Those who complained that the Chicago Bulls and their fans were complacent during this year`s championship playoffs got their comeuppance Sunday night.
If what led to the Bulls` winning the National Basketball Association title was complacency, then bungee jumping is a stroll to the 7-Eleven. If what followed it was world weariness, then a wedding is merely a church social with an oversized cake.
Chicago sports fans, accustomed to loving losers, cheering also-rans, and suffering with teams that look better on paper than in the paper, could be forgiven their exuberance, if not their scattered displays of criminality.
Those fans were handed Sunday a second successive NBA championship by the Bulls, the first time a Chicago sporting franchise has won a title at home since the 1963 Bears. It also was the first time a Chicago team claimed back- to-back championships since the Bears in 1940 and 1941.
As time ran out in Sunday`s game and the Bulls clinched their 4-games-to- 2 series victory over an underdisciplined Portland Trail Blazers team, John Paxson`s toss of the ball toward the rafters served much the same function as the orb that drops in New York`s Times Square on New Year`s Eve.
It was Paxson`s way of saying: Let the partying begin.
Throughout Chicago, the faithful obeyed, raising fists, steins and even cain in celebration. In a few areas, victory brought broken windows and uninvited shopping. And mopes citywide chose to draw and fire their guns in the air, as though only actual menace could match the moment.
But the predominant noise on the streets was more benign. Motorists leaned into their car horns like cabdrivers at rush hour, bleating approval for something that everybody knew should happen, everybody suspected would happen, but everybody, somewhere deep in their oft-wounded followers` hearts, secretly feared would not.
In a town where potential often lingers in the locker room while the team goes out to play, the Bulls did the most surprising thing of all. They did what was expected of them. They won it all, again.
True, the Bears won a Super Bowl in 1986, the Cubs and White Sox flirted with grand-scale success several times in the 1980s, and the Blackhawks made a hard run at a National Hockey League title this year before doing a nosedive in the finals. But it is only the Bulls who have kept it up, delivering on promise and doing so more than once. And this time, they did it at home.
Psychologists, educators and youth baseball coaches may debate whether winning is or is not everything. Sunday night, it was enough.
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It was enough to alter, if only for a few moments, the message of the Chicago Gospel Festival.
As the game wound down, Dr. Charles G. Hayes and the 100 or so members of his Cosmopolitan Church Choir, wearing yellow-and-green robes, were still singing on stage at Grant Park, although a few ”Go Bulls” shouts appeared to be coming from their direction.
The audience, many of them huddled in blankets, had already scattered into enclaves clustered around portable televisions. One group of 20 young people kept time with the music, clapping and shouting, while they kept their eyes trained on the game.
Finally, the choir gave up singing and someone on stage began doing a play-by-play instead. ”Michael has the ball,” he said. ”There are 30 seconds left in the game.”
When the Bulls won, festivalgoers danced, yelled and hugged one another, and frenzied music came from the stage.
Minutes later, attention turned back to the reason the thousands of people had shown up: music. On the stage appeared Mom and Pop Winans, whose family is to gospel what the Bulls are to basketball.
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The sun had not quite set, but the West Side streets were deserted by all but the kids. In the evening heat, the outside basketball court at Central Avenue and Madison Street was host to one pickup game.
As the clock at the Stadium ticked down, cheers, screams and shouts rang out of open windows and across Central. The neighborhood cheered its idols, the ones who haunt the dreams of the children at Central and Madison.
”Bulls won!” the cry went out.
A young woman in tight jeans did a sort of strut out on the sidewalk, arms waving in exultation. Children began to streak from the playground at Columbus Park and down the street, ready to share in whatever the grownups were starting.
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Inside the Stadium, fans reacted to every made Bulls shot as though it were a winning lottery ticket, treated every 3-pointer that didn`t fall like a daughter who had brought home a Hell`s Angel. Still and all, it looked for most of the contest as though Portland would have enough gumption to force a seventh game.
Even before the game started George Wendt, the actor who has helped make
”Da Bulls” a phrase we are all fed up with, left the building. Superfan, it seems, had to appear in a play. (He did, however, pledge to be watching on a TV backstage.)
When, during a third-quarter timeout, the two guys who imitate the Blues Brothers both missed their artificially-aided dunk tries, it seemed an ill omen, indeed, for the Bulls.
”Chicago, they aren`t used to winning championships,” said Roger Carter, a high school student from the South Side.
”1839, or something like that,” said his friend Harold Mapp.
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On the court, Bulls reserve Stacey King was going up for a layup.
”That`s money. That`s money,” Mapp said.
King`s shot was rejected.
Mapp and Carter nonetheless expressed confidence that the Bulls would win, and a squad of reserves plus Scottie Pippen mounted a furious charge at the beginning of the fourth quarter that signaled the start of summer vacation for the Trail Blazers.
But what was good news for the Bulls may only put pressure on Chicago`s other professional franchises.
”I guess this will just give us more hope for the rest of the teams,”
said Kathleen McGhee, a 16-year-old student at the Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy. ”If the Bulls can win back-to-back championships, why can`t other teams too?”
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Nikki and Brian Gordon celebrated two big events Sunday at the Ambassador West Hotel: their wedding and the Bulls` title.
Throughout the nuptials, in the hotel`s ballroom, guests were listening to the game with earplugs and transistor radios.
When the Bulls won 97-93, the band began playing the team`s theme song and the wedding party and guests went wild. The Gordons were off to an auspicious start.
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At the Greene residence in the 2100 block of West Monroe Street, Tywanna Greene, 24, gathered around the television set with about a dozen family members to watch the game.
”We missed out on the Gospel Fest because we wanted to stay here and watch the game because we`re going to win,” she said.
At the time, the Bulls were down 43-30 in the second quarter. Greene, however, shouted: ”Wait until the second half. That`s when we`ll get in it.” The family turned back to the television set that, within two hours, would prove Tywanna Greene visionary.
In that household and thousands of others, a Chicago fan`s faith, tested like Abraham`s but never broken, had been rewarded.
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Whoops and hollers filled Miguel Gonzalez`s Northwest Side apartment as he doused himself and 11 friends with champagne. He ignited the fireworks he had purchased a week ago for the express purpose of marking the Bulls`
victory.
”The second time is great, much better than the first time,” he said.
”This time they did it at home.”
Gonzalez`s year-old son, Miguel Jr., watched the mayhem from the sidelines. He was dressed head-to-toe in Michael Jordan gear, a living shrine to his father`s hero.
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At Madison Street and Pulaski Road, the celebratory air was damped by tension. Hundreds of people walked down the streets, some carrying sticks or bottles, while police patrolled by on foot.
At Madison and Pulaski, windows had been broken out of a Church`s Fried Chicken.
Other businesses, about 40 of which are clustered on this corner, were protected by pulldown gates or bars. A department store in the area was burning as some dozen firefighters struggled to control it.
In the first hours after the game, reports of looting and shooting also came from the Cabrini-Green public housing development, while in the heart of Lincoln Park, there was a report of a large explosion, apparently from fireworks.
Stores were looted along South Ashland Avenue in the vicinity of 50th Street. In the State and Division Street area, revelers spilled from the bars and overturned two cabs. Mounted police moved in to quell the crowds and were met with tossed cans and jeers.
Throughout the city, hundreds of extra police officers were on duty, attempting to maintain calm, or at least control excitement, on a night when emotions were running high.
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Ed Hernandez was probably one of the few people hoping for a Bulls defeat Sunday night. He said sales at his souvenir stand outside the stadium were abysmal and figured one more game would jack his profits.
”It`s brutal. It`s more like a struggle,` he said, pointing to a stand full of T-shirts, hats and sweat pants.
Hernandez, with naivete rare in those connected with the Chicago sports scene, had a suggestion for improving sales.
”We`ve got to have a championship every five years instead of every two years.”