The reporters who covered the NBA Finals for the Tribune recall their favorite moments from a memorable series.
RICK MORRISSEY
THE WORM EXPOSED
Dennis Rodman is a fraud, and if you don’t believe that, then you weren’t watching Game 4 of the NBA Finals, when he calmly sank four important free throws.
Let’s backtrack for a second, though. Rodman went through warmups for Game 4 as he normally does for any game. He banged short jumpers off the rim, hammered layups off the backboard and generally bricked everything he tossed up. It almost looked like an effort to miss that many shots.
It was.
Besides Michael Jordan, Rodman has perhaps the best shooting form on the team. But going through a layup line and having people think he cares. . .well, that’s too much for Rodman. So he misses, because image is everything.
But late in Game 4, there was Rodman, the alleged non-conformist forced to conform, and it was fun to watch.
You could almost see high school coaches around the country covering their eyes as the Human Palette went to the free-throw line. The Bulls were doing all they could to put the Jazz out of its misery late in the fourth quarter, and here was Rodman being asked to pay attention and make his free throws. This normally is a time for the Jeff Hornaceks and the John Stocktons and all the coaches’ sons to do what they have been practicing to do all their lives. Not Rodman.
The first one went up and the United Center fans watched the bouncing ball. . .and watched and watched and watched. It finally got tired and went in, and Rodman offered up a look that said, “No big deal.”
Then he knocked down another one. With 43.8 seconds left, he hit two more free throws–cleanly this time–to give the Bulls a four-point lead and some breathing room. Behold the hero.
All of this came against the backdrop of the bad boy missing practice two days earlier so that he could take part in a pro wrestling event in Detroit. Pro wrestling is as real as Rodman’s image.
Then he came back and made his free throws, like all good basketball players do.
The next day, as a horde of reporters and camera operators waited to descend on Rodman after he practiced from the free-throw line, Bulls assistant Tex Winter said to no one in particular: “Take a look at that form. Perfect form.”
Does that sound like a description of an iconoclast? You got the feeling that Rodman wanted to cry right there.
MALCOLM MORAN
A FAMILIAR FACE
It is halftime at Market Square Arena, when the aisles are jammed and the volume is reduced about a quarter of a notch, and there is a lot of work to be done tonight, and. . .
This woman is looking at me.
The look in her eyes is part suspicion and part wonder. I know this face, but I had forgotten the context. She calls my name, with a question mark attached at the end, and I said, “Liz?”
We had known each other long before she became Chris Mullin’s wife. SHe was a bright student assistant in the sports information office at St. John’s University. Her unofficial title, direct from her boss, was “student slave.”
Katha Quinn, her boss, the sports information director, could push her slaves, and cajole, harass, annoy, infuriate, and inspire them, and somehow, they would appear in the office the following day. Within that office, Liz was known as “Little Elizabeth.” One day I wondered, out loud, exactly when we might lose the “Little” in Little Elizabeth. The look I received from her boss suggested that my request would be taken into consideration.
When Liz’s husband-to-be did not live up to a commitment, and the rather loud voice at the other end of the phone called for “Chris-to-pher,” there was no need to ask who was calling. There was always something maternal about the way she dealt with her players and her staff, and the way they responded. Maybe she knew something.
We were standing on the floor of Katha’s building, the place where she supervised the media facilities for the men’s and women’s tournaments at the Pan American Games, 11 years ago this summer. When she received the assignment, friends suggested that this new venue would offer an opportunity to revoke credentials in a variety of languages. But Market Square Arena became the location of her finest hour.
The cancer was diagnosed less than eight months before the tounament. The Pan Am games became a goal that bordered on fixation. This was a non-negotiable item. Katha endured her teratments. She took her naps. She ate healthy things. Through game after game after game, she ran her venue.
Nineteen additional months went by before her body stopped pushing, the day before her 35th birthday. I do not remember much about her funeral, except a church stuffed with former slaves, and her players, and laughter at some of the memories they shared. Now we are standing in Market Square Arena. Chris Mullin had reached into a bag to produce a picture of three happy boys, including the reddest of redheads. At the end of halftime, I have an update for the former Little Elizabeth–news of a son named Thomas John, after his grandfathers, and a daughter named Katharine Grace, with thoughts of our absent friend.
TERRY ARMOUR
WHAT GOES AROUND. . .
The season was still weeks away when the phone rang. It was Dennis Rodman. Yes, Dennis Rodman. The Bulls were overseas playing the McDonald’s Tournament in France, but Rodman had stayed behind. There was a problem with his contract and he was dying to tell somebody. He chose me.
“I’ve got a story for you,” Rodman said. “I’m going to make you look good to your bosses.”
It seemed Rodman wasn’t happy with the incentives in his contract and he didn’t plan on signing it. This was only weeks after the Bulls had announced that Rodman and the team had come to terms.
Not so fast. Rodman wanted to spill his guts. To me.
It was a Saturday and I was supposed to meet Rodman and his agent, Dwight Manley, at a River North lounge later on.
Some six hours later, I was there. So were Rodman and his entourage, which included five people. Rodman wasn’t ready to talk. He was preoccupied. He wanted to party.
We all hopped in his pickup truck and rode about six blocks to a nightclub. There was a line in front, maybe 20 or 30 people. We were hustled in, got on a freight elevator and headed to the upstairs bar.
We were led to a corner of the bar reserved for VIPs. Rodman had a couple of drinks. He began to talk. I listened.
The contract was bogus, he said. Bulls General Manager Jerry Krause was treating him like a child, he said, with all these restrictions and loopholes in the contract. A lot of Rodman’s incentives were tied to the team’s performance. He didn’t believe that was fair, since Scottie Pippen would be gone indefinitely after foot surgery. The team would struggle and Rodman would lose money.
After a while we were back in the pickup truck. The entourage had grown to 10 people, all squeezed into the pickup. Finally we were at Rodman’s favorite place: Crobar.
The interview continued over loud, throbbing music and more drinks. At 5 a.m., I had to go. Rodman told me to meet him the next day at a Northwest Side tattoo parlor: He had more to say.
The next day I forced myself out of bed to meet Rodman at 1 p.m. It eventually turned out to be 3 p.m. Rodman pulled up on his motorcycle. There was an attractive woman on the back. He told me to wait outside while he went into the place and rescheduled his appointment.
Rodman then told me to follow him to his new club, Illusions. The grand opening was two weeks away.
Rodman started talking again.
He said he was getting too old. He said that his best basketball days were over. He said he just couldn’t get motivated to play this year: He said he was ready to retire. He said he wanted Krause to read all this as soon as he got off the plane from Paris.
How did things work out? Eight months later, at 3 a.m. in a Salt Lake City hotel room, I watched Rodman get his hair colored in preparation for Game 1 of the NBA Finals. What else is there to do in Salt Lake City at 3 a.m.
K.C. JOHNSON
A WARM WINTER
Fred “Tex” Winter closed the door to his Berto Center office behind him and sat down, reclining in his seat just a bit.
A team shootaround had just ended, and as is Winter’s custom, he spent the final portion of it rebounding while Dennis Rodman shot free throws.
The sight of the two men–one a graying 76-year-old basketball lifer, the other, a tattooed, 37-year-old adolescent–seemed to paint a stark contrast.
But Winter would have none of it, shrugging off the notion with a dismissive wave of his hand. To Winter, basketball is basketball and basketball players are basketball players.
Winter has been a Bulls assistant coach since 1985. He has been a basketball coach for 51 consecutive seasons.
But Winter doesn’t coach for fame. Winter doesn’t coach for money.
Winter coaches because he has to. The gift is that deep in his blood.
I had asked Winter for 15-20 minutes of his time for a story I was writing about him. But when 51 years of experience are in the rearview mirror, time becomes somewhat irrelevant.
Phone calls were ignored. Bulls coach Phil Jackson popped his head in the office and Winter took care of that business quickly. A lunch appointment got delayed.
More than two hours elapsed.
The stories wee coming faster now, the years falling away like sweat dripping off the countless players Winter has coached.
Stories of driving from California, where Winter attended college, to his first coaching job in Kansas and wondering, upon stopping in a Dust Bowl town, just what in the heck he and his wife had gotten themselves into.
Stories of success. Stories of failure. Stories of tough decisions. Stories of his family.
Most of all, Winter told stories of his love for the game.
Winter is a coach constantly in pursuit of elusive perfection. To him, it doesn’t matter if the player is Keith Booth or Michael Jordan. Winter simply wants basketball played correctly.
It is why he has remained in the game so long. It is why he has so many stories.
Only six hours remained until the Bulls’ tipoff that night. And Winter kept talking, kept telling basketball stories. Pure stories. Genuine stories.
Stories that made talk about the Bulls’ future, talk about organizational politics and talk about money seem very, very far away.
MICHAEL ROSENBERG
THE CLASSY SUPERSTAR
Michael Jordan walked out of the Bulls’ Delta Center locker room and headed to a postgame news conference. The Bulls had just lost the first game of the NBA finals, 88-85 in overtime, putting Jordan’s team in a Finals hole for the first time since 1991.
As Jordan walked out, a middle-aged woman stepped in front of him, surely not realizing she had just cut off one of the most popular men on the planet. Jordan bumped into her, and she turned and saw his famous face.
“After you, ma’am,” Jordan said.
He kept walking, and I kept waiting. I was not there to talk to Jordan. I was not there to talk to any of the other Bulls who sat in front of their lockers waiting to answer questions. I–hard working journalist, decent human being, fine American–had the unfortunate assignment of trying to talk to Dennis Rodman.
So I waited. And waited and waited and waited. Finally, Rodman emerged, declining to answer the first three questions, which was certainly his prerogative. But as he walked down the hallway, the cameras caught him, and Rodman immediately started talking, basking in the attention. He had bodyguards in front and back of him and to either side–quite a bit more protection than Jordan, who is just a tad more famous, had received moments earlier.
The bodyguards did their best to “protect” Rodman, a task that apparently required elbowing me. All I wanted was to hear Rodman’s answers, but in their defense, maybe they viewed my pen as a dangerous weapon.
Rodman eventually stepped into a van and headed to Las Veggas. That, too, was his prerogative, and like Phil Jackson, I really didn’t care one way or the other.
None of this makes Rodman a bad guy, any more than Jordan’s politeness makes him a saint. It’s not easy to be a famours person, but as Jordan and Rodman both showed, it’s preferable to forget being famous and concentrate on being a person.
After you, Mike.
SKIP MYSLENSKI
A BULLISH INVASION
The boy of the ’60s watched the images flicker across whatever black-and-white TV set was available. THe British INvasion, it was called, and there on the screen were these mobs of worshipers, huddled, expectant, pulsating, waiting beneath some hotel window for a glimpse o fone of the Beatles, the leaders of that invasion.
“George! George! We love you, George!”
“We love you, Paul!”
“Ringo! Oh, Ringo!”
“JohnJohnJohnJohn!!!!!!”
The young scribbler, on his first job, watched from backstage at an arena called the Rochester War Memorial. Herman’s Hermits, the group was called, and there in front of him was this mob of budding girls, jumping, screeching, pulsating, beseeching lead singer Peter Noone and pelting him with almost everything imaginable.
“Peter! Peter! We love you, Peter!”
“Peter! Oh, Peter!”
“PeterPeterPeterPeter!!!!!”
The old scibbler, on his fifth job, never expected to see such sights again, but then came that winter evening the Bulls visited Indiana’s Pacers. At Market Square Arena their bus would not simply pull into a lot, but makke its way up a ramp and park a floor above the street.
Memory does not recall who won the game that night (the scribbler is old now, after all), but it will for ever embrace one moment, one scene, that followed. That memory arrived as the players made their way from the building and back to the bus. Specifically when Dennis Rodman walked past the bus door and to the wais-high wall that overlooked the street below.
He recalled Evita Peron looming abover her adoring masses, recalled any scene from any movie that included a king walking out onto the balcony of his castle to address his royal subjects. For there, on the street below, were thousands of fans, huddled, expectant, pulsating, waiting to glimpse one of the Beatles, er, Bulls.
“Dennis! Dennis!”
“Michael!”
“Where’s Michael???”
“We want Michael!!!!!”
“Aieeeeeee!!!!!”
There would be, in the months ahead, many moments in many cities that resembled this screeching scene. But this one? Damn. It was good to feel young again.
ANDREW BAGNATO
A SALTY EXPERIENCE
Did you hear the one about the Baptist who walks into a bar in Salt Lake City? Or the one about the Bulls fan who wakes up in the Morman Tabernacle?
The headquarters of the Mormon Church was ripe with comic scenarios this month when it played host to a couple of major events–the annual meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention and the NBA Finals.
Hard to say who provoked more alarm among the local citizenry: proselytizers or sportswriters.
I don’t know how it went for the Baptists, but I enjoyed Salt Lake City.
A lot of media people groaned when the Utah Jazz won teh Western Conference title for the second straight season. The joke last year was that they don’t roll up the sidewalks at dusk in Salt Lake because there are no sidewalks. But consider teh alternatives for the Western Conference representative. Houston’s nice–if you like watching humidity condense on the inside of your hotel room window. San Antonio’s nice–if you want to fry an egg on the hood of your rental car. L.A.’s nice–no, L.A. is not nice.
As an adopted son of the Southwest, raised in Arizona, I`m partial to Salt Lake’s stunning physical beauty and thin, clear air.
The city isn’t richly endowed with nightlife, but I found ways to stay amused. ONe night a couple of us wandered over to the local Triple-A ballpark, where the view overshadowed the horrible pitching. Literally. I won’t soon forget the sight of the snow-capped Wastach Mountains, rising beyond the center-field fence, turning purple as daylight faded.
Spend a week in Salt Lake City and it’s easy to understand why Rick Majerus has spent so many years there at the University of Utah, despite being offered higher-paying jobs by half the schools in Division I.
Majerus’ appetite is legendary. Salt Lake was a culinary desert a decade or so ago, but these days it supports a number of restaurants that could survive in Chicago. There is a decent mix of bars, too, though an out-of-towner needs a lawyer to translate the state’s byzantine liquor codes. As near as I could tell, if it comes in a glass it’s not available after midnight. Except on Sundays, when it’s not available at all.
So I looked on the bright side when the Greatest Team in the History of Sports failed to close out the series in Chicago. there are worse places to be in mid-June, including a celebratory riot outside the United Center.
Besides, when we arrived on the eve of Game 6, the downtown bars seemed less crowded than they had been the previous week. The Baptists must have gone home.
