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CLEVELAND — Joakim Noah and the Chicago Bulls remain confident they can beat the Cleveland Cavaliers in a seven-game series — even though they dropped Sunday’s game 99-94 to the Cavs.

“I think we’re a confident group,” Noah said after the game. “And it would be great to play them in the playoffs. It would be very, very exciting, something that I really hope happens.”

Noah, who famously disparaged the city of Cleveland during the 2010 playoffs, showed the city a similar lack of regard during his postgame comments.

“This is a great place to play basketball,” he said. “Other than that, there’s not much else to do. But when you get onto that court, it’s a great place to play basketball. That’s as much love as I’ll give to Cleveland.”

Cavs guard J.R. Smith, who was traded to Cleveland before the trade deadline, echoed Noah’s sentiments in an interview with NBA.com’s David Aldridge earlier in the year.

“I think this is the best situation for me, ’cause there’s nothing but basketball,” Smith told NBA.com. “There’s nothing you expect but basketball. There’s nothing, there’s no going out, there’s no late nights. There’s video games, basketball and basketball.”

The Bulls are 1-3 against the Cavs in the regular season, but they have the highest-scoring offense in the Tom Thibodeau era. The Cavaliers hit 16 3-pointers on Sunday, tying a record for 3-pointers given up in a game with Thibodeau as coach.

Even so, the Bulls seemed upbeat after the loss and remain confident they will be even better once Derrick Rose and Kirk Hinrich return from knee injuries.

“Look, there’s no moral victories, and we would have liked to have played better,” Bulls veteran Mike Dunleavy said. “But you lose a game by five and you have three, take your hat off to them, great shots at the end, buzzer-beaters. Hey, if they hit those shots, they’re going to beat a lot of teams.