It is all prelude, the NBA season is, all dress rehearsal and shadowboxing. We are still 20 games from the good stuff and 20 more from the best stuff. Treasure the nights when then is visible now.
There was Michael Jordan, naturally, filling up the net, treating a poor Miami creature named Voshon Lenard as if he were a stump–or worse, Craig Ehlo.
Scottie Pippen was at full gallop, soaring, slamming, disputing, all fresh legs and focus, in form.
Toni Kukoc dared and Steve Kerr scored, and the usually neglected Joe Kleine played like a man sent out to collect a bad debt.
And there was the best and worst of Dennis Rodman, paying attention for a change, mocking and mugging, a mouse under his left eye courtesy of Alonzo Mourning.
Much this night was courtesy of Mr. Mourning, as if it could be any other way when the Heat and the Bulls intersect.
Mourning threw a cruel and purposeful elbow at Pippen, catching him in the chest instead of the head, causing Pippen to square off against Mourning. Kleine acted as the peacemaker, though Kleine as a peacemaker is unlikely as a torpedo as a pillow.
“As you see,” Jordan said, “there is not much love once we are out on the basketball court. I think a lot of it has to do with the way they approach the game. We have to be defiant. We cannot let the intimidation factor affect us.”
Mourning also threw a meaningful hip at Jordan early in the game, knocking Jordan down.
“That’s the way Alonzo plays,” Bulls coach Phil Jackson shrugged. “I would like to see some of those things called.”
If it doesn’t happen on a Tuesday night in March, it is not likely to happen on a Sunday afternoon in June.
“We got their best game,” concluded Pat Riley, the Miami coach, assuming a compliment not given, and one certainly not returned.
The Heat is a team with its nose to the window, as is Indiana and, perpetually, the Knicks, not to mention all those tormented teams out West, the lot of them carrying the burden of envy.
On the other side are the Bulls, with all their majesty and all their trophies.
Will any of these wannabes ever get to the other side as long as Jordan plays as Jordan can play?
“No one has yet,” Riley said.
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Decidedly not the Heat on this night, a team possibly too miffed at having been weathered in by real weather to bother with its best game. Which is more annoying, to get in out of the cold to find Jordan being Jordan or Rodman being Rodman?
Jordan was no more magnificent than usual, if a bit more accurate, but Rodman seemed inspired by the challenge of Mourning, resorting to his playoff prance and playoff posing, his playoff conspicuousness.
“I wasn’t listening to Rodman,” Mourning swore. “I didn’t hear a thing he was saying. He gets to you all (the press) more than he does me. You’re the ones who have him in your heads.”
What matters is only if Rodman thinks he is getting into anyone’s head, and if not Mourning, then certainly the crowd, which greeted his every entry into the game as if he were buying another round for the house.
To win again, the Bulls will have to have Rodman’s interest, Jordan’s brilliance, Pippen’s versatility and Kukoc’s attention. It is not a secret formula.
“You know,” Dan Majerle said, shaking his head, “everyone in this locker room knows their offense just as well as they do. Stopping it is another matter.”
Indeed. Indeed.