Hidden somewhere in the post-loss mumblings of the Great Sarcophagus and sometime ambulatory coach of Indiana is a threat. Ah, yes. Here it is.
This is a response to a question about how to keep the Bulls–particularly Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen–from driving the lane for easy baskets.
“If you lay a couple of them on the floor when they come in there,” Larry Bird said, “then they don’t come in there the next time. Within the rules, of course.”
Well, now, isn’t that a precious little sentiment to be strewing about?
What’s the undermessage here? Wear armor. Pack heat. Bring a bodyguard.
Don’t come back to Indiana unless your affairs are in order.
It inevitably comes to this for the Bulls. If you can’t beat ’em, mug ’em. This is the Pat Riley recipe, though it never has worked. This is where the Bulls came in, back against the Bad Boys of Detroit, when Dennis Rodman was the baddest.
Nothing changed, as Jordan suggested it would, once the Bulls showed the world that basketball could be art. There have not been imitators of the Bulls, only cheap manglers, lined up with hidden hammers to knock the nose off the Pieta.
Those who can, do. Those who can’t, undo.
This is familiar turf for the Bulls, not pleasant, but familiar. Optimism, later rather than sooner, turns to desperation.
“We were going to take the ball to the basket,” Phil Jackson said after Game 5. “We knew we were going to get hit. We would take the hit and make the free throws. And take it to the basket again.”
And why should there always be an obstacle course on the way to destiny?
Earlier in this, Reggie Miller expressed the mind-set of the Pacers, as familiar as it is unoriginal.
“You don’t get a decision against the champs,” Miller said. “You have to knock ’em out.”
What a prize are the Bulls, what an incomparable treasure to grab. What a souvenir to whomever knocks out the champs, to the team that can end the dynasty before it self-dissolves.
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The team that finally gets the Bulls also gets a tiny share of all the Bulls have been.
Immortality by conquest. The Goths and Visigoths may have sacked Rome, but they did not become Rome.
Nor will Utah, certainly not Indiana, become the Bulls.
The Bulls have become a greater prize than any team they defeated for any of their five titles. Maybe the only fitting way for this to finish would be for the Bulls at the end to play the Bulls at the beginning.
The Magic Johnson Lakers were substantial, but the Bulls have become much greater than those Lakers were. The Portland Trail Blazers of Clyde Drexler are the least of the five. Phoenix, with Charles Barkley, proved to be an inadequate fabrication.
Seattle? Two years later, the star is gone, the coach is fired. Utah is going to get a second chance and probably deserves it, but the Jazz will always be Frazier and the Bulls will always be Ali.
New Jersey wanted only to be allowed into the special world of the Bulls, to show it belonged there.
Charlotte took the single victory at the United Center and pasted it into its book of memories. There is Glen Rice showing his grandchildren the tire tracks on his chest.
The Pacers have celebrated their two victories as if they came with trophies, wasting hugs and wet kisses on ephemera.
Every Bulls challenger is Joe Hardy in “Damn Yankees,” willing to trade everything human for a brief moment of spite.
Who will be the Onion that gets Secretariat, the Upset that gets Man of War?
Time and opportunity are passing, certainly for the Pacers, who now are the most dangerous, not because they have any hope of winning two games from the Bulls, but because they will want to leave scars.
Within the rules, of course.