While it may not be accurate to blame Miami for Michael Jordan lying there prone in front of the Bulls’ bench like a sack of citrus, Dallas does get blamed for the assassination of John Kennedy and Milwaukee for the crime spree Jeffrey Dahmer, so if Jordan has to suffer the rest of the playoffs in a body cast or a walker, I’m accusing all of South Florida.
“It’s one of those spasm things,” said Jordan of the back upon which the Bulls’ fortunes inevitably rest. “Nothing to keep me out Wednesday.”
Michelangelo’s Pieta was never the same after that nut took a sledgehammer to her. And they still haven’t got the butcher who hacked off the Venus de Milo’s arms.
I might suggest looking on the Heat bench.
The guy who got Jordan has a name. Several, actually. The first is Tyrone Corbin, of the DePaul Corbins. He got the official foul call, though another creature named Chris Gatling caused Jordan to twist unnaturally to finish his shot, a reverse layup.
While neither man could be accused of the typical abuse expected of Pat Riley and his usual suspects, the result is nonetheless the same.
“I’ve had this for four or five years,” Jordan said. “It’s just a sign of getting old.”
At least Jordan does not have to do much on defense, his assignment being to guard Rex Chapman. This is like standing watch on an outhouse. Except for the odd October holiday, you pretty much expect it be to just where you left it.
The most dangerous creature to Jordan turned out to be a bindlestiff named Keith Askins, whose only reason for being in the game appeared to be to draw blood. He crashed into Jordan when Jordan tried to play again after twisting his back. Shortly thereafter, and maybe not soon enough, Phil Jackson wisely removed Jordan as prey and casualty.
“If we foul someone, we’re thugs,” said Alonzo Mourning, a player distinctive enough to play both roles in “Dumb and Dumber.” “You say Riley taught us that. Someone had to tell them to foul that way too.”
Mourning is innocent in the Jordan injury, though not in the Dennis Rodman ejection or in smacking Ron Harper in the nose with a towel as the teams mingled at halftime.
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“I’ll see him in Miami,” Harper said.
Rodman does not, of course, need any accomplices to self-destruct, but he generously included Mourning in his third-quarter ejection and photo op, sharing the moment until he stripped off his shirt, made a classic Roman gesture to those he was leaving behind and disappeared into wherever it is Rodman disappears to.
“What were we, 30 up at the time?” Jordan asked. That means Rodman picked a harmless occasion to open his personal seethe valve.
“Dennis is under control,” Jordan assured, not that Jordan might not be wrong about both his own back and about Rodman’s mental state.
Jordan said that officials are calling ticky-tacky fouls on Rodman, and that he hopes they loosen up as the playoffs go on. Phil Jackson said he was upset that Rodman “got run out of the game,” as if it were anyone else’s fault but Rodman’s.
“It’s unfortunate it again drew attention to Dennis,” Jackson said.
That seems to be the whole point. Rodman is to attention what a tuxedo is to lint.
If Rodman cannot handle a situation as pressureless as the challenge of the insignificant Mourning and the desperate Heat, what comes later is going to be gruesome. Playing with Rodman must be like living on a fault line. You just hope you are out of town when the big one hits.
Losing by 31 points is not so much shameful as predictable, never mind that the Heat got to play with all the Mourning it wanted and with both Jordan and Rodman missing from the Bulls.
Insisting that Miami is the best eighth seed to ever make the playoffs is as foolish as admiring the cosmetics on a cadaver.
“I once lost by 47 with the Lakers,” Riley said. “You just keep coming back.
“Contrary to what people might think, we’ve got a good team. We just haven’t been through the wars together.”
Instead of waving a white flag, Riley waved Stacey King. Same thing.