Goodbye to those bald barber poles from Michael Jordan’s home state. Hello, neighbor. Hello, Reggie, you old chicken fighter.
The Bulls now get to trade one set of darning egg domes for another. The nearby Indiana Pacers await, strobing light off their naked heads like a casino ceiling.
The Pacers give a whole new meaning to winning ugly, the starting five resembling rented pallbearers, with Chris Mullin playing the corpse.
“The next series is not going to be as easy as this one,” Jordan said.
Up to now it has been calisthenics, shadow boxing, all shrugs and yawns. Up to now it has been courtesy and indulgence.
“Publicly it is my duty to say that Charlotte played a very good game,” Phil Jackson said.
Privately? Well, thanks for not doing the Bulls any lasting damage and for getting out of the way on time.
While the Nets and the Hornets were tolerated, Indiana may very well be respected. Respect is not something the Bulls offer unearned.
“The Pacers are a very serious challenge to what we have,” Jordan said.
“No way do we feel like we are going to dominate this team,” Scottie Pippen said.
“We’ll have to play better than this series to win,” Jackson said.
These seem to be serious and reasoned opinions, and anything after the first two opponents would have to be more formidable. But the Bulls do seem to be overdoing the ominous.
That will all start Sunday. This night was a night to tidy up, nothing more, required by obligation and TV schedules, neither reason enough to have bothered with yet another polka with the Hornets.
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Early on, neither team took the evening seriously enough to bother playing defense, preferring instead to act like wedding ushers.
May I escort you down the lane, Mr. Jordan? Can you see all right, Mr. Rice? Here, let me duck out of your way.
The only player who bothered to put a hand up was excused to the bathroom.
Later, despondency overcame the Hornets and they resorted to assorted bits of silliness, the most perilous antic being Glen Rice throwing, in sequence, a shoulder and then an elbow at Jordan.
Dell Curry objected to a bit of Dennis Rodman mischief so shrilly he was asked to leave instead of Rodman.
“It is important to finish teams off in the playoffs and play as few games as possible,” Pippen said.
Indiana did its part earlier in the evening, clubbing the Knickerbockers out in five, pretty much a habit for Reggie Miller and his cronies. Somewhere in the telecast of the game, one of the TV voices offered the opinion that, still, the “Knicks had the heart of a champion.”
That is not the organ I would have chosen.
The Pacers, under Larry Bird, finished only four games worse than the Bulls and with their best record since they were in the old ABA.
This was determined to be reason enough to select Bird Coach of the Year. More accurately, Bird should be coach of a year, this being his only one.
And what coaching Bird does is undetectable to the naked eye. Bird is from the taxidermy school of emotion. His pulse is taken by seismograph.
The Celtics retired Bird’s number; the Pacers now may retire Bird’s Barcolounger.
Still, in the coaching ratings Bird poleaxed actual bona fides such as Jerry Sloan of Utah, not quite as great a player as Bird but much the superior coach, and well overdue for the honor. Jackson, with five championship rings, finished 47 votes behind.
The second round is where the Bulls were stopped the two years between the three-peats. Since winning their first conference final, the Bulls have not lost one.
In the five title runs, the Bulls have beaten, in order, Detroit, Cleveland, New York, Orlando and Miami, to reach the finals.
The Pacers are this year’s fresh fodder.
“A serious challenge,” Pippen said.
Whatever he says.