06/14/1992
Twenty-one years ago last Friday, the Bulls won game 6 of the 1992 finals vs the Blazers in Chicago to repeat as champions. Whereas they had breezed through first championship run in 1991, the 1992 playoff run was arguably the toughest overall of any of their six championship runs. They swept a happy-to-be-there Heat team in the first round, but then took seven games to defeat the Knicks in one of the toughest series of the dynasty. In the ECF, the Cavs gave the Bulls some trouble throughout the first four games before the Bulls finished the series strong in its last two games. In the finals, MJ put on a legendary performance to lead the Bulls to victory in game 1, but then the Bulls dropped two of the the next three. After a game five win, they needed just one more win, but here they were, game 6 at home, and they were down 17 points going into the fourth quarter. But then, a big run would be sparked by an unlikely player.
Bobby Hansen only played the one season for us, as a reserve guard, essentially in the role Dennis Hopsen had been in a year before. This was only the ninth game that he had played in in a twenty-two game playoff run, and in those nine games, he only averaged 7.7 minutes per game. But on this night, with the Bulls in a hole and facing a game 7, Hansen hit a three-pointer that sparked a huge run that would lead the team to a come-from-behind victory, and to their second championship. That three-pointer was the only shot he took in the game, but it's a part of Bulls history, because it sparked that run. John Paxson described the 1992 season and playoff run, the road to repeating as champions, as an odyssey, and looking back, you can see what he meant. This particular championship also holds the distinction as being the only one of the six that was won in the Chicago Stadium. The other two that were won in Chicago were won at the UC. It's nice to think that building saw one NBA championship before its life came to an end. The place went wild. I always loved the bit at the end of the "Untouchabulls"(the second championship video), where a few announcers' calls are mixed together:
Marv Albert: "Time running down, the Chicago Bulls, have won, the NBA championship, for the second straight season"(as Pax throws the ball straight up into the rafters)...
Johnny Red-Kerr: "And let the celebration begin here in the Windy City..."
Don't know who the guy is: "Chicago Stadium is going wild as you can image, the BULLS, haaaave repeated!"
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FqkVbO0bUFs[/youtube]
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ul_XO2C816g[/youtube]
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06/14/1998
Fifteen years ago last Friday, the Bulls won game 6 of the 1998 finals vs the Jazz to pull out a near-unheard-of, sixth title in eight years, and close out one of the greatest dynasties in the history of modern sports. I think this was the first finals the Bulls were in where the other team was actually favored by some. The Jazz had home-court advantage, so the series started and ended in Salt Lake City. After splitting the first two games there, the Bulls won the first two of the three games in Chicago, including a historic 96-54 creaming in game 3 that prompted Karl Malone to say, in the post-game presser, "we got our butts beat". In a carbon-copy scenario to 1993, the Bulls had a chance to win the championship at home in game 5, and were unable to do it, as the Jazz forced the series back to Utah with a two-point victory, keeping the series alive by, as Wayne Laravee used to say, the slimmest of margins(well, close to it anyway). Game 6 in Salt Lake City went down to the wire. It was one of MJ's greatest performances. With 45 points, 4 steals, 1 assist, and 1 rebound on 42.9% shooting, he was the team's leading scorer. Toni Kukoc was the second-leading scorer with 15 points, and after that, no one else scored in double digits. Jordan carried the team on his shoulders in this game, it's as simple as that. Right until the end. I don't need to tell anyone how it ended.
If you were writing a film script about the greatest basketball player of all time, playing the last game of the last finals in (what was thought to be) his last season, in the last game of one of the greatest dynasties in modern sports history, you literally couldn't have written it better. You all know what happend but I'll outline it again. Utah had an 83-81 lead with just over a minute left. Jordan drove into the lane and got fouled by Stockton with 59.2 seconds left. He went to the line and hit both free throws to tie the game. Stockton brought the ball of the court, passed it into Malone, and then he ran to the side, across under the basket, and back out behind the arc on the other side, where Malone passed the ball cross-court to him, and Stockton hit the three to give the Jazz a 86-83 lead with 41.9 seconds left. That was their last FG of the game. Pippen inbounded the ball to Jordan, who drives into the lane on Bryon Russell and lays it in to bring the Bulls within one point, 86-85, with 37.1 seconds left. Stockton brought it up the court again, passed it into Malone, and Malone was doubled. Jordan stripped the ball from behind with roughly 21 seconds left, brought it up the court, stalled behind the arc with about 17 seconds left, dribbled the clock down to about 9 seconds, and then drives inside the arc, and hits the shot from above the free throw line to give the Bulls an 87-86 lead with 5.2 seconds left. The ball is inbounded to Stockton, who takes a three that misses, and the game is over.
It was a great moment, especially since everyone in their hearts kind of knew it was over. In 1997, 'will they come back' was actually a question, in 1998, it was more of a hope beyond hope.
As an aside, everyone should read/watch/listen to Bob Costas's closing remarks of that telecast. He said some really eloquent things about the dynasty ending, MJ, and the future makeup of sports teams(about which he was kind of prescient):
"Well, for Bulls fans, there is of course cause for celebration tonight, after a sixth championship that came harder than the others, but there's some anxiousness mixed in as well. Who knows how all of this will play out, but it's certainly possible that tonight we have seen the last of the Chicago Bulls as we have known them, and whether it ends here or sometime in the near future, it'll be noteworthy not just for the breakup of one of the great teams in sports history, but because given the present structure of pro sports, it may be quite a while before we see anything like this again. All the organizations that have the resources, the Yankees, the Braves, the Cowboys, the Lakers in the NBA, will almost always field contending teams, but the days of continuity may be ending. Even on the best teams, there's now so much turnover, that it's becoming ever-harder to follow and identify with teams. Loyalty has been fragmented. Which brings us to an underappreciated aspect of this golden era in the NBA. It hasn't just been Bird, Magic, and Michael. It was the whole recognizable cast of characters around them that gave the Celtics, the Lakers, and the Bulls their texture, and made following them all the more interesting. Even the Jazz, noble runners-up two years in a row, are personified by the longest-tenured coach in the league, and two hall-of-famers who have been teammates for well over a decade. We'll see championship teams in the future, but will we see teams that endure in this way?
And as for Michael Jordan, all the superlatives have been exhausted and almost all apply, but perhaps the most important one is this: he's authentic. His essence is so much deeper than image, in fact the images is, in his case, an amplification of something true and substantive. Take all the money, all the adulation, all the TV cameras away, and put Michael Jordan in a gym somewhere with Russell and Oscar, West and the Doctor, and he'd be as genuine and as much in his element as any of them, his heart and his athletic integrity every bit as impressive as his artistry. So whenever it ends, it's been an incredible ride for Michael Jordan and the Bulls, and we at NBC have been privileged to be taken along for that ride. So as we say goodnight, we'd like to acknowledge the work of all the people who made these telecasts possible. For everyone at NBC Sports, goodnight, from Salt Lake City."
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BsI0L9Yl3jY[/youtube]
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iEVeoJPb0-k[/youtube]
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A0BR6uoIIBE[/youtube]
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06/16/1996
Seventeen years ago this past Sunday, the Bulls won game 6 of the 1996 finals vs the Supersonics to win their fourth championship and re-claim the throne after a two-year absence. The Bulls had been utterly dominant that season, winning a league-record 72 games in the regular season, and then going 11-1 en route to the finals, including a five-game win in the last of the legendary Bulls-Knicks playoff series of the 90s(although this one wasn't nearly as contentious, physical, difficult, and close as the three that had preceded it in 1992, 1993, and 1994), and a sweep of the Magic team that had defeated them the year before. Their dominance continued as they won the first three games of the finals in more-than-convincing fashion, including a 107-90 17-point blowout at the UC in game 1, and a 108-86 22-point blowout in game 3 in Seattle(game 2 was a closer 4-point 92-88 win in Chicago), taking a seemingly insurmountable 3-0 series lead. Everybody expected a sweep. And then the Sonics won games 4 and 5 in Seattle, 107-86 and 89-78, a 21-point blowout and an 11-point loss. Everybody was surprised. Nobody understood how this dominant team could drop two games in a row. Why couldn't they close the Sonics out? I remember people even speculating the Bulls threw the games on purpose so that they could win it in Chicago. Which they did(win at home). Game 6 was easily the least exciting of the six championship games; 1993, 1997, and 1998 were nail-biters, 1992 required a big fourth quarter comeback, and 1991 was the first time, so even if there was nothing else exciting about it(there was), it would've been exciting for that reason alone. But in this game 6, the Bulls were in control the whole time, and they won the game by twelve points. That doesn't mean it wasn't exciting - any time your favorite team wins a championship it's exciting- it just means, as basketball games go, it was the least exciting of the six.
But for Michael Jordan, it was probably the most emotional one other than the first. He had walked away from the game three years earlier, burnt out, unmotivated, and mourning his father's murder. After an eighteen-month absence, he returned to the Bulls in March of 1995, and they went on a 13-4 run to finish the 94-95 season, defeating the Hornets in four games in the first round of the playoffs, but then falling to former Bull Horace Grant and the Magic in six games in the second round, with Jordan being perceived as 'rusty' after making some key mistakes in the first game of the series. That offseason, he played regular pickup games with other NBA players on a studio lot while he was filming Space Jam. He came back ready-to-go, and with him back at 100% and the newly acquired Dennis Rodman in the fold, the Bulls took off out of the gate and had their record-breaking season. Now, on Father's day 1996, three years after his father and he had talked about him leaving the game, and after his father's murder, Jordan had completed a journey, leaving the game, mourning, playing baseball, coming back, and working his way back to a championship. When the buzzer sounded, he went back to the locker room, fell on the floor, and cried. The second three-peat had started.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HAHdrdEmO90[/youtube]
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nojFS8NWlHY[/youtube]
