Smell the fumes. The Bulls might have emptied the tank against Indiana. Is there a filling station between here and Utah? One with retrograde youth on the pump? Are the Jazz a series too far?
More to the point, will the Bulls get the AARP rate at the team hotel?
“We’ll be fighting an uphill battle,” said Michael Jordan, no pun intended. “We’ve got to take care of our energy.”
In bed by 5. Afternoon naps. Early-bird dinners.
Never have the Bulls looked older in victory, never has tomorrow looked so unrelated to yesterday. Never have the Bulls looked so NBA Finals beatable.
“Was the Bulls’ swagger lost in this series?” Jordan asked. “Probably. But no one has taken anything away from us so far.”
The Bulls did not dance Sunday after disposing of the Pacers, did not hoot nor did they holler, barely hugged. More a lean than a hug, actually.
The Bulls exhaled, is what they did, a lot.
When the Pacers, those synthetic jerry-rigs from next door, take the Bulls to the last 5 minutes of a Game 7, the future is not a warm kiss but a hard shove.
When the Bulls have to shoot 20 more shots to make only two more field goals than the Pacers, when the offensive rebound is the highlight, when Toni Kukoc is the difference-maker, the Bulls have entered a strange and unreliable new world.
When doubt is cast from the losing locker room, the grapes are not sour, they are honest grapes.
“I believe the Bulls are more vulnerable,” Indiana point guard Mark Jackson said. “I think they showed it against us and against other teams in these playoffs. They showed it today.”
What is next will not be as easy as what has already passed, and what has passed was piece work in a foundry.
“This was probably the toughest series of my career in playoff games,” Scottie Pippen said. “They gave us all we could handle.”
That is just the point. The Bulls of any of the five championships would have pinched these Pacers’ cheeks, patted them on the head, sent them out for ice cream and made them return the change.
This is the most irregular of the Bulls’ East titles, a survival more than an authentication. The Bulls did not cause fear, they fought it.
They played with raw desperation, not nerveless efficiency, and at what cost?
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“This was about heart,” Jordan said.
It certainly was not about free throws, or hitting open shots, or playing familiar, flowing basketball. This was grunt and grab and throw bodies at bodies, take the blows and miss the free throws.
This was all will and courage and bloodline, maybe part habit as well.
Folks in Utah had to be gleefully cheering every bit of the extra effort it took to get past the Pacers, every minute Jordan was on the floor, every blow he took, every scampering defensive pain given and taken by Pippen, every moping moment Dennis Rodman gave to an effort not even his apathy could wreck.
“Pant, Michael, pant,” they had to be cheering.
“I was tired,” Jordan admitted.
What goodwill was lost by the Bulls by their griping and whining in the series against the Pacers may now be replaced by compassion for a team so clearly and sympathetically mortal.
This would have to be like urging one more tune out of an aging lounge singer, hoping he remembered the words.
Utah, with its sweep over the Lakers, now has to be the bully, with home-court advantage, ready to wear down the tattered and faded Bulls.
“It would have been ideal to sweep the series,” Jordan said. “But when a team is trying to do a thing for the third time, it’s easy to lose focus. The battle you have is really with yourself.
“The expectations are there and maybe you’re a little cocky, maybe you have a little swagger. But you do what you have to and get through it. You lay everything out. If you shoot 38 percent and they shoot 48 percent, you outrebound them, you outwork them. You do what it takes to get where you want to be.
“Now we’re there. Let’s do the job.”
Let’s keep the oxygen handy. Just in case.