by Sam Smith
Grant, meanwhile, was brilliantly bothering Karl Malone into an 8-for-21 shooting game, and suddenly it was Jordan time. He drew Jeff Malone into a key fourth foul and then took over offensively. Jordan at his best was electric and exciting, a human alchemy where action became art and effort hardened into brilliance. He moved toward the middle of the floor and was unstoppable in his passion and delight. He blew by defenders as if they were moving in slow motion. It was the kind of moment players occasionally talked about, a time when they were going at full speed and everything around them seemed to be moving in slow motion. Some called it “the zone.” It was a time when they could see defenders coming from all angles and be out of the way before the defenders got there, when they could move to the basket as if they were alone on the court or shoot the ball as if it were on a string attached to the basket. It only happened to the great ones, and only rarely, though more often to Jordan. He scored 8 points on driving baskets in the third quarter and 17 in the fourth quarter as the Bulls overwhelmed the Jazz and pulled away for a 99–89 win, finishing the game with a 22–7 run.
The Bulls’ defense was sharp down the stretch, too, and bothered Utah into several turnovers and the fast breaks the Bulls rely upon to put up their point spurts. It was a close game the Bulls had won and one in which they’d come from behind. But the real significance was the way it happened. To Jordan, it was a playoff preview, and after the game he stood up in the locker room and thanked Jackson in front of the team “for sticking with me.”
To Jordan, it was an escape from the jail he called the triangle offense. He was as happy as a baby in a tub and as anxious to recount the events of the evening as a kid coming home from the circus. Jordan’s eyes sparkled when he talked about the game.
“The triangle’s killing me,” Jordan insisted. “All I can do in it is take jump shots, but he finally gave me the freedom. This was the first time all season I kind of felt free of the triangle. He gave me the option to drive and boom, screen roll, everything was working. I had space and could move. I don’t think we’ll go back to an open court game in the regular season, but it’s what you’ve got to go to in the playoffs. I think he’s just trying to lift everyone’s confidence a little and this (tonight) is not the game Bill can play because it’s too quick. Horace is going to get his points off the boards and Paxson will get his spotting up. This is the type of game we need for Scottie and me and I think he’ll keep it under wraps until the playoffs. But we’ll have to go with it then or we won’t have any chance.”
The game with the Jazz was frightening to the Bulls in another way. Although they’d won, they had to resort to massive use of Jordan and the starters against the team with the worst bench in the league. And there was the specter of what the Jazz had to endure. Coach Jerry Sloan was saying that only in the last few weeks—after the All-Star break—had the team started to recover from the season-opening trip to Japan. Sloan said he had actually gone weeks without any kind of practice at all because the players were so tired from the trip and then returning to the arduous NBA schedule. The entire Bulls organization feared they’d be next.
They steadfastly tried to ignore the probability, like a kid in class who doesn’t know the answer and figures if he doesn’t look up he might not get picked. No NBA team that had gone to Europe to the preseason McDonald’s tournament had finished that season with a better record than the season before, and the Japan trip was far tougher. The Bulls were a natural attraction with Jordan, but more than that they believed NBA commissioner David Stern would soon send them as punishment. For what? For beating him.
The Bulls had switched their televised games to WGN, a so-called superstation capable of carrying Bulls games to cable systems throughout the country. The league was outraged because of the potential competition in smaller markets. Would Indiana fans want to watch their Pacers or Michael Jordan? The league ordered the Bulls to cut down on their TV games each season and go off WGN within five years. The Bulls sued and won. This left them both thrilled and worried. Stern, the powerful commissioner, had never been beaten in a public arena like that before. In many ways, he’d shaped the current success of the NBA and had been rewarded by the owners with a contract worth millions of dollars a year.
Stern has been credited as a marketing and promotional genius, but he is more than that. He is a behind-the-scenes power, manipulating ownerships in different cities and even helping sign players. Clippers’ owner Don Sterling says a call to Stern enabled him to break what he considered a hopeless impasse in the negotiations with then-No. 1 draft pick Danny Manning. Stern had arranged for black ownership in Denver to help the league’s image, and he’d forced out weak owners when he had to and come up with stronger groups. Bach had always heard rumors that Stern’s fingerprints were all over Franklin Mieuli’s sale of the Golden State Warriors. And when Reinsdorf was once asked why he’s not more involved in the NBA, as he is in baseball, he responded, “Stern won’t let the owners get involved.”
No one was complaining about Stern, though. He was the NBA’s kingmaker, and could also cause a team problems if he wanted. The Bulls were sure he’d soon be sending them on some awful preseason or season-opening trip that would ruin their year or try to catch them in some sort of minor rules infraction and fine them or take away a draft choice. They didn’t believe he’d take his loss on the WGN case quietly. Krause had more reasons for paranoia.
The games are Olympian any time Michael Jordan comes to town, even after all these years. Atlanta Hawks president Stan Kasten said his son had asked that his birthday party be postponed because he didn’t want to miss seeing Jordan for the final time this season when the Bulls came into Atlanta March 10. The Hawks, perhaps, could have done without seeing Jordan again; recently winners of twenty-two straight at home and conquerors of the Bulls in Atlanta in January, the Hawks surrendered as if Sherman were back in town. They were down 15 by halftime and by 31 midway through the third quarter on the way to a 122–87 loss. After the game, Hawks coach Bob Weiss, seeing Phil Jackson, said, “Hey, we didn’t even finish second out there today.”
The scene in the locker room before the game was heart-wrenching. Almost weekly, Jordan meets a kid from the Make-a-Wish Foundation, a group that tries to grant last wishes to dying children. There’s nothing sadder. But Jordan has seen so many in his seven years and the Bulls have processed so many requests, the senses become numbed. Jordan is gracious with the kids, who usually are frightened and thrilled and invariably speechless. He’ll ask them their names and about basketball and about getting a win. He’ll sign some things and sometimes the kids will want to meet other players. Basically, they’re there for Jordan. But the little girl who came in this afternoon was special. Sweet, blond, wearing a frilly dress, she was glowing. Public-relations man Tim Hallam stood nearby. He’d processed dozens of these requests, but he was near tears. The girl started crying, she was so excited to be near Jordan. “Relax, take it easy,” Jordan said comfortingly. His voice was breaking. She sniffled and smiled. It was heartbreaking and uplifting at the same time. Jordan didn’t want her to go. He sat with her and talked and laughed and she smiled some more, fighting away tears. Finally, it was time for Jordan to get taped. The little girl stood, and as she walked away she kept looking back over her shoulder. Tears were in Jordan’s eyes.
“How do they expect me to play basketball now?” he wondered aloud.
Earlier, there had been big business for the team. Krause had flown down from New York with scout Jim Stack to meet with the coaches. Scott Williams, the mercurial rookie, had cracked, they thought. He was demanding an operation on his shoulder. All season, he had fought even the suggestion when friends saw him in pain. Although he could barely lift his right arm, which severely hampered his rebounding ability, he wouldn’t hear or talk of an operation. “I’m going to finish the season,” he’d say. Now, he had demanded immediate surgery. He’d aggravated his shoulder injury in the Indiana game ten days earlier and had grown dark a
nd remote, slipping into a personal dungeon in which he was all but unreachable. The coaches suspected his representatives had talked to him about going to Europe next season, and if he could get the Bulls to operate now he’d be ready. He might not have time to recuperate from off-season surgery before the European season began, or, worse, he’d have to pay for the surgery himself. Jackson would eventually call him in and tell him the Bulls had taken a chance on him when no one else wanted him, they’d offered him an opportunity, and now he wanted to walk out on them. Williams would relent and say he was ready to finish the season. But a roster spot was looming.
The coaches agreed it might be worth it to give still-unsigned free agent Adrian Dantley a look. They’d had a chance the year before, but Jackson had believed Dantley wouldn’t fit into the Bulls’ style of play. He was a 6-4 post player, he needed the ball and space to operate. His game would not fit Jackson’s triangle and movement concepts. And he was not noted for his defense.
Perhaps rejecting Dantley had been a mistake, Jackson thought. Dantley had been with Detroit, his fifth team, as the Pistons made their climb to get past Boston, but midway through their first championship season he was traded for Mark Aguirre. Dantley blamed Isiah Thomas, with whom he’d never gotten along. Dantley went to Dallas, and the first time Dallas came to Detroit and the two met, Dantley walked up to Thomas and whispered in his ear, “I know it was you who got me.” He had grabbed a piece of Thomas’s leg and squeezed it in an exaggerated pinch. “I’m not going to forget, and the first chance I get I’m going to mess you up.”
Maybe Dantley could help the Bulls. He might even have helped them get past Detroit in 1990. Who would have been more willing to break down the Pistons’ physical tactics than Dantley? And he could score. He always could score. The triangle really didn’t work well among the Bulls reserves. Jackson had hoped to develop a second unit, but they couldn’t play together. King had disappointed as the designated scorer and Hopson wasn’t getting many opportunities. Perhaps Dantley could help.
There were doubts, though. Dantley’s agent was David Falk, and Krause disliked Falk intensely for his habit of bypassing Krause and talking to Reinsdorf. The Bulls might look at Dantley, but they’d make it hard; they’d bring him in for a physical and a mental exam, they’d question him hard, and they’d pay him little. It was typical Krause, Jackson thought: Go after a guy and then belittle him in the process. The Bulls had done that in their bitter negotiations with Levingston and Krause wondered why the players said the team wasn’t fair. “We’re fair to everyone,” Krause told Jackson. “Have you been fair to John Paxson?” Jackson shot back.
Jackson asked Bach to talk to Frank Layden, Dantley’s old coach in Utah, who once said Dantley had driven him out of coaching. Layden was at the Atlanta game for the NBA radio network. He had nothing good to say, but he did say Dantley would score for the Bulls. That he could do. The Bulls would think about it some more.
Tuesday’s game against Minnesota figured to be easy and it was. The Timberwolves were the drying paint of the NBA. They played like a leftover fly from January, moving more and more slowly and then trying to buzz for a shot. The Bulls simply had too much talent for them: They led by 23 at halftime and put the lead into the 30s by the third quarter before Jackson emptied his bench in a 131–99 laugher. Jordan and Grant were sitting with 20 points and Armstrong had 19 with about five minutes to go when Jackson put Paxson back in. The players razzed Armstrong because they knew his career high was 20 and now he wouldn’t be in the lead paragraph of the stories as the leading scorer. Armstrong was not amused. He called his agent, who later called Reinsdorf to find out why Armstrong had been pulled at that point. Jackson had no idea, actually, how many points Armstrong had or what his career high was. He told Reinsdorf he thought Armstrong was playing selfishly.
Armstrong had one other discussion that had some effect on the team. Pooh Richardson, the Minnesota point guard, told him he’d rejected a new contract offer from the Timberwolves of $3.5 million per year. Armstrong told Pippen. The pace of negotiations between Pippen and the Bulls had quickened and the two sides were close to a five-year extension that would pay Pippen almost $3.5 million per season. But now Pippen was worried. Was Richardson telling the truth? His agents had told him he might be better off to wait until summer, but Pippen was growing ever more nervous.
Bo Jackson, the two-sport star, was said to be through for his career because of a hip injury, although he would eventually sign with Reinsdorf’s White Sox with the hope of returning for the 1991 or 1992 baseball season. “What if something happens to me? I’ve got nothing,” Pippen told Rote in a desperate late-night call. But Pippen’s teammates told him the market would be going up, that he’d be crazy to lock himself up through 1998, as he would if he accepted this deal. Rote thought Pippen’s teammates were using him, trying to keep him from signing a deal so there might be more money left for them. The salary cap had made the players vultures, Rote thought, preying on one another over the scraps of cash that were allotted. Paxson and Cartwright were free agents and Jordan wanted more. And the Bulls remained in pursuit of Kukoc. There was only so much under the cap and everyone knew it wasn’t going much higher without a new TV deal and expansion. But, Pippen wondered, what if he signed and two years from now the cap doubled? And what if he got hurt? He was desperately confused.
Meanwhile, the Bulls were racking up milestones in this historic twenty-fifth anniversary season. The win over Timberwolves coach Bill Musselman, Jackson’s old CBA coaching foe, was Jackson’s hundredth—he’d had the quickest hundred wins for a coach in team history. The Bulls had just won the thousandth game in franchise history and were on a pace to break the all-time team win record for a season, and would certainly win just the second division title in team history. The newspaper reporters already were writing about magic numbers. And the Bulls had simply been dismantling teams. They’d won more games by at least 10 points than any team in the league and had the biggest winning margin per game, averaging 9 more points scored than yielded. They were the league’s hottest team.
How crazy would things be if we were losing? Jackson thought.
And even when they should have lost, they wouldn’t, or couldn’t. The Bulls went to Milwaukee, where the Bucks usually played them closer, although with just slightly more success. But this time it appeared the Bucks would carry away a win in a wild game. Milwaukee had a 5-point lead with less than five minutes left, only to unravel late this time. Fred Roberts and Dan Schayes committed turnovers against the Bulls’ slapping hands and Paxson hit two big three-point field goals off the transition breaks. Jordan hit two free throws with five seconds left to give the Bulls a 102–99 lead, and the Bucks threw in to Frank Brickowski, who stepped close to the three-point line and fired. It was good and referee Ted Bernhardt, standing a few feet from Brickowski, signaled a three-pointer while Dan Crawford from across the court was waving him off. The lead official in the crew was Hue Hollins. He was at the lower right baseline and too far away to see the play.
There’s an informal rule among those close to the NBA: To ascertain the quality of a game, add up the numbers on the backs of the officials. If the three total less than 100, it should be a well-officiated game. If the total is between 100 and 120, there could be problems of consistency. Over 120? Tell your team to foul every time because no one knows what will happen. The numbers for Hollins, Crawford, and Bernhardt are 42, 43, and 63. Ugh, 148! This was a disaster waiting to happen.
The Bulls started to leave the court. “I was always told to take your team off the court,” explained Jackson, “because they’re reluctant to bring you back.”
But there was no hesitation from Crawford. Replays were inconclusive, although it appeared Brickowski had a toe on the three-point stripe, which would negate the extra point and end the game. The Bucks, though, claimed they had a replay that showed Brickowski’s foot behind the line. Referees are not permitted to speak to reporters after games in the N
BA, but it was clear what Crawford was telling Bernhardt: His foot was on the line. Bernhardt had been just two feet away, but he backed off and it was a two-pointer. The game was over. Bucks coach Del Harris went berserk. He’d lost almost every way imaginable to the Bulls, but this one was unimaginable: A guy who’d made one three-pointer in his career hits one and it gets waved off to prevent overtime.
Charlotte on March 15 proved stubborn, but the 105–92 win was inevitable as Jordan put on a show for the folks back in North Carolina yet again with 34 points. The Bulls moved on to Cleveland, where the Cavaliers led by 11 shortly after halftime, but the Bulls hung a 23–6 spurt in eight minutes to take control of the game and win 102–98.
“Another brick in the wall,” Jim Cleamons said afterward—it was becoming a regular postgame comment for the young assistant coach. Bach was more direct: After a win, he’d draw an ace of spades on the blackboard. It was the military sign of death; soldiers would leave one between the toes of a fallen enemy in battle. Another one bites the dust. Aces of spades were turning up everywhere the Bulls went.
Despite the Bulls’ gaudy record, respect was hard to come by. Opposing players and coaches doubted the Bulls’ chances all season, even after losing to them by 20 and 30 points. Reggie Miller’s comments after the Pacers’ win in Indianapolis were typical: “We’re just as good as they are. Take Michael Jordan off that team and who the hell do they have? Who the hell do they have over there? Nobody.”
Pooh Richardson echoed that after the Timberwolves game, saying the Bulls were no better than a half-dozen teams in the West. A few days later, after the Hawks defeated Boston, Glenn “Doc” Rivers would say that while the Bulls had the best record, the Celtics were the best team. And Milwaukee assistant coach Mack Calvin said after that controversial ending March 13 that the Bulls would not win the East because they didn’t shoot free throws well enough. Cleveland coach Lenny Wilkens added that he thought with McHale and Bird healthy the Celtics would defeat the Bulls.