What the Bulls must realize now is that the last six months mean nil. They had a better winter than Chicago did, but those 55 victories, like snow blowers, are best forgotten in the current climate.
Everything you wanted to know but were afraid to ask about the Bulls without Michael Jordan will be answered starting Friday night. If they think they survived his retirement, they might think again when the NBA playoffs begin. This is war, and the general who led the Bulls to three straight titles and always wanted the ball in the final minute is smoking cigars in Birmingham.
“It’s like entering our second season since he left,” noticed Steve Kerr. “We did well in the first season, but we’ll be examined all over again.”
If it’s spring, it’s Cleveland. We beat our rugs, the Bulls beat the Cavaliers. It happens every April, or so it seems. The path to the NBA championship passes through Chicago, but not before the Bulls leave a strip of rubber in Shaker Heights. Even when the Bulls don’t go all the way, you set your clocks back an hour when the Bulls go to Ohio. The Bulls don’t use a whirlpool to get ready. All they need is Lake Erie. Cleveland fans thought the Indians were enough to ruin every summer, but then came Jordan.
It was Michael’s 16-foot jumper at the buzzer that signalled the Bull market. He beat the Cavaliers 101-100 in the fifth and deciding game of their opening round on May 7, 1989, the day the dynasty was born. The Bulls took two years to figure out Detroit, but the Cavaliers still haven’t figured out the Bulls. Cleveland won 3 of 4 from the Bulls this season, but Cleveland won 6 of 6 that year and it didn’t matter.
“I didn’t get there until the start of the ’89-’90 season,” said Kerr. “But I heard all about `the Shot.’ There are three things people in Cleveland talk about, all in the same sentence. There’s `the Interception’ that Brian Sipe threw (for the Browns against Oakland in 1980). There’s `the Drive’ by John Elway (for Denver in 1986). And then there’s `the Shot.’ They’re loyal fans, but they feel tortured and they wear those scars well.”
The Cavaliers were the better team in 1989, having won 57 games to the Bulls’ 47, with only four losses at the Richfield Mausoleum. Yet the Bulls prevailed, as they did the year before and twice since during title runs. The next playoff series the Bulls lose to Cleveland will be their first, but worry about the law of averages later.
The Bulls have to stop dwelling on New York. The last time they looked past current affairs to New York was last Friday night, when they botched their Boston assignment and blew the seed money.
Sunday, the Bulls discussed the Knicks as though the great rematch were guaranteed. There’s danger there, and not only because the Bulls talked a better game than they played. Their inconsequential 92-76 Stadium defeat was rife with ominous signs, even if you believe the party line that the Bulls didn’t show all the defensive tricks they’ll lay on the the Knicks in two weeks. As aptly described by Luc Longley, who should know, Sunday’s fray resembled Australian rules football. There were technical foul difficulties early, and then clutch really led to grab.
Alas, the Bulls wound up down under an array of untamed elbows and restricted shots. Granted, the Bulls had little to prove except their ability to vanquish the Knicks again at home. But the Bulls failed, though New York’s twin terribles, injured John Starks and punished Anthony Mason, were invisible. The Knicks delivered 48 minutes of static cling, anyway.
On the flip side, the Knicks are under infinitely more pressure than the Bulls to win with Jordan out of the league. New Jersey and Cleveland are better business trips than vacation spas, but you know it’s a strange year when the missing link is getting away from it all in Alabama.
