Luc Longley left the floor with a sore knee about 2 minutes into the third quarter of the Bulls’ 106-101 overtime victory over Detroit on Tuesday night at the United Center. He never returned.
Longley had missed 13 games with a strained left knee before returning to the lineup Sunday in Milwaukee. He said he felt a twinge in the knee. Bulls coach Phil Jackson said the knee will be examined Wednesday.
“Luc hurt himself in the first half and tried to get himself loose in the second half,” Jackson said. “He had a twinge there, and I took him out immediately. We’ll have to wait until (Wednesday) to analyze it.”
Longley, who scored six points in 15 minutes, said he didn’t think it was anything serious.
“But you’re always worried when you have a sore knee,” he said.
Turning point: With their victory over the Pistons, the Bulls extended their season-long winning streak to 10 games. They haven’t lost since that embarrassing overtime debacle in Dallas three weeks ago.
Jackson, who walked off the floor in the waning seconds of overtime that night, calls that game a turning point in the season. Jackson said he was thoroughly disgusted with the Bulls, who had blown a 19-point fourth-quarter lead.
“I’ve seen a lot of coaches get thrown out so that they can leave early and not have to watch a debacle,” Jackson said. “At some level, you’ve got to let your players know publicly that this is something you can’t tolerate.”
Now Jackson sees that game as sparking the ensuing turnaround.
“That Dallas blip might have been the thing that pushed us to another level,” he said.
Same old thing: Michael Jordan has finally acknowledged the obvious: The incessant questions about his future are beginning to get to him.
“You get tired of hearing the same questions,” he said. “I think people are basically trying to redirect their questions or trying to put some kind of emphasis within the question to see if my answer has changed or if my response has changed. But my response is still the same.”
To wit: He won’t play for any coach other than Phil Jackson.
“I think we have to focus on the moment and not focus on what may be happening next year,” Jordan said. “We’re trying to get our sixth championship, and whatever happens after that is going to happen. There have been a lot of questions about me over the course of the year, but now it’s time to put that to rest and deal with the present. The present is focusing on our jobs.”
A little sympathy: While the Bulls are on a roll, the Pistons have again hit on hard times. Detroit was making a push for the eighth and final playoff spot in the East, winning seven of nine games, before dropping back-to-back games to Cleveland and Atlanta over the weekend.
Things have been so bad for the Pistons that the normally placid Grant Hill was ejected in the third quarter in Atlanta. It was the first time Hill had ever been tossed from a game.
“Grant and their players have put up enough energy that they feel like they deserve to be in the playoffs,” Jackson said, “and at this time, seeing that perhaps slip away, they know they have to be perfect from here on out. I think that makes it frustrating.”
Back home: Detroit’s Brian Williams was back in Chicago on Monday, a year to the day that he signed with the Bulls for the last four weeks of last season, helping them to their second straight title.
Williams, who moved to the Pistons as a free agent over the summer, visited the Bulls’ locker room before the game, joking with his ex-teammates and offering Bulls assistant Frank Hamblen some tips on beating Detroit. Then he went out and scored 27 points on the Bulls, often dominating play inside.
“He wants to come back home,” Ron Harper said.
Williams stopped short of admitting that, but he did say he missed the Bulls. He then sat in front of Longley’s locker.
“It’s back to the `Four-headed Monster,”‘ Williams said, referring to himself, Longley, Bill Wennington and now Joe Kleine.
