So it’s supposed to be over for the Bulls, who are down 3-0 to the Detroit Pistons in their Eastern Conference semifinal with Game 4 Sunday at the United Center.
Was it over, as John Belushi once famously said, when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor? No!
Sheed! He’s ours! C-Webb! Done! TP! Man, the guy’s nickname is toilet paper! Chauncey! You’re respecting a man named Chauncey? Rip? Rip this!
It’s time for the Bulls to do it!
Of course, if they are unable to do it and the parade fantasy ends up in some ugly crash, either a sweep here Sunday or an elimination Tuesday in Auburn Hills, is all lost?
Actually, it’s just the beginning.
After all, how would you feel now if you are the Miami Heat with Shaquille O’Neal and Dwyane Wade, the defending NBA champion, and you couldn’t even win one game against the Bulls? No, this is how teams are built.
Perhaps we’re not seeing Bulls-Pistons circa 1991, or even 1990. Maybe it’s more like 1988 when the Bulls were fortunate to beat the Pistons once in five games in the conference semifinals and lost their home games by an average of more than 20 points per game.
And that was with Michael Jordan, when he was the NBA’s MVP, and Scottie Pippen and Horace Grant were rookies.
Who, exactly, on this Bulls team is Jordan? Now, as we know, Jordan has evolved from icon to urban legend.
To read about him now is as if he never missed a game-winning shot or lost a big game. It’s really all he did for years growing up with the Bulls. But I remember Jordan after those losses, and he always pointed out one thing.
Jordan in his farewell comments for the season always would say he looked for one thing: Did the team advance from where it was before? Was it getting better? It always did, and he said he could live with that.
There’s this notion, though, especially because of the short memories of Jordan’s losses and failures, that if a team doesn’t win a championship, it’s a disappointment.
“You have to look at expectations at the beginning of the year, where you might be, and deal with that and not where you are at the end of the year,” said Pistons coach Flip Saunders, who fought towering expectations with Kevin Garnett in Minnesota. “Chicago, no matter what [happens], has had a great year with the young players they developed. A team that hadn’t won a playoff series beat the world champs, and in the second half played as well as anybody in the league.”
Sure, that’s the stuff coaches say when it appears they are about to win a playoff series. But it’s not like the Pistons weren’t who we thought they were and we let them off the hook.
Winning in pro sports isn’t about magic. It’s about development, a path and a plan, like the Bulls were on for seven years after they got Jordan.
More Top Picks Best Laptops For College Students
The Bulls won 49 games in the regular season, the most since 1997-98 and more than Tim Floyd’s first three seasons combined with the Bulls. They advanced to the second round of the playoffs and won a playoff game on the road, both for the first time since 1998.
After two first-round eliminations, the last one to the Heat, the Bulls came back and beat the Heat, albeit a weakened, disinterested version.
That’s called progress.
It’s what building is all about.
There will be a lot of looking back to the last game of the regular season in New Jersey, in which a victory would have put the Bulls in the same bracket where Cleveland is having a boring walk to the conference finals. But would that have helped the Bulls?
Yes, everyone could have celebrated for a month and likened Luol Deng, Kirk Hinrich and Ben Gordon to Larry Bird, Kevin McHale and Robert Parish. But it would have been fool’s gold.
Cleveland isn’t a very good team, and is about to find that out soon. The Pistons have done the Bulls something of a favor by revealing the weaknesses everyone knew existed but were obscured by a lazy weekend in the tropics.
The Bulls are too small; they need some interior scoring, perhaps a big-time scorer. Gordon struggles against size, Deng isn’t quite a high flier, Hinrich isn’t the greatest decision-maker, Ben Wallace doesn’t need to be guarded. The rookies are, well, rookies. The depth is fragile, especially with the injury that’s bothering Andres Nocioni. Wallace helps, but he needs scorers around him.
But, hey, Tyson Chandler and Eddy Curry didn’t make the playoffs. Elton Brand missed again. And Ron Artest and Brad Miller are in Sacramento.
Still, the Bulls, to many, have had the look of a team good enough to compete with the best. They have players with value and a high draft pick. And they have taken another step this season.
Jordan would understand and accept that.
———-