This one was a game for the ages. Stone, I think.
The resemblance to actual basketball was inadvertent, as it was to any endeavor that requires style and spirit and measurable skill.
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This was all heavy lifting and wood chopping. And bricklaying. Lots of bricklaying.
“Let’s see,” Phil Jackson said. “Dennis goes 1 for 8, `Harp’ goes 1 for 4, Scottie 4 of 16 and Toni 4 of 12. These are your starters.”
These are your visual aids.
There is art and there is craft and there is graffiti. This was bird droppings.
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It was ugly too.
With barely 5 minutes left in the opening quarter, the score was 4-4.
“That was ridiculous,” Steve Kerr said. “That was terrible.”
That was typical of the night. On both sides.
Oh, by the way. The Bulls lost a playoff game. Lost to Charlestown, Chillicothe, some team like that. Some team in purple. Some team with a whole new purpose in life.
“We’re not here to win a game,” B.J. Armstrong said. “We are here to win a series.”
If that name sounds familiar, it should. This is the same B.J. Armstrong who tagged along with Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen through the early championships, the old Stadium titles.
And now there he was in the fourth quarter, this B.J. Armstrong, flinging the ball at the basket with familiar insouciance and darned if it wasn’t going in.
If it wasn’t B.J. it was Dell Curry, neither of them the sharpest arrows in the Clarkesville quiver. Being beaten by these two is like being eaten by gnats.
“When you’ve had the success we’ve had over the years,” Jordan said, “it’s easy to lose your focus. Sometimes it takes something like this to wake us up.”
Like Gulliver waking up in Lilliput.
Anyone really think that the Bulls dynasty is going to end against this bunch of nits?
“It is only one game,” Armstrong said, wisely.
Oh, there was strategy, not the least of which was Anthony Mason, the lug, guarding Jordan, the zephyr. Who wins?
“They won with Mason guarding me,” Jordan said, who scored 22 but none in the second half until the Bulls had lost the lead in the fourth quarter.
“A bold move,” Jackson said.
A move that will turn the series to the Charless Hornets?
“He can stop my postup game,” Jordan said. “But on the perimeter, I can break him down.”
In other words, ask me again on Friday.
But this was not about what Chalkyton did but what the Bulls did not do. The Bulls chewed but did not swallow, cruised but did not break the speed limit, tiptoed but did not stomp.
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“The reality is we had guys come here tonight and not give the effort they usually do,” Jackson said.
That takes us back to that original list–Dennis, Harp, Scottie, Toni.
“I thought Luc was a bright spot for us,” Jackson said.
Bright, maybe, but I wouldn’t try to read a menu by him.
“We looked like the preseason Bulls on the court tonight,” Longley said.
This was a case of the Bulls playing down to the competition, something they should know better than. This was a lapse but not a collapse.
“The bottom line today, as it was in 1946 when the NBA started, is people do not like to get embarrassed,” Hornets coach Dave Cowens said. “The bottom line in this business is that people are warriors and competitors.
“They don’t want to lose. When somebody says you are not up to the task, you are not in somebody’s league, you want to prove them wrong.”
The Bulls should keep that thought all the way to Charburg and back.