Here is the big question when the Bulls open their Eastern Conference semifinal Saturday in Auburn Hills, Mich.: Who shows up from Chicago, the 1989-90 Bulls, a year away and hopeful of winning against a veteran championship team?
Or the 1990-91 Bulls, confident that it’s time to put away a fading former champion?
“We started to gain confidence against them beating them in the regular season in Detroit,” recalled Horace Grant, the team’s power forward now settled in Northern California and raising money for a community center for underprivileged children.
“It’s like Golden State with Dallas. Those games do mean something. We felt we were very good that season and once we beat them a game in the playoffs, we knew. If the Bulls can gain that kind of confidence, they’ll win this series.”
The 1990-91 season was the coming of age for the Bulls’ dynasty, a young team with some similarities to this Bulls team, a team with the ultimate star in Michael Jordan, which the current Bulls don’t have, but a team growing in belief and maturity.
The addition of veteran center Bill Cartwright and sharpshooter Craig Hodges in 1988 and savvy reserve Cliff Levingston in 1990 to complement 1989 draft picks B.J. Armstrong and Stacey King completed the puzzle.
These Pistons, not quite the Bad Boys even with Rasheed Wallace, likely believe they are about to play the 1989-90 model Bulls, a team a year away from overtaking veterans who have one more title run in them.
“More than anything, I think it was the maturity of me and Horace,” said Scottie Pippen, who is involved in business ventures in Arkansas and elsewhere. “It was our fourth year in the NBA. We’d run into the Pistons numerous times and never could overcome them. We did not understand what it took mentally to win.
“In 1990 I had the migraine, and I knew that was the only thing holding me back. I knew all we had to do was get stronger physically and mentally, that our game was up to it, but it was a cycle we had to break through.”
A week after their 1989-90 season ended, unannounced and unscripted, they all showed up at the old Multiplex health club where the team used to train.
“What I remember most was Scottie, Horace and Cartwright just showing up at the Multiplex,” recalled Armstrong, now a management and player consultant based in Los Angeles and Chicago. “Nothing arranged, nothing we talked about. The guys took it upon themselves to hold themselves responsible for what happened.
“I felt that was the biggest step for all of us. It was the biggest step for me as a player, looking at defeat for what it was, not what I wanted it to be. I learned you can be responsible for the effort and not the result. I took responsibility for myself in defeat. It’s the biggest lesson I learned in sports, to take responsibility for the effort. We did and came back as improved players.”
It sounds a lot like the summer of ’06 for Ben Gordon, Luol Deng and Kirk Hinrich, training almost from the day of their playoff elimination game against the Heat last year.
The 1990-91 season started off like many before with little thought of a championship or even much true hope of beating the Pistons, the defending champions.
Portland jumped to a 19-1 start and was virtually ceded the championship after its loss to the Pistons in the 1990 Finals. The Bulls visited the Pistons right before Christmas and lost by 21, their 12th loss in the last 13 in Michigan. Coach Phil Jackson talked about the team being broken up after so many failures.
The probable turning point occurred right before the All-Star break in Auburn Hills. The Bulls squeaked out a 95-93 victory behind, of course, Jordan. But it was Armstrong who hit two killer jumpers down the stretch and scored 12 points off the bench.
“I believe it was a critical point for everyone,” Armstrong said. “Michael had been in the league seven years, we traded for Bill, how good would Scottie and Horace be? It was a team being built with expectations. I think we would have been dismantled if we had not done it then.
“I remember that year wanting to play Detroit — I didn’t want to play anyone else. If you’re going to be a champion, you want to go through the best. You don’t want ‘woulda and coulda.’ “
The win at the Palace pulled the Bulls within a half-game of the Pistons in the standings, and suddenly the goal Jackson had talked about all season — getting a Game 7, if necessary, back in Chicago — was in sight. The Bulls had won all three home playoff games against the Pistons in 1990.
“We felt that was the psychological thing we needed,” said John Paxson, now the Bulls’ general manager. “They didn’t have Isiah Thomas (injured) in that February game, but it was big to win there, and we felt the difference was getting the home court.”
“It was like a light bulb went on: ‘We can beat them,’ ” said Will Perdue, a radio analyst for NBA games now living in Louisville.
“The locker room seemed different. It had always seemed something would happen against them, whether it was foul trouble or injury, and it was like it wasn’t meant to be. But I remember Phil talking about how everything was following a script, how Detroit worked so hard to get past Boston and now it was Chicago’s time to get past Detroit.”
John Bach, a Bulls assistant then, said it was Jackson the pacifist who helped the team through the final battle.
“Phil deserves a lot of credit,” Bach said. “We had always been like many teams — if Detroit took hard shots at us, we always wanted to retaliate. It irritated our team. It wasn’t working. But Phil sold them on a different idea. The team had to see success with it.
“It began as a philosophy from the first day of practice. We were not going to get into their intimidation tactics, the street talk. You saw Scottie go down [from Dennis Rodman], Cartwright with Isiah. But Phil showed them these are not the tactics to win a game. You beat them not with retaliation but what you had been doing.”
And in the end, like beaten bullies, the Pistons refused to acknowledge the Bulls, walking off the floor before the last game of the East finals ended in defeat and humiliation.
So it’s here again, a series that could become a nasty rivalry again within weeks.
Although 1991 remains my favorite year, perhaps my favorite Bulls-Pistons series was 1974, a classic seven-gamer in the Western Conference semis leading to what each knew was the inevitable beating by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s Bucks.
“[The Bucks] knew we’d beat each other up so badly we had no chance against them,” recalled John Mengelt, then a Piston who later played for the Bulls and now is a North Shore businessman. “That series was a bloodbath.”
It was fiery Bulls guards Norm Van Lier and Jerry Sloan against the Pistons’ rugged power featuring Bob Lanier. Back then they played nearly every other day, switching cities for each game. The Bulls won Game 7 96-94 and four of the last five games were decided by four points or fewer.
Mengelt said the Pistons had a policy of fining anyone who allowed a layup in the playoffs.
“That,” he said wistfully, “was basketball.”
And so it begins again.
