Guarantees have been not only unnecessary during the glory years of the Bulls, but indelicate. Promise and expectation have been secret lovers, holding hands in private.
So, when a guarantee comes, it feels like you have just opened the wrong door.
“We are going to win Game 7,” said Michael Jordan. “We will win Game 7.”
Maybe that’s a double promise. Maybe that’s one for us and one for himself. Maybe one for the rest of the Bulls, one for the Pacers.
Not since the beginning of their title inventory have the Bulls with Jordan been this close to the precipice, facing a single game that means everything.
“This is why you play these seasons,” said Phil Jackson, “so that if you need the home court for a Game 7, you have the home court.”
This is the same home court the Bulls were griping about before, the one with all the traffic, with the tight rims, with the poor shooting background. Ah, but they love it now. They have to love it now.
“This is fantastic,” Reggie Miller said. “One game, the chance to move to the finals against the the best team. This is great.”
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At least somebody is happy. Once again the Bulls leave Market Square Arena, not only losers, but sore losers, convinced they have been jobbed, this time by an old accomplice, referee Hue Hollins.
This time it was not a foul on Scottie Pippen, as it was against the Knicks those several years ago, but an illegal defense on Pippen.
“He always seems to put the spotlight on me,” Pippen said.
Anyone who actually can detect which defense is legal or illegal has been watching too much basketball, so when Jackson asks the press to verify the call, he might as well be asking a supermodel to recite the periodic table.
“You saw it,” Jackson said. “It changed the direction of the ballgame. I’ve never seen that call made and we paid a major consequence for it.”
Similar sentiments were expressed on the call by Hollins that still lives in Bulls’ infamy. The call is never made. Doesn’t mean the call was wrong.
And then there was the call that wasn’t made. The last Bulls’ chance ended with Jordan sprawled face first on the floor without the ball.
“The referees swallowed their whistles on that last call,” Jackson said.
“I had a clear path to the basket,” Jordan said, “and then I was falling down. People may think I tripped over my own feet, but I’m not that clumsy.”
How about a different interpretation of all of this? Maybe this is just all some devilish plan by the Bulls, extending this playoff series with the nuisance Pacers to a seventh game. Only the Bulls would be audacious enough to try it.
Make Utah squirm.
Sure. By the time the Bulls get to Utah, the Jazz will have atrophied like dried fruit.
The Jazz will have to change their name to the Salt Lake Prunes.
Already word has arrived from the Wasatch that the Utah Jazz have been jaking it, feet up, bellies full, all of that, killing time and picnic ants waiting for the Bulls to dust the Pacers.
Supposedly, this has so incensed their coach, the hard-nostriled Jerry Sloan, that he has had the whole bunch of them running up the Olympic luge run, carrying each other on their backs.
Where another coach would see rust, Sloan sees bed sores.
Complacency be gone. No slackers allowed when the Bulls are coming.
This ain’t Shaquille O’Neal stepping off the visitors’ bus.
Who will it be? That will be decided Sunday at the United Center. And even if it were to be the Pacers–and there are two chances of that, fat and none–the Jazz should take the extra time to practice hiding their disappointment, like preparing for royalty and getting in-laws.
Put the good china away, it’s only Reggie.
Revenge is a purer motive than bewilderment, which would have to be the reaction to looking across the lobby and seeing Larry Bird in a necktie.
The Jazz have waited so long for redemption, anyone but Michael Jordan showing up may have to bring a certified copy of the Bulls’ last will and testament.
“You get frustrated, you get angry,” Jordan said. “You just have to laugh and let it go. What do you do? You play the next game like there is no tomorrow.”
After Sunday there will be a Monday, and there will be no need to think about the Pacers again. Like the lawn bag at the curb, you only notice it until it is gone.
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Michael has guaranteed it.