Dèjà Vu
It has become a Chicago Bull tradition for assistant coach John Bach to sketch a single spade on the locker-room drawing board after a crucial victory. "The ace of spades is the death card in the military," says Bach, who was a Navy ensign during World War II. "Soldiers would wear it in their helmets in defiance of the Grim Reaper. It's about looking death in the eye and staring it down." In the middle of the spade, Bach usually puts the number of the player most responsible for the Bulls' win. "I used to write number 23"—Michael Jordan's number—"in there an awful lot," Bach says. But last Sunday, after the Bulls had tied their best-of-seven NBA Eastern Conference semifinal series against the New York Knicks at two games apiece with a dominating 95-83 victory, Bach drew a spade with a big black T in the middle. For Team.
That was because the three-time defending champion Bulls not only had avoided the death of their dynasty by squaring the series in Chicago Stadium after the Knicks had won the first two games in New York, but also had reestablished themselves as a unit after an act of astonishing selfishness and immaturity by their supposed leader, forward Scottie Pippen, two nights earlier. In Game 3, with the score tied 102-102 and 1.8 seconds left on the clock, the Bulls called timeout and coach Phil Jackson set up a play designed to give forward Toni Kukoc the last shot. Pippen, miffed that the play hadn't been called for him, refused to go back into the game, waving his hands in disgust and taking a seat near the end of the bench as his teammates headed out onto the floor. Jackson and Pippen exchanged "words I don't think I should repeat," Jackson said later, and Chicago called a second timeout. Bach and forward Horace Grant urged Pippen to reconsider, but still he refused.
The Bulls were lucky that the ball didn't belong to the petulant Pippen because he probably would have taken it and gone home, which would have kept Kukoc from hitting the 23-foot fall-away jumper at the buzzer that gave Chicago a 104-102 win. But even if the Bulls come back to take the series, which was to return to New York for a fifth game on Wednesday night, Pippen's desertion of his teammates in Game 3 is likely to cast a bigger shadow over his career than Jordan ever did. "It wasn't that Phil took me out," Pippen said after his disappearing act. "We exchanged words, and I just took a seat." It won't soon be forgotten that when Chicago most needed Pippen to step up, he chose to sit down.
"I apologized to the team and to Phil Jackson," Pippen said after Game 4. "I don't think I have to apologize to anyone else." At week's end he had offered no further defense or explanation for his actions, but it seemed that his season-long effort to replace the retired Jordan, the constant physical pounding administered by the Knicks and a longtime resentment of rookie Kukoc all came together in one blinding moment and temporarily blocked Pippen's common sense, leaving his ego in control.
On the Bulls' possession before Kukoc's game-winner, Pippen had been forced to dribble out the 24-second clock after trying unsuccessfully to get Kukoc to clear out the side of the court in order to give Pippen more room to maneuver. When Jackson drew up the final play for Kukoc, he added insult to injury, in Pippen's view. "It all became muddled in Scottie's mind, the concept of himself and the concept of the team," Jackson said. "In that instant, he thought he was the team."
Pippen did come back to contribute 25 points, eight rebounds and six assists in Game 4, which shouldn't have been surprising because at any given moment during the first four games there was someone coming back from something—either a huge deficit or team trauma. Both teams averted disaster so often that Bach would have needed to draw a deckful of spades to have had enough to deal one to every deserving player. New York nearly gave away its home-court advantage in both of the first two games before pulling them out with fourth-quarter rallies. And in Game 3 the Knicks dug themselves a 20-point fourth-quarter hole before center Patrick Ewing led them on a furious game-tying surge. With the Pippen scenario unfolding and New York poised to go into overtime with the momentum flowing its way, the Bulls were facing a 3-0 deficit and the end of their run of NBA titles at three. But Kukoc changed all that with his game-winner.
Still, most of the discussion after the game centered on Pippen. And in any other series his lapse in judgment would have been the most compelling story line, but this was the Bulls versus the Knicks. They were meeting in the playoffs for the fourth consecutive year, and over that time their rivalry had become the league's best. In this postseason it grew more richly textured by the game, with incidents both comic and calamitous. The comedy was exemplified by Jackson's decision to take the Bulls on an impromptu, tension-easing cruise on the Staten Island Ferry between Games 1 and 2. The voyage seemed to induce only queasiness in Grant. "If you see anything in the water and it's not a shark or a fish or something, it's my insides," he warned. The calamity was the ugly brawl (page 26) in Game 3 that spilled into the stands and led to a total of $162,500 in fines levied against both teams and the suspensions of New York guard Derek Harper for two games and Chicago guard Jo Jo English for one.
And then there were the rivalry's constantly bubbling themes, including Pippen's simmering resentment of Kukoc, which had begun three years ago when Bull general manager Jerry Krause made the pursuit of the Croatian star a bigger priority than renegotiating Pippen's contract; friction between Jackson and Knick coach Pat Riley; New York's attempt to finally overcome Chicago after having been eliminated from the playoffs by the Bulls the last three years; and, hovering over the entire scene, the ghost of the departed Jordan.
After the first two games of the series, Jackson's diatribes against the Knicks' physical style of play grew more urgent, invoking "flagrant fouls and trips and leg whips and all the other weapons New York employs. We're not going to trip them or beat them up," declared Jackson. "That is not who the Chicago Bulls are. The Chicago Bulls are a basketball team. They're not a mud-wrestling team or a rugby crew or anything else." Most of Jackson's rhetoric was intended to keep the Knicks' reputation for thuggery foremost in the minds of the referees, a tactic to which New York grew accustomed long ago. But what annoys the Knicks is the fact that the elegant Bulls don't consider them worthy successors to their throne, that Chicago looks down its nose at the New York style as coarse and uncivilized. Of course, the Knicks' style is coarse and uncivilized, but Jackson chooses to emphasize that point by casting himself and his team as defenders of all that is good and right about basketball.
Jackson isn't the only coach to complain about New York's roughhouse approach, but he's the only one whose barbs consistently get under Riley's skin—so much so that before the Bulls eliminated the Knicks in Game 6 of last year's conference final, Riley sent a note to the Chicago locker room informing the Bulls that if they won, he wouldn't offer Jackson the traditional end-of-series handshake. Riley's resentment of Chicago is shared by the rest of the Knicks. "I read where Jackson said they played down to our level," said New York guard John Starks after the Knicks won the first two games of this year's series. "We've had a better [regular-season] record than they did two years in a row, and we're up 2-0. Seems to me they would have to play up to our level. It seems like whenever we beat them, they say it's not because of anything we did, it's because of something they didn't do."
New York's victories in the first two games were a result both of what it did and what Chicago failed to do. In each game the Bulls dominated the first three quarters by spreading out their triangle offense a few steps more than usual, moving the ball quickly and taking advantage of their superior quickness with slashes to the basket by Pippen, Kukoc and guard B.J. Armstrong. But in the fourth quarter of Game 1, Chicago lapsed into a stagnant, screen-and-roll offense that the Knicks smothered, while New York forwards Anthony Mason and Charles Oakley dominated the backboards. The Knicks came back from 15 points down for a 90-86 victory.
Mason arrived in the Knick locker room before Game 2 carrying a four-pack of Bruce Lee karate-film videocassettes, explaining that he had taken karate lessons until his mother, Mary, made him stop at age 12 because "she thought my temper was kind of bad." Kukoc was no doubt grateful for that small favor because, as it was, Mason chopped him up badly in Game 2. Mason finished with 15 points and 14 rebounds and, in the fourth quarter, stifled Kukoc on defense. Starks hit a pair of clutch three-pointers—"daggers to the heart," Riley called them—as New York pulled out a 96-91 win in a virtual replay of Game 1.
The sight of Jackson searching in vain for effective minutes at off-guard from Pete Myers, Steve Kerr, John Paxson and English brought back memories of Krause's decision to ignore appeals from Jackson and Pippen and not make a trade for a guard this past winter. Meanwhile, of course, the Knicks were bolstering their lineup by acquiring Harper from the Dallas Mavericks, and the Utah Jazz were picking up Jeff Hornacek from the Philadelphia 76ers. But English engineered a de facto trade in Game 3 that could prove to be pivotal. He and Harper got into a taunting match that turned into a shoving match that wound up with Harper punching and body-slamming English to the floor near a sideline. As a result of the fisticuffs, New York lost its starting point guard and best ball handler for Games 4 and 5, while Chicago had to go only in Game 4 without the little-used English, who hadn't scored in the series and didn't seem likely to. "That's the deal of the century for them," Oakley said.
Indeed, the subtractions paid immediate dividends for the Bulls as the Knicks started Greg Anthony at point guard in Game 4 and were quickly reminded of why they had felt the need to acquire Harper. Chicago threw a variety of defensive looks at New York—"hesitations and staccatos," Bach called them—which led to 21 Knick turnovers, four of them by Anthony, who also missed 11 of his 13 shots and scored only six points in 42 minutes. Just as important, without Harper to get Ewing the ball, Ewing got only 14 shots in 44 frustrating minutes. During one break, he walked over to guard Hubert Davis and said slowly and deliberately, "Throw...me...the...ball," as if he were explaining a very difficult concept.
"They're keeping us from getting the ball into some of the spots on the floor that we want," Riley said of the Bulls' scheme. "But we need to get home and give our fans a chance to do for us what theirs did for them."
The Chicago fans' biggest contribution in Game 4 might have been their reaction to Pippen during the pregame introductions. WILL CHICAGO FORGIVE PIPPEN? asked a Chicago Sun-Times editorial the morning of the game. The crowd's ovation at the sound of Pippen's name, which included only a smattering of barely audible boos, provided the answer.
But the more important question might have been: Will his teammates forgive Pippen? After Game 3 the answer seemed uncertain. Jackson, despite his attempt to appear calm, was livid. In the postgame press conference he brought up the subject of Pippen without prompting and informed the media that Pippen had "asked out of the game." Jackson made no effort to protect Pippen; instead, Jackson left the impression that Pippen didn't want to be on the floor with the game on the line, probably the most damning thing that can be said about any athlete, especially a star of Pippen's Dream Team magnitude. Armstrong said he didn't even notice Pippen wasn't on the floor, which was a slap as well, implying as it did that Pippen's presence isn't meaningful enough to be missed.
But in the afterglow of the Game 4 victory, all was right with Chicago. "If anything, the whole thing might have helped," Kerr said. "There was so much frustration that maybe it was good to have some things brought to the surface. Scottie wanted to be the Man. We just wanted to win the series. But now we all want the same thing."
The Knicks, of course, share that desire as well, and at week's end both teams had a great deal of work to do. The Bulls had to find a way to win in Madison Square Garden, and the rudderless Knicks had to find a way to win without Harper. But Pippen had the toughest task of all because it's easier to come back to win a series than it is to win back a reputation.
PHOTO
JOHN BIEVER
In Game 4, a driving Starks resorted to underhanded measures against a determined Kukoc.
TWO PHOTOS
JOHN BIEVER
In Game 3, when he wasn't sitting, Pippen jumped on New York for 25 points and four assists.
TWO PHOTOS
JOHN BIEVER
After Kukoc's game-winning rainbow went down, he confirmed that he was the No. 1 option.
TWO PHOTOS
JOHN BIEVER
Friday: Riley was too late getting a grip on Harper; Sunday: Fans came helmeted for head-knocking.