No one gets it. No one understands that indoor fireworks displays and bleach-blond wrestlers screaming bloody murder before tipoff are the worst things you can do to Michael Jordan.
You don’t tug on Superman’s jersey.
If you want to beat Jordan on the road, you must, as Charlotte’s Vlade Divac says, “sneak up on him.” Try beating Jordan with pregame hoopla and you’re committing Michael-cide. Turn your arena into a shrieking asylum and he turns himself into a lightning rod. Your energy electrifies him, and he electrocutes you.
If you want to beat Jordan, hush, hush, Charlotte.
Saturday morning, the Bulls’ Bill Wennington said: “I see some of these things people do (for Jordan visits) and I say, `Why?’ Michael thrives on challenges. If you do anything that he thinks is directed at him in any way, it’s really a mistake.”
As Wennington spoke, the Bulls were leaving the floor after a light workout in an empty, silent Charlotte Coliseum–the perfect place to beat Jordan. The Hornets would have had a better chance if they had asked their fans to stay home and watch Friday night’s playoff game on TV. The only way Jordan loses in Charlotte is if he loses interest.
As Jordan said of his team’s Game 2 loss in Chicago, “We fell asleep.”
If nothing else, Hornets management should have passed out Jordan Road Rules instead of rally towels as fans entered the arena. These Jordan Road Rules should be: No cheering for the Hornets. No cheering Jordan misses. You are in the presence of an acutely sensitive extraterrestrial. Do not provoke him. The slightest taunting sound unleashes his supernatural powers.
Just hush and hope he doesn’t unleash until it’s too late.
Instead, Hornets management decided a Michael Jordan playoff game back on his home-state soil needed annoying bells and irritating whistles. As if Jordan playing before a salivating-room-only crowd in North Carolina wasn’t enough, the Hornets tried to turn the night into a combination WWF death match and the Darlington 500.
Bulls coach Phil Jackson, concerned about his team’s recent lethargy, had to be thinking, “Thank you, Charlotte.”
During pregame festivities, as the teams stood facing each other at opposite free throw lines, fireworks shot through the darkness near the top of the arena and exploded. Several Bulls flinched and winced; the obnoxious bangs left your ears ringing.
Then pro wrestling legend Ric Flair, displaying no flair for the dramatic, took the microphone and began pumping up fans as if they were about to compete in a tag-team match with Michael’s Bulls. Hornets management should have been embarrassed. What was this, Mayberry Coliseum? Say cheesy.
Jordan’s gum-chomping reached red-line r.p.m.
This was reminiscent of the playoff game in Orlando two years ago, when Hulk Hogan worked the crowd (and Jordan) into a bloodthirsty frenzy. Remember the Jazz mascot riding a Harley across the floor before a Finals game last year in Utah? A game won by Michael’s Bulls?
Will opponents ever learn?
“Obviously,” Hornets General Manager Bob Bass said, “all that stuff was done to help fire up our team, not their team.”
Yet Jordan was already fired up over the Game 2 outburst by his onetime “little brother,” ex-Bull B.J. Armstrong. After nailing the clinching shot, Armstrong threw a fist in the air and yelled toward the Bulls’ bench. Never mind that teammate Glen Rice was standing between Armstrong and the Bulls bench and that Armstrong appeared to be sharing his elation with Rice.
Jordan took it personally. When the fireworks smoke cleared Friday night, Jordan unleashed. Charlotte had stirred up the hornets nest that is Jordan.
“It wasn’t that Michael went out and scored 40,” Wennington said of Jordan’s 27-point night. “But he played a great floor game, getting everyone involved, and we really fed off his defense.”
That’s what so intimidates the Hornets: Jordan can take it out on them on either end. On defense, he attacked point guard David Wesley with such pent-up fury that Bass wasn’t sure Wesley could get the ball past half-court.
“My gosh,” Bass said, shaking his head and pointing at the midcourt line, “he kept making us start our offense all the way out there. You’re afraid to dribble by him because he’ll steal it, and he makes it very difficult to make entry passes over him.”
The harder Hornet fans waved their rally towels, the more the Hornets looked as if they had thrown in the towel. The more the scoreboard flashed a sarcastic “Don’t touch Mike” when fouls were called on Jordan’s defenders, the harder Jordan drove to the basket.
The scoreboard operator was committing Michael-cide.
The best place to beat Jordan is in Chicago, where fans spoiled silent by Jordan sometimes put him to sleep. But when Michael visits, mum is the word.
