Some of the fondest memories of my youth are intrinsically tied up with the championship Chicago Bulls team, as is the case for most Chicagoland natives who are now in their twenties. The Bulls won their first championship in my eighth year, and their last in my fourteenth, indeed the formative years of life, and certainly the most unstable. Lives and bodies change during that time, and steadiness is something rarely found.
The Bulls, at least for me, offered such steadiness. Every summer, we knew the Bulls would be in the playoffs, and—if Michael Jordan was playing—they would win the championship. Then the fun would begin: players would take a sip of champagne, would immediately become drunk, and would start benignly cursing on TV (see Ron Harper being interviewed after the 1996 championship—possibly the funniest interview in history this side of Rickey Henderson); the streets of Chicago would be literally set aflame with overturned cars and trash cans filled with plastic cups and kerosene; and we all knew that it would only be a few months until the Bulls playoff video came out on sale, with the cheesy synth music and constant slow-mo’s of Jordan dunking and Cliff Levingston/Dickey Simpkins/Randy Brown pumping his fist.
Oh, those were the days. But, in the beginning, such things were not so assured. We—or at least I—needed the 1992 Finals to know the extraordinary level of greatness that the Bulls could achieve. Particularly, I needed Game 6.
They had won the previous year—having swept the Pistons in the conference finals and handled Magic’s Lakers in the league finals—but I really did not know if they could do it again. Now, they were facing the Blazers, who had home-advantage, Clyde Drexler to counter Jordan, and the ever-terrifying Kevin Duckworth. To my shame, I doubted Jordan. He immediately allayed my doubts in the first game, by hitting six threes in the first half, on way to a route. This onslaught to me remains the most exhilirating Jordan highlight of all time, and it told me, once and for all, that Jordan personally could not be stopped (all of us have that Jordan moment, when we realized just how powerful he was). This series, I thought, would be a breeze.
But the Blazers kept nipping away, pushing the series to a sixth game in Chicago. This game needed to be won, because going back to the old Rose Garden in Portland would be a formidable task, and would lead me to doubt Jordan again. Such temptation to apostasy my heart could not bear to entertain. So they needed to win Game 6.
For the first three quarters, they were not winning. As a matter of fact, they were getting their butts kicked. At the beginning of the fourth quarter, the Bulls were down by fifteen, and Michael was on the bench. “How could this be?” I remember asking my dad. He shook his head.
Put Michael in, Phil. We cannot possibly win with Pippen and a bunch of scrubs. No, no, no. Impossible.
But, then, a magical thing happened. The Blazers kept missing shots, and the Bulls kept making them. Pippen (in a preview of his MVP-like performance in the years of Jordan’s first retirement) took the point and ran the team, and the likes of Scott Williams and Craig Hodges were helping the Bulls carve away at that formidable lead. The crowd at the old Chicago Stadium sensed something magical was happening, and the rumble that began with a Pippen breakaway dunk soon became a swelling crescendo of maniacal yells and cheers rivaled only by the Colloseum.
Closer and closer the Bulls came, and louder and louder the crowd became. Jordan himself could feel it, and was jumping around like a lunatic. Phil left him out, and Jordan, the ultra-competitive man that he is, did not seem to care. They both knew not to mess with a good thing. For the first time, people were realizing that, without Jordan, the Bulls could function. They were not a one-man team. When Bobby Hansen (the forgotten “smaller white guy” that we suburban kids love, sandwiched in between the more prominent John Paxson and Steve Kerr) hit a corner three to bring the Bulls to within five, it was utter pandemonium in Chicago.
Even the scrubs could get it done, we were telling ourselves. The Bulls were actually a team.
But to say that the Bulls could function—even function well—without Jordan did not in any way mean that they could win without him. This, too, the crowd seemed to know, and when Michael finally checked in with about three minutes left, and the Bulls down by three, pandemonium became bedlam. Bedlam, though, connotes anarchy, and an innate lack of certainty. When Jordan came in, though, there was no uncertainty. The Bulls were going to win.
You could see the fury and determination on Jordan’s face when he checked in, hidden behind that deceitful smile. Like a man possessed by his mission, he began flying around the court with an abandon I had never before seen (or perhaps had never before recognized), hitting shots, and making two huge steals.
The second of these steals was the icing on the cake. His bug-eyed-goggled majesty, Buck Williams, had just corralled in a defensive rebound, and was looking downcourt for an outlet, when Jordan, like a lion sneaking up on his prey, crept behind him, made a vicious uphand swipe with his left hand, and knocked the ball away. After stealing the ball, he dribbled once, and stuffed it home. Bedlam became hysteria. The game and series ended soon after, and Jordan of course was named MVP of the Finals, the first person ever so named in consecutive years. He would be named Finals MVP four more times.
Perhaps because this was the first championship won in Chicago, but more than likely because of their extraordinary comeback without Jordan, the players were even more raucous than is civilly customary, high-fiving fans and running around the stadium like goofballs. Jordan himself was positively goofy, jumping up on the scorer’s table, black championship baseball cap on head, smiling and waving around his hands. This unhinged Jordan delighted the crowd, holding up two enormous fingers to symbolize the accomplishment. But then he held three fingers. Then four. Then five. Then six, seven, eight. And he was smiling the whole time.
It was hilarious to see at the time, but, in retrospect, there is an almost chilling prescience to his actions. Perhaps he saw that, with the right role players surrounding him, he could not be stopped, and that he did not need to bear the load entirely on his own (only about 90% of the load). Really, had he not retired, it is ridiculously feasible to think that Jordan’s Bulls could have won eight straight titles. The only thing that could—and did—stop Jordan from fulfilling his comical prophecy was him.
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about 1 year ago
Great read...thanks Ben.
If you go back and watch a Jordan game from the late 80's or early 90's, the thing that stands out above all else is his defensive intensity. His help-defense especially was ridiculously aggressive and intense. And for as effective as he and Pippen were offensively, they probably had more of an impact on the final score at the other end of the floor.
Jordan simply never stopped when he stepped foot on the court.
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