Who got game? He got game. They got game. Michael got game. Oh, Lord, yes. Don’t Michael got game.
The price for Michael Jordan is, I have come to realize, the English language, and, speaking for the grammar police, worth every misused syllable of it.
Even Mrs. Mears, my old English teacher, would have to agree the price is small.
And I am sure if I asked her today what she thought of the upcoming Bulls-Pacers series, this is what dear Mrs. Mears would say:
Do Reggie got game?
Well, that is what we will find out, isn’t it? Nice, finally, to have a villain in the house. None in New Jersey, not a one. And Anthony Mason was harder on his own coach than he was on the Bulls.
Dennis Rodman can turn a guy around. Dennis got game. Dennis got Mason.
But Reggie, he got it. He got the nasties. Reggie got one of the ugliest, off-center, crooked-elbow, broken-neck, flailing jump shots in the world. He got the bottom of the net most times.
He got ears too. He got ears like tongues sticking out the side of his head. That’s what he got.
(I’m sorry. I can’t do this any longer. I get dizzy. I got dizzy. As unhip and un-NBA as actual syntax and subject-verb agreement may be, I, like Popeye, yam what I yam.)
So, where was I? Oh, yes. Reggie Miller. A kinder, quieter Miller. So gossip has it. Who could tell? Miller has had two moments in his career, one when he beat he Knicks and/or Spike Lee (no one would have noticed the first without the second) and one when he happened to be opposite Jordan in Game 1 of the Great Comeback.
Otherwise, Miller is just another skinny, ear-obvious wannabe with another hero’s first name from an altogether other sport. Reggie will never be the Reggie, the way Michael always will be Michael or even the way Larry became Larry.
It is much too late in the day for that. Miller is as were Charles Barkley and Patrick Ewing and Karl Malone when Jordan got in the way of their one best chance for what Jordan has a fistful of (Mrs. Mears would ask me to diagram this sentence), a single championship ring.
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If Reggie is ever going to get his, it had better be now.
Miller has always been reflected light, his sister’s, Spike Lee’s, Jordan’s, so this may be the best chance he will ever have to shine on his own.
Miller has stepped into the World of Jordan and only one of them will leave it.
This is not a rivalry. This will not be a rivalry until the Bulls say it is, and maybe they are saying it is. They are dropping hints that it could be.
There seems to be a genuine concern about the Pacers, but–and this is the important part–not because of the Pacers but because of the Bulls.
It is the Bulls who are not shooting well, the Bulls who have not found the consistent teeth-in-the-neck attitude, the Bulls who, to use one of those precious Phil Jackson words, have not found their “synchronicity.”
(Is there a movie in that? Will it fit the marquee? He Got Synchronicity. Starring Gene Hackman as The Zen Master.)
As it happens, the Pacers offer a little more danger than what the Bulls have already been through. And if the Bulls could not find their “synchronicity” against the Nets and Hornets, they should be concerned about trying to find it now.
Still, the Bulls tend to play up to whatever the challenge is. Always have. The question is whether they still can. The question is when the Reinsdorfian deterioration actually takes over.
That’s the question. Reggie Miller is not the question.
He got game. They all got game.
Bulls in six. Games. Got it.