No one but us understands. The world is getting a good giggle today at our barricades aside and our confetti still tethered, at our mayor instructing his constituents not to throw a bottle at anybody, which is, nonetheless, good advice at all times.
Big city, big laughs.
“This is only a basketball game,” the mayor said.
Maybe Richard Daley doesn’t understand either.
It is as if the Bulls have failed by not finishing off the Jazz at home, never the way it was supposed to be anyhow, not in the real world, only on Planet Bulls.
Out here on the great salt lick there is great delight, not just that the Jazz managed to tear out the life support and leap to its feet, but that the Bulls have had to come slouching back to a place none of them would be caught dead in, though that would be their preference.
“The whole town closes after dinner,” Dennis Rodman grumbled.
Now, any insult from Rodman should be considered the highest compliment. Yet the good folks hereabouts tend to the missionary, so they may believe that a redundant Utah will wear Rodman down.
They have a better chance of discovering cold fusion, which some around here insist they did, though the reviews remain mixed.
Even Phil Jackson, the most reasonable of men and never more comfortable than when in flannel, dreaded “taking our tails out to the Delta Center and being abused by the wonderful Mormon fans who I love out there.”
Just as Chicago prepared for the Bulls’ victory, so has Salt Lake City for a Jazz success. A parade route has been planned for the Jazz, prudently avoiding the endless rehabbing thoroughfares, cluttered by construction and Olympic anticipation.
It is less than four years until the next luge comes sliding down the Wasatch, and you can’t plant enough winter shrubs for that.
Should it come to it, may what they think of themselves be true, that they can celebrate with dignity–as the Chicago TV reminders prompted–and not a single idiot will think of throwing a bottle, or tipping one.
Envy is the shabbiest of emotions, and rather than try to understand why, on the verge of the great void–that is, life after Michael–Chicago should be all gushy and conflicted, the world scoffs at our tears and snickers at our regrets.
Sports Illustrated shoos the Bulls away. Begone, you tedious loiterers, hanging on beyond your welcome and a columnist’s patience.
The great distraction of Rodman the wrestler demanded universal scorn and got it, but then we learn that Rodman will be wrestling none other than Karl Malone in a July tag-team pay-per-view.
This is the wholesome Malone who relaxed by going to the truck-weighing station on his day off, now planning to soil himself in Rodzilla’s muck for money.
Why would a courtside ticket for just another basketball game scalp for more than $10,000? What would a seat next to John Glenn on Friendship 7 have gone for?
There are irreplaceable times and special places to be, and the United Center on Friday night was the only place in the universe that a Chicagoan wanted to be.
To the world the Bulls are a commodity, entertainment, a freak show at times, depending on the Rodman whim du jour, as if the whole thing comes out of Baraboo for the spring, full of juggling acts and sword swallowers.
To Chicago, the Bulls are our envoys of excellence, our proxies and our pride, and what we know and what we don’t want to know is that Friday was the last we shall have them.
That is why it was important to end it in Chicago, to say a proper goodbye in the context of joy and in the arena of glory, spontaneously and with the sweat still wet.
The Bulls will pass and the world will turn the page to see what comes next, more circuses with more bread, or, to put it in a ’90s context, more cinnamon scones.
The world is losing an amusement; we are losing our better angels.
Just another basketball game. Indeed. Almost makes you want to throw a bottle at somebody.
