Greg Ostertag was on national television Sunday. Yep, cameras caught him holding up a “Hi Mom, Send Defense” placard.
Someday, he’ll feel good about what Jordan did to him on one particular highlight film play. Someday, he’ll be able to say he was one of the canvases Jordan painted on during his Red Period. But maybe not for a while.
Jordan was on the left side with Jeff Hornacek in front of him. He faked right, then cut to the baseline, leaving Hornacek behind. There was the 7-2, 280-pound Ostertag waiting like a very large bar of Ivory soap. Jordan went up, and Ostertag rightly thought he was going up for a left-handed layup. As Ostertag reacted, Jordan went under, spinning the ball on the other side of the basket and in.
Ostertag offered up the obligatory foul on the high altar of Jordan, and the Bulls were ahead 56-35.
During a timeout with two minutes left in the quarter, Jordan was exhorting his teammates to put the game away, so they all could ice their knees early. Michael’s the king of the obvious. It was already over.
It was over when the Bulls realized that the only player who could possibly hurt them on this day was Malone. The rest of them were bad background music. Stockton? He was somewhere in the 312 area code, but that’s all anybody knew at that point.
The Bulls’ defense simply was hermetically sealed. The Jazz got 14 points in the quarter on four of 15 shots. Malone had eight of the points. Stockton was a non-factor, and how many times can you say that? He had no points and one assist in the quarter, with Harper and Jordan teaming up to shut him down.
“We were very quick to the basketball today,” coach Phil Jackson said afterward.
Twice Pippen took charges on Malone. Think about that for a second: Pippen stands in the way of a tractor-trailer two times. That takes a lot of anatomy. Malone picked up another offensive foul when he raked an elbow across Rodman’s face in an attempt to get the ever-present tattooed one to go away.
One more snapshot. Scott Burrell skied to block a Bryon Russell jumpshot. Harper picked up the ball and without looking, heaved it over his head to a sprinting Burrell for a layup. Simple. Just like the quarter, it was almost too easy. And the amazing thing was that Ostertag was nowhere near the scene.
