew his team was stuck at a gigantic fork in the road.

After another embarrassing defeat to the Cleveland Cavaliers on Monday night, the Chicago Bulls' sixth in their past eight games, the emotional center knew his team's entire season was headed in the wrong direction. The Bulls weren't fighting hard together, they weren't communicating enough on the floor and the hard-nosed defense which had defined them over the past four seasons went missing.

Noah, who was sitting out the Cavs game because of a sprained right ankle, knew that neither he nor his team was having any fun. The Bulls held a team meeting on Tuesday and talked about the issues they were having, but nobody knew whether airing out all the issues would have an impact on the floor.

Three days later, it appears that meeting might have saved the Bulls' season and gotten it back on track.

Noah, who returned to the lineup in Friday night's impressive 102-98 win over the Dallas Mavericks, after missing four games because of the ankle injury, wore the look of a proud and relieved older brother as he spoke after the game.

"I think when you go through adversity like that, you either go two ways," he said. "You either come together or you start to point fingers, and that's not who we are. At the end of the day, I think everybody wants to win here. It was definitely a humbling couple of weeks, but we just got to regroup and we still got work to do. We're not satisfied. We know we got to get better, and I think we're all more than capable of doing that."

But why did the message suddenly take? The Bulls always had talent, and they rattled off plenty of wins before their recent spiral. Why did it take so long for the players to buy into what they were trying to do together and get out of their funk?

"That's a good question," Bulls guard Jimmy Butler said. "I really can't tell you. I think we just all needed to sit down and get our feelings out and tell each other what we see was wrong, and we did that and turned it around for right now."

Lots of things were said in that meeting. Veteran Pau Gasol said coach Tom Thibodeau encouraged players to say what was on their mind, but after watching the Bulls roll through the defending NBA champion San Antonio Spurs on Thursday night and then squeeze out an even more impressive road win over the Mavericks on Friday night, one of the subtle, noticeable differences in the short term is that Thibodeau has changed his tone toward his players a little bit.

The hard-charging coach still destroys referees all night, but he is not as outward with his criticism of his own players in recent days as he has been in years past. His players have always wondered whether the veteran coach could take his foot off the gas ever so slightly, a point undoubtedly touched upon in the meeting. In that regard, at least in the short term, it appears he has.

The Bulls players, coaches and executives aren't naïve enough to think two good wins are the cure-all for a team that struggled so mightily in recent weeks, but it's a hell of a start for a group that has regained a championship belief in itself. They have started better in games. Derrick Rose has been more aggressive to start those games, as evidenced by the fact he scored 13 of his 20 points in the first quarter and drove to the rim. But most importantly, they are playing better defense and appear more unified on the floor. Thibodeau is cautiously optimistic his team is mentally back where it needs to be.

"I think you got to be careful," Thibodeau said. "You just got to keep building. Because you play two games, you got to keep putting the intensity into it, the concentration into it. Don't feel good. The games will keep coming. We got a quick turnaround with Miami, but I like the direction we're moving in. The last three or four days have been very good and productive.

"The words are good, but the actions are better. So it's about the work."

The work is what has made Thibodeau one of the very best coaches in the league over the past five seasons, but it's the words spoken by him, and his players, that might have saved this season.

"Having meetings when things are not going well, I think it's positive because you hear everyone out and you understand we're all in the same boat and we all have to row together to get to port, get to land," Gasol said. "If we don't do that, we're just going to continue to not accomplish what we want to accomplish. So once that's said, now let's take action. Actions speak louder than words, and now we have to bring it to the floor. Now we have to prove what we are talking about -- to ourselves first and then to other people. I think that's kind of what happened."