Part 16 (1/2)
I was worried that they might get drunk on winning and run out of steam before we reached the playoffs. I considered slowing down the pace, but nothing seemed to stop this juggernaut. Not even injuries. Rodman injured his calf early in the season and was out for twelve games. During that time we were 10-2. Then in March Scottie missed five games with an injury, while Dennis reverted to his old ways and got suspended for six games for head-b.u.t.ting a ref and defaming the commissioner and head of officials. Still, we lost only one game during that period.
As we approached the seventy-game mark, the media hype was out of control. ABC News reporter Chris Wallace dubbed the team ”the Beatles of basketball” and designated Michael, Scottie, Dennis, and me as the new Fab Four. The day of the big game-against the Bucks-TV helicopters shadowed our team bus all the way to Milwaukee, with crowds ma.s.sed at the overpa.s.ses on the interstate holding up signs of support. When we arrived at the Bucks' stadium, a crush of fans was gathered outside hoping to get a peek at Rodman's hair.
Naturally, we had to make the game dramatic. We were so wound up by the time the game started that we fell apart in the second quarter, hitting only 5 of 21 from the field for 12 points. But then we slowly clawed our way back in the second half and won in the final seconds, 8680.
The main emotion we felt was relief. ”It was a very ugly game, but sometimes ugly is beautiful,” said Michael. But his mind was already on the future. ”We didn't start out the season to win 70 games,'” he added. ”We started out the season to win the champions.h.i.+p and that's still our motivation.”
We finished the season with two more wins, and Harper came up with a new Gershwinesque team slogan, ”72 and 10 don't mean a thing without the ring.” To inspire the players, I adapted a quote from Walt Whitman and taped it on their lockers before the first game of the playoffs, against the Miami Heat. ”Henceforth we seek not good fortune, we are ourselves good fortune.” Everyone expected us to dance our way to the champions.h.i.+p, and those are always the hardest kinds of games to win. I wanted the players to know that despite our remarkable season, the rest of the way wasn't going to be easy. They would have to make their own luck.
And they did. We swept Miami and rolled over New York in five games. Next up was Orlando. To prep the players for the series, I spliced a few clips from Pulp Fiction into the game tapes. The players' favorite scene showed a seasoned criminal, played by Harvey Keitel, instructing two hit men (Samuel L. Jackson and John Travolta) on how to clean up a particularly gruesome murder scene. Midway through the proceedings he quips, ”Let's not start sucking each other's d.i.c.ks quite yet.”
Ever since we were humiliated by the Magic in the 1995 playoffs, we had set our sights on a rematch. In fact, we had rebuilt the team primarily with Orlando in mind. But the first game was anticlimactic. Our defense was just too overpowering. Dennis held Horace Grant to no points and 1 rebound in the first part of the game. Then Horace hyperextended his elbow in a collision with Shaq and was out for the rest of the series. We also shut down two other players who had hurt us badly the year before: Dennis Scott (0 points) and Nick Anderson (2). We ended up winning 12183.
The Magic rebounded in game 2, but we broke their spirit when we erased an 18-point deficit in the third period and went on to win. They were also crippled by injuries to Anderson (wrist), Brian Shaw (neck), and Jon Koncak (knee). The only Magic players who posed any kind of scoring threat were Shaquille O'Neal and Penny Hardaway, but that wasn't enough. The series ended, appropriately, with a 45-point scoring blitz by Michael in game 4 on the way to four-game sweep.
The odds against our next rival, the Seattle SuperSonics, winning the champions.h.i.+p finals were nine to one. But they were a young, talented team that had won sixty-four games that season and could give us trouble with their out-of-the-box pressure defense. The key was to stop their stars, point guard Gary Payton and power forward Shawn Kemp, from building up momentum and outrunning us. I decided to put Longley on Kemp to capitalize on Luc's size and strength, and I gave Harper the a.s.signment of covering Payton.
At first it looked as if the series might be over early. We won the first two games in Chicago, buoyed by our defense and Rodman's 20 rebounds in game 2, during which he also tied an NBA finals record with 11 offensive boards. But Harper reinjured his knee that night and had to sit out most of the next three games. Luckily, the Sonics made a tactical error after game 2, flying back to Seattle Friday night after the game rather than waiting, as we did, until Sat.u.r.day morning to take a more leisurely flight. The Sonics still looked bleary-eyed on Sunday afternoon, and we were able to put them away 10886.
At that point the debate over whether the Bulls were the greatest team ever became pretty intense. I ignored most of the chatter, but I was pleased when former Portland Trail Blazers coach Jack Ramsay said the Bulls had the kind of defense that ”defies a period of time.” In my view, the team the Bulls most closely resembled was the 197273 New York Knicks. Like the Bulls, that Knicks team was made up largely of newcomers. The players were very professional and liked playing together, but they didn't spend a lot of time together off the court. I told the Bulls early in the year that as long as they kept their professional lives together, it didn't matter to me what they did with the rest of their time. These players weren't that close, but they weren't that distant either. Most important, they had a deep respect for one another.
Unfortunately the basketball G.o.ds weren't cooperating. With Harper injured, it was harder for us to contain the Sonics' attack, and we lost the next two games. Still leading the series, 32, we returned to Chicago determined to close out the finals in game 6. The game was scheduled for Father's Day, which was an emotional time for Michael, and his offensive game suffered as a result. But our defense was insurmountable. Harper returned for the game and closed down Payton, and Michael did a brilliant job of holding Hersey Hawkins to a mere 4 points. The player who stole the game, however, was Dennis, with 19 rebounds and a lot of key put-backs on missed shots. At one point late in the fourth quarter, Dennis fed Michael for a backdoor cut that put the Bulls up 6447 with 6:40 left. After the shot, Michael observed Dennis skipping downcourt, and they both erupted with laughter.
When the buzzer sounded, Michael gave Scottie and me a quick hug, darted to center court to grab the ball, then retreated to the locker room to get away from the TV cameras. When I got there, he was curled up on the floor hugging the ball to his chest, tears streaming down his face.
Michael dedicated the game to his father. ”This is probably the hardest time for me to play the game of basketball,” he said. ”I had a lot of things on my heart, on my mind... . And maybe my heart wasn't geared to where it was. But I think deep down inside, it was geared to what was most important to me, which was my family and my father not being here to see this. I'm just happy that the team kind of pulled me through it because it was a tough time for me.”
That was a poignant moment. But when I look back on that season, it's not the finale that stands out in my mind. It's a game we lost to the Nuggets in February that ended our eighteen-game winning streak. They call that kind of game a ”bookie's dream” because we had flown to Denver from L.A. the day before and hadn't had time to adjust to the alt.i.tude change.
The Nuggets were a sub-.500 team, but they shot 68 percent in the first quarter and built up a surprising 31-point lead. Many teams would have rolled over at that point, but we refused to surrender. We did everything: We went big, we went small, we moved the ball, we shot threes, we sped up the tempo, we slowed it down, and midway through the fourth quarter we went ahead on a pirouetting breakaway dunk by Scottie Pippen. Michael led the comeback, scoring 22 points in the third quarter, but this wasn't a one-man show. It was an inspiring act of perseverance by everyone on the team. And even though we lost in the closing seconds, 10599, the players walked away feeling they had learned something important about themselves. They learned that, no matter how dire the situation, they would find the courage somehow to battle to the very end.
That night the Bulls found their heart.
CHAPTER 12
AS THE WORM TURNS
To dare is to lose one's footing momentarily. Not to dare is to lose oneself.
SREN KIERKEGAARD
Zen teacher Lewis Richmond tells the story of hearing Shunryu Suzuki sum up Buddhism in two words. Suzuki had just finished giving a talk to a group of Zen students when someone in the audience said, ”You've been talking about Buddhism for nearly an hour, and I haven't been able to understand a thing you said. Could you say one thing about Buddhism I can understand?”
After the laughter died down, Suzuki replied calmly, ”Everything changes.”
Those words, Suzuki said, contain the basic truth of existence: Everything is always in flux. Until you accept this, you won't be able to find true equanimity. But to do that means accepting life as it is, not just what you consider the ”good parts.” ”That things change is the reason why you suffer in this world and become discouraged,” Suzuki-ros.h.i.+ writes in Not Always So: Practicing the True Spirit of Zen. ”[But] when you change your understanding and your way of living, then you can completely enjoy your new life in each moment. The evanescence of things is the reason you enjoy your life.”