The final count will be a handful, enough fingers to make a fist, five Bulls world championship banners hanging from the rafters of the United Center, not the roundest of numbers, nor the most possible of numbers, considering the two years without Michael Jordan and what may be beyond the reach of this year’s vintage reassemblage.
But this is a good and worthy total, three more than the Sox and three more than the Cubs, two more than the Hawks and four more than the Bears, counting only Super Bowls; two fewer otherwise.
Titles are not so common to Chicago that each one should not be cherished, the details savored, though the Bulls have made the ring ceremony into a drive-through service.
It was time again Saturday night to look back, a direction more satisfying than forward, for ahead lies mortality and the end of it all.
The fifth banner was already in place, raised earlier, one supposes, by organizational hands, those Krauseian hands that win championships, rather than by the players, who do the work and usually do the honors, all tugging on the rope that hauls the emblem of their accomplishment to the ceiling.
The ring ritual has become so routine that it is promoted by a beer company. Apparently the brewery couldn’t find a christening or a coronation to sponsor.
The Bulls trooped out to get their championship rings, the one for the thumb, at least for Jordan, Phil Jackson and Scottie Pippen, who have been here for them all.
Quite a nice little bauble it is, too, 46 pave-cut diamonds totaling a carat and a half, decorating the face of a bull on the bevel. On the sides are the words “World Champions” and “Team of the Decade.”
Last year the rings said “Greatest Team Ever.” This may be the first case of a dynasty being demoted by its own jewelry.
Jerry Krause was first, bounding toward David Stern as if the commissioner had the last cruller on earth instead of the ring boxes. Krause’s journey was accompanied by loud and sincere boos.
Jackson, next, was greeted with warm appreciation, as loudly cheered as Krause was booed, the clear winner in popularity if not in job security.
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Stern, the NBA commissioner, called the Bulls a “team for all time, a team for the ages,” and he must have meant it as a compliment, not as a commentary on the fact that the Bulls are older than farming.
When Dennis Rodman is in the lineup, even before Pippen returns, the Bulls average 32 years of age, compared with Philadelphia’s 25, a clear clue that whatever future the punky 76ers have, it is longer than these Bulls’.
Never has the sense of closure been so obvious at one of these things. The feel was of something ending rather than something continuing, made more poignant by Pippen, dapper in street clothes, without a noticeable limp, but wet of eye and thick of voice.
Pippen spoke of 10 long seasons, of giving joy and pain and being grateful for the chance.
“I have had a wonderful career here,” Pippen said. “If I never have another opportunity to say this again, thank you.”
This does not sound like Pippen plans on winning another title, or if so, of coming back for next year’s ceremony.
How strange that would be, for should they all have other lives in other places by then, how embarrassing it would be for the Bulls to have to give the whole magnificent bunch one more precious moment.
“If we never win another one (championship), we are certainly going to win the sixth,” Jordan told the crowd.
Even if they didn’t understand it, they seemed to believe him.