It will become basketball again when Pat Riley and his thug tactics are no longer involved in it. Until then, the Bulls will need to watch their backs and other vulnerable body parts. The bonus for being the best team in the NBA is having to start the journey to the championship by walking through a dark alley called the Miami Heat, just like it used to be called the New York Knicks.
If you can’t beat ’em, beat ’em up.
And then whine about it later as if you were the victims.
“This thing ought to be about equality, but it’s not,” said Riley. “They won 72 games and we won 42. That’s a disparity of 30 games. That’s the absurdity.”
No, that is the reality. The Bulls are a polished gem to Miami’s gravel. And yet the Bulls have to bang around in the same jar. Chances are it will be the Bulls who get dented.
The best the Heat can do against the Bulls is to tie at the half, which they did Friday night, and hang into the fourth quarter, which they didn’t.
The worst the Heat can do is to abuse the Bulls out of spite or envy, which seems to be the plan, causing damage that will last after they are gone.
“We anticipated a war,” said Michael Jordan. “Pat Riley’s teams have always been that way. They are physical and intimidating, or try to be.”
This is to be endured, not enjoyed, not by the paying witnesses and not by the players, who were scattered across the United Center floor like rubble.
The only bright moments in so much ugly anger was when, in succession, Alonzo Mourning, Riley and Chris Gatling followed each other off the floor and out of the arena, dismissed by technical fouls.
“They lost their cool before we lost ours,” Jordan said.
But not their self-pity.
“It was like playing five guys against eight,” said guard Tim Hardaway. “We played physical and they played physical, but we get the ticky-tack fouls called and they only get the most obvious fouls called. It was crazy. It was ridiculous.”
In a game that had 56 personal fouls and nine technicals (including one on Bob McAdoo, a Miami assistant now), the Bulls were not innocents. Luc Longley fouled out and Dennis Rodman, his technicolor head looking like a lit fuse, managed to hang on to enough dignity to finish upright.
“For a moment, I thought Dennis was going to lose it,” Jordan said.
On this night, he did not. There will be more nights. There will be more edgy moments for Rodman.
“They wanted to confront Dennis,” Phil Jackson said. “He’ll just have to stand up to that.”
Compared with Mourning, Rodman was all propriety. In the race to immaturity, Mourning won easily, spending most of the night either on the bench in foul trouble or on the floor in trouble with only his one move to the basket.
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“Alonzo Mourning,” Riley said, “is one of the great players in this league. Obviously, they (the officials) don’t think so. My strategy is to give him a flak jacket.”
Mourning becomes etcetera.
“He took himself out of the game,” Scottie Pippen said.
That’s Miami’s problem, and welcome to it. The Bulls have to keep from grubbing at the same trough as Mourning and his ilk, from being baited by Riley and his desperate strategy.
“I mean, hell,” Riley said, “I thought we did a hell of a job.”
For Sunday’s second collision between the Bulls and Heat, the officials might frisk both sides to be fair, or at least make them enter the game through a metal detector.
Mourning first.