Blood on the Horns

by Roland Lazenby

  Pippen responded after the timeout by taking a rushed trey that missed badly, and Malone hit two jumpers to put Utah up by four with 55.7 left. The Bulls, though, managed to tie it on two Pippen free throws and a Longley jumper with 14 seconds to go. From there, Chicago’s defense forced overtime, but in the extra period Stockton victimized Kerr on a late shot in the lane to give the Jazz a 1-0 lead in the series.

  The 1998 Finals was off to a great start and appeared headed toward a doozie of a finish. As was their trademark, the Bulls made their adjustments for Game 2, which involved spreading their triangle offense and opening the floor up for easy baskets by their cutters.

  In the first half, the triangle had never worked better. “Tonight it really shined bright for us,” Buechler said. “It’s an offense designed for everyone to touch the ball, to pass and cut. And the guys did that tonight, instead of going to Michael every time and posting up. Early on everyone got involved, and that really helped out for later in the game.”

  “The first half was beautiful,” Winter agreed. “We followed through with our principles a lot better. Got a lot of cutting to the basket. And Michael gave up the ball. He was looking to feed cutters.”

  Winter’s face, though, showed his frustration. “The second half we abandoned it, aborted it,” he said. “We tried to go way too much one on one. Michael especially forced a lot of things.”

  If the Bulls had stuck with their scheme they might have won by a dozen, the assistant coach figured. But Jordan had delivered a win against Indiana in Game 7 by going to the basket and drawing fouls. He attempted to do the same in Game 2 against Utah, but the officials weren’t giving him the call. Instead, Jordan wound up on his back while the Jazz scooped up the ball and headed the way for easy transition baskets. Suddenly Chicago’s seven-point edge had turned into an 86-85 Utah lead with less than two minutes to go. “I don’t know what it is,” Winter said, shaking his head. “Michael, he’s got so damn much confidence.”

  As it turned out, it was Kerr who rescued the Bulls in the closing moments, with a rebound no less. “It’s ironic,” the guard agreed. “I think it was my first rebound of the series, wasn’t it?”

  Jordan knifed inside for a layup that pushed the Bulls back ahead 88-86 with 47.9 seconds left. But moments later with the series on the line, and the score tied at 88, Kerr got open for a transition three. “I missed the shot and the ball went right to me,” said Kerr. “Lucky bounce. As soon as I got the ball, I saw Michael underneath and just flipped it to him.”

  Jordan’s bucket and ensuing free throw propelled the Bulls to a 93-88 win, the victory they needed to wrest away homecourt advantage. The difference was clearly the Bulls’ 18 offensive rebounds, five by Kukoc and five by Rodman. “They did a great job of rotating, hustling after plays,” said Utah’s Jeff Hornacek. “I think we got outhustled. They got the loose balls. We anticipate all the games being close. It’s going to be a play here or there that wins the game. I thought that Steve Kerr play killed it.”

  “Even when we went down by one,” said Kerr, “we went back to the huddle, everyone was quiet and focused, and we came back out and took control.”

  STATEMENTS

  The series then shifted back to Chicago, where a swarm of media gathered at the Berto Center as the Bulls shot around before Sunday’s Game 3. Jordan rushed off the floor after practice with a TV producer in tow pleading for some interview time.

  “It’s for NBC, Michael,” the producer said.

  “I don’t give a damn,” Jordan shot back as he ducked into the team’s training room.

  A few feet away, Winter was again drilling Rodman on pressure free throws. “Tie score,” the coach said as the forward took aim. Across the gym, Randy Brown, who was getting no playing time, was feeding passes to Kerr, his rival for minutes who was practicing three-pointers.

  “Good job, the rhythm is good,” Winter said, grabbing Rodman’s hand and shaking it as they finished yet another session. Winter paused to answer a few questions and admitted that where he once held out hope that the team might remain intact he now saw that as the remotest of possibilities. “I don’t think it’s necessarily a shame to break it up,” he said. “It’s too bad that has to be, but you have to have changes. And it could be well-timed.”

  Winter had figured the Bulls would struggle to win the title in ‘97, yet here they were a year later, in solid position again to rule the league. If the team returned, it would likely be too far past its prime to meet expectations in 1999, the coach reasoned.

  Besides, keeping the key parties together would take some Jackson-inspired therapy. Perhaps Jordan and Pippen could be assigned to go fishing with Krause to relax and talk out their problems. The lake would have to be very shallow. The two stars could later sit with Reinsdorf and enjoy a good cigar.

  But how would Winter heal the relationship between Jackson and Krause? Only Reinsdorf could do that, the assistant coach said. As it would turn out, the team chairman tried, but it just wasn’t possible.

  “Well, I think time heals all wounds, but time can also wound all heals,” Jackson said, toying with a riddle when posed the question in a private interview. “In retrospect, at some point, we’re going to back away from this so that we’re not so close and say, ‘You know, this was a collection of pretty talented people. The Bulls were very successful. Even though we were enmeshed in the midst of it, we really were enjoying it.’ I’ve always felt that way.

  “Perhaps we could have enjoyed it more if we could have appreciated it,” Jackson said. “I’ve really enjoyed it a lot, and as a consequence, I’ve really revelled in it the most. Tex doesn’t revel in it as much as I do. But the players do. The players have this association with it, and I have an association with that, too, because I was a player.”

  The coach admitted that no matter how hard their feelings he and Krause would always be bonded by their mutual success with the Bulls. In fact, their story was one destined to be told and retold.

  Having acknowledged that, Jackson said there was virtually no chance of his return. He said he had tried to make it clear to Reinsdorf in 1997 that it was impossible for Krause and him to keep working together. The implication was that the team chairman had faced a choice, the coach or the general manager, and had clearly sided with Krause.

  “Last year I felt that coming back, even though the ground had been seeded, the groundwork wasn’t good,” Jackson said. “I felt like my message about how a house divided against itself cannot stand wasn’t really listened to by Jerry Reinsdorf. I really like Jerry, and I have a tendency to like authority figures. And Jerry has been a good one as an owner for a coach to appreciate because he stays away and stays in the background and doesn’t intrude and allows things to happen. And yet he’s gotta coerce both of us to work together in this atmosphere. For this group to come back, I just don’t see how it’s gonna happen. Right now we’re in the throes of saying, ‘Look at the genius of this team. Look at the collective effort between the coaching staff and the team on the floor, all the strengths of the individuals.’ But the reality is that while no one wants to back away from another championship or another two championships, going through another long period of 82 games in that respect is going to be difficult. It’s not a good thought.”

  Even so, Jackson couldn’t avoid leaving the door cracked. “If it comes down to a chance of Michael not playing, then my responsibility would be to him and to the continuation of his career, and I would have to consider it,” he said. “I have to be a person that is loyal to the people who have been loyal to me. I feel that conviction. The only thing that would take me basically out of the mix would be my own personal well being, my own personal physical and emotional health in dealing with this.”

  Clearly, Jackson had been left emotionally frayed by the season and the struggle for control of the team.

  The emotional health of the entire team got
a boost in Game 3 as Pippen and Harper and Jordan took turns overpowering Utah’s guards in the largest rout in NBA history. The performance established how absolutely dominant the Bulls could be as a team and Pippen could be as an individual defender. The conclusion itself turned into the kind of dunkfest for substitutes usually reserved for rec league blowouts. The game had opened with a blast of applause from the United Center crowd, followed by a brief scoring outburst from Malone. Then the Chicago defense closed out the proceedings and propelled the Bulls to a 96-54 victory. The margin was so great that a cross-country airlines flight that had radioed in for a game update for a Utah fan had to call back a second time to confirm the score. It was the worst point difference in league history, either playoff or regular season.

  Jerry Sloan expressed surprise when he was handed a box score. “This is actually the score?” the Utah coach said. “I thought it was 196 (points). It sure seemed like they scored 196.”

  “It was one heck of an effort, defensively, for our team,” Jackson said. “We were very quick to the basketball.”

  “I’m somewhat embarrassed for NBA basketball for the guys to come out and play at this level, with no more fight left in them than what we had,” Sloan said. “(The Bulls) got all the loose balls, all the offensive rebounds, and we turned the ball over (26 times). I’ve never seen a team that quick defensively.”

  Pippen had roamed the floor, free to terrorize Utah’s passing lanes. “It’s a luxury to have a defender like Scottie,” Jackson told reporters. “He can cover more than one situation at a time. He can play a man and play a play. He can hang tight on his man and he’s also able to rotate like that.”

  “A lot of times Phil wants me to be a help defender, and that’s pretty much what I’m doing in this series,” Pippen said. “He wants me to limit their way to the basket, keep them out of their sets, things like that. I take pride in being able to do that.”

  In one game, the Bulls had sent a resounding rebuke to Krause’s plans to rebuild because they were too old. Tacked on was the emphasis that Pippen was too special a player to consider tossing away in any trade.

  “I almost feel sorry for them,” Jackson said privately in discussing how Krause’s and Reinsdorf’s agenda had been shattered.

  Pippen, in a private moment, addressed the issue with the tallest of grins. “Ain’t nothing changed,” he said, unable to suppress the smile. The day after Game 3 a team employee revealed that the Bulls had renewed all but four of their skybox leases, and those four would soon go, too. “Is that right?” Jackson said with surprise when informed of the news. Regardless, Jordan and Pippen had fun with the topic at practice that morning in the United Center. Jordan walked into the empty arena and stood looking around. Suddenly, he pretended to be speaking into a microphone: “Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to how your arena is going to look next season.” Then the star pointed to the upper reaches of the vast building and said, “There are your choice seats.” Strangely, one sole spectator was sitting in that nosebleed section, and when Jordan pointed, the man stood and began waving his arms wildly, leaving Jordan and his teammates to hoot at the oddity of the moment. In the other corner, a few feet away, Pippen performed a similar skit with an imaginary microphone. Actually, the building was safely sold out for 1998-99, but in the realest of senses the stars were right. No matter what happened, the magic would likely be gone.

  Just when Chicago seemed to be soaring in the 1998 championship series, Rodman changed the flight pattern by missing practice to slip off to appear at a professional wrestling event in Detroit as “Rodzilla.” Some accounts suggested he was paid as much as $250,000 for the appearance while others reported that he was paid nothing. Privately, Rodman said the appearance was part of an $8 million contract.

  The media took great interest in delving into the strange turn of events, which cost Rodman $10,000 in fines. When Rodman returned to practice before Game 4, Winter was ready with a lecture. “I just asked him what he thought he was doing,” the coach revealed. “He said, ‘Well, if you had a chance to give up $10,000 to make $8 million would you do it?’ That’s what he told me. I said, ‘Don’t kid me. There’s no way you made $8 million.’ He said, ‘Oh, yes, I did.’”

  Behind his frown, Winter took the matter with a smile. “You know, Rodman’s no dummy,” he said. “Actually, he’s beaten the system. You have to give somebody credit who can do that. And I’m not so sure that maybe the system shouldn’t take a lickin’ every once in a while.”

  MBA’s from Harvard would have trouble figuring out how to earn the money that Rodman had in the past three seasons, Winter said. “It’s a reflection a little bit on our society, though. Which is a shame, but that’s part of the system, too.” The coach had talked often with Rodman about taking better care of his money but didn’t think his message had gotten through, especially when it came to his gambling. “Anybody that likes him and has some compassion for him is gonna be concerned about him,” Winter explained, pointing out that the reason his teammates put up with Rodman was because they liked him. “He’s a very likable guy. Very generous. Generous to a fault, really. Wants attention. He’s a contradiction, really. He’s a very shy guy in a lot of ways. Very withdrawn. And yet he calls attention to himself on every turn. That’s a contradicting personality. I think Phil’s got a better read on him than the rest of us. Phil was somewhat a maverick himself. He wrote that book, The Maverick, which he’s still embarrassed about. I didn’t read it. He asked me not to, so I didn’t. He said, ‘You don’t want to read that.’ Phil is more sympathetic toward Rodman than I am by a long shot.”

  As the plot would turn in Rodman’s strange world, Game 4 of the Finals came down to his ability at the free throw line. He responded by hitting four free throws in the closing seconds to go with his 14 rebounds to seal an 86-82 Chicago win and a virtually insurmountable 3-1 lead in the series.

  “The much-maligned Dennis Rodman had a wonderful game for us,” admitted Jackson, who had blasted the forward’s behavior just a day earlier. “As usual, he takes himself out of a hole and plays well enough to redeem himself.”

  On a night when the Jazz responded to their Game 3 blowout with a show of fire, the Bulls managed to stay ahead by hitting 17 of 24 free throws in the fourth period. Rodman, a 55-percent shooter during the season, rolled in two for 78-75 lead with 1:38 left. Then, with under a minute left and Chicago ahead by two, he added two more.

  “How ‘bout that?” Winter asked afterward as he was about to slip out of the United Center. “The last two especially. He bounced those two in. I just told him to stay on the line. ‘Shoot ‘em the way we shoot ‘em in practice. You know how you shoot in practice. You shoot 80 to 90 percent. Shoot the same shot.’”

  Winter said he had figured the season might come down to Rodman free throws. “If he’s in the ball game late, he’s probably the guy they’re gonna try to foul. That’s why we didn’t neglect to work it with him all the time,” the coach said. “Sometimes it seems like it’s worthless because he doesn’t get very many free throws, but if he’s gonna be in the ball game late in the game, he’s gonna get fouled. So he’s at least gotta have a chance to hit ‘em. He’s not gonna make ‘em all, but he’ll make a good percentage of ‘em.”

  As the coach talked, he held yet another of Jordan’s empty shoe boxes under his arm. Asked what he did with all the empty boxes he collected, he replied, “Well, I use ‘em for file cabinets. I label ‘em and put different things in ‘em, investments or whatever.”

  It was pointed out that Jordan’s shoe boxes were probably worth more than Winter’s investments, what with the mania over collecting items from the star’s era in the league. “Well they probably are,” Winter agreed. “Maybe I’ll sell ‘em one of these days.”

  After Game 4, Jordan had told the media that he and his teammates were in great shape to claim their sixth title, if only they kept focused. Winter, though, figured
it was very hard to beat a solid team four straight games, which proved to be solid thinking. It wasn’t like the Bulls hadn’t stumbled here before. They lost Game 5 of the 1993 Finals to Phoenix and had to travel back to the southwest to defeat the Suns. “Unfortunately, we have to go back to Utah, and it’s a duplicate situation of 1993,” Jordan said after Chicago lost Game 5 to Utah and saw their series lead narrowed to 3-2. “So when you get on the plane headed to Utah, you have to be very positive, you have to be ready to play. It’s one loss, and you can’t let it eat at you to the point where it becomes two losses.”

  It had clearly been a case of celebrating too early, too many laughs at their good fortune, and the result was an 83-81 Utah win. Even Jordan admitted getting caught up in the fallacy. “I really didn’t have a tee time,” he told reporters, “because I anticipated drinking so much champagne that I wouldn’t be able to get up.” As poorly as the Bulls played (Jordan was 9 for 26 from the floor and Pippen 2 for 16), they still had a shot to win it at the end. Kukoc’s 30 points on 11-of-13 shooting had kept them close, despite Malone’s 39 points.

  The Bulls got the ball back with 1.1 seconds to go, and during the ensuing timeout, Jordan sat there enjoying the circumstances. If ever there was a moment to inhabit, as Jackson had encouraged him to do, this was it. Moments later Jordan missed the falling-out-of-bounds shot, which sealed Chicago’s loss, but that didn’t prevent his treasuring the moment. “I’m pretty sure people were hoping I would make that shot. Except people from Utah,” he said. “For 1.1 seconds, everyone was holding their breath, which was kind of cute.”

  “No one knew what was going to happen,” he said. “Me, you, no one who was watching the game. And that was the cute part about it. And I love those moments. Great players thrive on that in some respects because they have an opportunity to decide happiness and sadness. That’s what you live for. That’s the fun part about it.”