Bulls coach Phil Jackson said he was “disappointed” for the NBA Thursday night when he saw the fight between Miami’s Alonzo Mourning and the Knicks’ Larry Johnson during Game 4 of their first-round playoff series.
The brawl broke out in the closing seconds of the game, which the Knicks won to even the best-of-five matchup 2-2. Both players were fined and suspended two games, including Sunday’s series finale in Miami.
New York’s Chris Mills also was fined and suspended for Sunday’s game for leaving the bench.
“The fact of the matter is it’s tough to have a good series and it’s tough to have a decided winner when you don’t have your best players on the floor,” Jackson said Friday. “I know it doesn’t feel good for Miami or New York.”
This is the second straight year in which a brawl disrupted a Heat-Knicks playoff series, resulting in suspensions. Last year Miami was on the brink of elimination in the Eastern Conference semifinals, trailing 3-1, when several Knicks walked onto the floor during a fight between teammate Charlie Ward and the Heat’s P.J. Brown. A raft of suspensions helped the Heat win the next two games and advance to a conference finals meeting with the Bulls.
“Both of them are culpable,” Jackson said of Mourning and Johnson, who were teammates in Charlotte, but didn’t like each other then and don’t now. “I would imagine that if you look at the video and the replay enough times, you’ll see that Alonzo is the one who threw the first punch, but Larry didn’t have to punch back. More goes into that than just basketball–New York versus Miami. Some things have probably come back from Charlotte.”
Fighting mad: One of the more comical sights during the fight was New York coach Jeff Van Gundy trying to pull Mourning away from Johnson by grabbing the center by the leg.
Jackson wasn’t surprised. During a 1994 playoff game between the Bulls and Knicks, Van Gundy, then an assistant to Pat Riley, got himself in the middle of a fight between Chicago’s Jo Jo English and New York’s Derek Harper.
“He was an assistant coach and nobody noticed it at the time,” Jackson said. “He seemed to want to get in the fray there and came away with a couple of black eyes. It’s unfortunate for him and I know it’s embarrassing, but he’s game. He threw himself out there.”
The waiting game: As of Friday’s practice, the Bulls didn’t know if their second-round opponent would be Charlotte or Atlanta. So in their first practice since their sweep of the first-round series with New Jersey, the Bulls concentrated on themselves.
Dennis Rodman didn’t practice because he made a court appearance as a character witness for one of his personal assistants. Luc Longley, who didn’t play in any of the first-round games, scrimmaged with the team for roughly 10 minutes.
“He looked pretty good,” Jackson said. “His timing is obviously off and his conditioning is not there for basketball, but it was nice to have him on the floor. The effect of his big body and his ability to do things were good.”
