With the NBA’s most irregular season about to relinquish its place as a creeping afterthought, we must face the truth: No matter how random and forgettable life after Michael has been, here’s where it gets worse.
This is where the dominion of the Bulls officially, finally and unceremoniously ends. Call them the NBA playoffs if you like, but the Curse of Krause is more appropriate.
The temporary Bulls will long have scattered to wherever they came from by the time they are replaced as champions, unable to take any part in the surrender of a title they defended in wardrobe only.
Anyone who has seen more than 20 minutes of the Age of Floyd the Custodian understands that the Bulls turned on the vacancy sign before breakfast. Whereas the Jordan-Pippen-Jackson Bulls played with abandon, these Bulls simply abandoned play.
Still, on stationery and phone-answering machines and rafter banners, the incumbency endured. Until there is an actual new champion, the Bulls are all the NBA has. In fact, for most of this decade, the Bulls have been it.
It seems there should be more, not just the NBA going on without the Bulls, but there should be some note that, indeed, whatever happens next is not earned but fabricated.
Too bad the NBA does not have a tradition like the Masters of the displaced champion putting a fresh jacket on the new winner. Whoever it is would have to fit into a Jerry Krause garment, size 52 squat, crumbs no extra charge.
Or in tribute to the man who may finally make the Utah Jazz a champion, a page from the Miss America Pageant. Taking one last walk down the runway, with Red Kerr warbling, “There he goes, our ideal.” Krause tries not to blush.
Ah, but just as there was no natural declination of the dynasty, there will be no ceremony to note its passing. On Wednesday the Bulls will lose by 20 to Orlando, flee the building and, if they have any shame at all, leave no forwarding address.
The shame is that Phil Jackson will be there to see it, finally getting his moment of honor. Talk about putting things off to the last minute. Any later and Jackson would have had to take his moment as either a visiting coach or ambassador to Sweden.
It can be argued that had the Bulls returned intact–or together without Dennis Rodman–they still might not have defended their title. This rushed, grab-bag season might have been as unkind to Jordan and the rest as it has to the other veteran bunches, most notably the Knicks and the Rockets and the Sonics.
Not that the Jazz has suffered similarly, and the Jazz is older than anyone. Had the Bulls remained the Bulls, the Finals would very likely have been the same Finals. Lack of practice time was the biggest complaint of all teams that never dipped into the Rodman Experience.
The Bulls would have been veteran and cohesive and familiar and won easily. Even had Jordan retired and Pippen and the rest been reassembled, that would have been enough. Judging the state of basketball, certainly right now the Bulls would be favored to win the East.
This has been basketball out of a suitcase, which most shooters could not hit the side of, by the way, if they had their bag in one hand and the ball in the other.
More Top Picks Best Handheld Shower Heads
This has been the lowest-scoring season since the basket was made of wicker or whatever it was back when Ron Harper first started, the Bulls contributing the most notable evidence of its shabbiness, that 49-point ceiling against the Heat.
Whoever wins the scoring title, Allen Iverson or Shaquille O’Neal, he will have scored fewer points per game than any league leader since Eisenhower was president and there were teams in Ft. Wayne, Rochester and Syracuse.
While 50 games in 90 days might have been cramped and ugly, the results would have been exactly as they are. The best teams are the best teams. All the playoff skirmishing is being done in the bottom half of the draw.
In fact, Pat Riley has seriously suggested making the season 60 games long, spaced out for easier travel and more rest, not that Riley is willing to make up the lost revenue out of his own or Alonzo Mourning’s pocket.
Will the basketball get better in the playoffs? The easy answer is it couldn’t get any worse. But the honest answer is, sure, it always has.
By actual and regrettable calculation, basketball can last another eight weeks, or almost as long as it has lasted so far.
We in Chicago will try to care.