Will Will or won’t he? Or has Phil had his fill?
These and many more questions will be answered Wednesday when the Bulls play their first actual center on this Western Conference trip, the Trail Blazers’ Chris Dudley, and Bulls coach Phil Jackson gets close to deciding on his real center.
“I have noticed in the last two weeks my minutes have been slowly dropping,” says Will Perdue, who has started all the games he’s played in this season.
But Perdue played 13, 12, and then nine minutes in the first three games of the trip before getting 22 in Sunday’s win over Golden State. “I know he (Jackson) likes Bill (Wennington) coming off the bench, which kind of leaves me and Luc (Longley) in an awkward position.
“I know he likes Luc’s big body and presence,” said Perdue. “But I feel in the time I’ve played I’ve been productive and I deserve to play.”
The statistics aren’t much different for Perdue and Longley on this trip. Perdue is averaging 3.5 points and 4.8 rebounds in 14 minutes per game. Longley is averaging 5.5 points and four rebounds in 15.8 minutes per game.
But with Perdue on the floor, the Bulls have outscored their four opponents 136-98. While he was off the floor, the Bulls have been outscored 374-329.
Which produced a rare highlight Sunday with a fan in Oakland behind the Bulls bench yelling for Jackson to put Perdue back in. Bulls observers said it was the first time anything like that was ever yelled by someone not a member of Perdue’s immediate family.
“Sure, I want to start,” says Longley, who missed most of the first half of the season with a broken leg. “All three of us do. That’s the competitive nature of the sport. But it would be arrogant of me to say anything now because I haven’t been playing well.”
For posterity’s sake: Injured forward Larry Krystkowiak has been recording this trip with his own videocassette recorder.
“I thought of all the road trips I’ve gone on there’ll come a time I won’t remember what went on, what it felt like, so I thought I’d record this for friends and family,” said Krystkowiak.
Last chance on those wobbly knees, perhaps?
“That’s not why,” said Krystkowiak. “But I do realize nine years have gone by and I won’t have another nine. But I see myself hanging around a few more years and contributing in some way to some team. It’s always nice to know there are two expansion teams coming.”
As for Krystkowiak, he says he’ll be ready to return to the active roster after the All-Star break, which would necessitate someone like Dickey Simpkins developing an injury.
Tired Toni? Jackson says he has a theory for why Kukoc has averaged just 9.7 points on 46 percent shooting the last three games.
“He looks haggard,” says Jackson. “His demeanor on the court seems tired. I asked him if being this far away from Croatia (on the West Coast, 2,000 miles from Chicago) has added to his minus factor because of how distant it is from his home compared with Chicago.”
Kukoc, typically, looked baffled about Jackson’s comments and responded: “I am not tired. I have had plenty of time off the ball. I went a whole quarter and touched the ball three, maybe four times. It might look like I’m tired, but people have always told me as long as I’ve been playing that’s the way I look on the court. But as long as we’re winning everything is fine.”
