The five gold championship trophies glittered behind Phil Jackson as he spoke. But the thoughts and feelings he offered up hardly matched their collective grandeur.
They couldn’t, not with his Bulls 4-4 and struggling as they await their Friday night meeting at the United Center with the Charlotte Hornets. They instead reflected a team clearly in distress, a once-swaggering bunch that suddenly finds itself stumbling and bumbling.
So Thursday, in the wake of two straight losses, he said things such as: “I think (our confidence) is at a low ebb right now. It’s the lowest it has been in three years anyway.”
And: “I think we need to get a little bit of that good feeling back about ourselves. But that erodes real fast in this game. You have a couple of losses, and it goes away real quickly.”
And: “We had to take care of ourselves today, and do some therapy. Physical, mental and spiritual therapy.”
And: “I feel more than anything else, it’s a malaise. There’s an energy drain on this team. We talked about that today. Getting our mind-set into the season, anticipating what’s going to happen and having the energy to go out and play the games. I think the energy more than anything is what’s lacking.”
The Bulls, in fact, are lacking what characterized them as an inexorable threshing machine that cut a wide swath through the NBA. They are shooting abysmally–a paltry 41.5 percent.
Their losses to Atlanta and Washington came in the final minutes, displaying that they’re not performing with the mind-set of a champion. And, most important, they are providing little aid for Michael Jordan, who himself is hampered by an injured wrist, shooting only 38 percent and averaging a mere (for him) 24.1 points a game.
On the court, Jordan’s frustrations are palpable, though Jackson denied he and Jordan had words after the loss to the Bullets. But too regularly his shoulders sag and he stares daggers at lagging teammates, his face is washed over with a look of disgust.
“He hasn’t expressed any frustration that I’ve seen,” Jackson said, before adding, “What Michael really needs to find right now is a rhythm inside the game itself.
“We’ve been messing around with some of his time–he has asked me to sit him not so long because his wrist tends to stiffen up. There’s also a certain amount of, `How much do I attack at the beginning of the game versus saving myself for later on’ because of our inconsistency getting out of the blocks. So there’s still some of that touch-and-go stuff we have to solve.”
Jordan, as he did after Wednesday’s loss, declined to speak after Thursday’s practice. Yet, clearly, his rhythm, his wrist, his minutes and his mode of operation aren’t all that is touch-and-go about the Bulls these days.
They have yet to adjust to the absence of Scottie Pippen, who was as much an offensive choreographer as he was a scorer, and they too often have fallen into the old habit of relying too much on Jordan. Many even have wavered when asked to share the load. As their failures have mounted, they have begun to operate with even more uncertainty.
Jordan, constantly double-teamed now, is finding the open man.
“But what’s frustrating,” Jackson said, “is the guys aren’t com-fortable and confident enough to make those shots. Right now it comes down to shooting with confidence and having the confidence to be aggressive offensively and make mistakes if you have to.”
Steve Kerr offers a slightly different perspective.
“We absolutely need more scoring (from other people),” he said. “But (Jordan) probably has to get us in the offense a little bit more and we have to take more initiative ourselves.”
Failing that, the losses will mount and the Bulls will bear little resemblance to their immediate predecessors. Already–
and this comes atop their wavering confidence and physical shortcomings–they have trotted out excuses for their failures.
They never did that in the past. But on Thursday, Jackson’s reasons for his team’s average record included the number of games (8) it had been forced to play in this season’s first 13 days; the number of road trips (3) it had been forced to endure; the difficulty of adjusting to “foreign beds”; the difficulty of readjusting to a season’s lifestyle; and the strain of being away from family.
The Bulls of old ignored stuff like that, regarded it as no more of a nuisance than a pesky mosquito. But now they lean on that stuff as a crutch and have taken up petty sniping: Dennis Rodman talking of retirement, Jackson insisting Rodman needs to play a well-rounded game, Jordan telling Rodman to go home if he wants, Rodman finally declaring, “If (Jackson) wants to keep throwing the blame on me, then I shouldn’t be playing. Period.”
“I think there are slumps everyone goes through,” Jackson said. “We’re in a shooting slump right now, have been since the beginning of the season. We’ll break free of it, and when we do, we’ll win a lot of games. We’ll win games in bunches. We’re just waiting for that time until we all break free.”
That time, history insists, will come. That’s why Kerr still can say with confidence, “We’re OK. We’re not panicking. We have a lot of veteran guys who have been around and we know there’s a long way to go.”
But, of their current condition, he said, “It’s a little bit shocking. We lost what, 23 games the last two (regular) seasons. So this is a shock to everybody.
“Everybody’s still trying to figure out how to react.”
