5/19 v. Detroit; 5/21 v. Detroit; 5/25 at Detroit; 5/27 at Detroit; 5/29 v. Detroit*; 5/31 at Detroit*; 6/2 v. Detroit*
*lf necessary.
MARK AGUIRRE, WHO GREW UP JUST BLOCKS WEST OF THE Chicago Stadium, had just hit a three-point field goal from downtown to give the Pistons a 59–58 lead in the third quarter, and Aguirre was having the convulsions of a madman.
“Get someone on me,” he screamed at Jordan. “Nobody can guard me. Get someone on me.”
No one really could that day. It was Game 1 of the Eastern Conference finals and the Bulls had gotten their wish: They were playing the defending champion Pistons. On Friday the Pistons had struggled past the Boston Celtics; this day, Sunday, was the date with destiny the Bulls had longed for all season.
The Pistons appeared on the verge of stealing the home-court advantage in the Chicago Stadium and sending the Bulls to another ignominious defeat. The Bulls had blown out to a 20–8 lead in front of a roaring crowd, but Aguirre came off the bench hot, getting 13 points in the first half and another 10 in the third quarter. The Pistons had regained some control in the second quarter, trailed by 8 at halftime, and then took the lead in the third quarter. And the Pistons were doing it as they always had: through intimidation.
The Bulls had, for years, been beaten and beaten up by the Pistons. When the emotional Doug Collins was coach, the Bulls often played directly into Detroit’s claws—Collins once got involved in a fight and was tossed over a table by then-Piston Rick Mahorn, who smiled. Collins and the Bulls raged and lost. The Bulls, in those years, were living the emotional life of drug addicts; the highs, from wins, were exhilarating and impassioned, the losses so depressing and verging on the suicidal.
But Jackson’s message all year was not that the Bulls shouldn’t be emotional, nor that they should turn the other cheek. In fact, going into the Detroit series, Jackson had counseled the team to strike the first blow, not to allow the Pistons to hit them with three or four elbows every time they crossed the lane. Strike first, Jackson said; let strength grow out of weakness. But he also knew that his players needed to remain composed.
And, surprisingly, they would throughout the series.
“Phil taught us how to respond to Detroit’s aggressive nature,” John Paxson would say after the Bulls victory. “It’s something we never had before.”
And the Bulls were learning well. Jordan, of all people, took on the unfamiliar role of enforcer. In the early moments of the game, he popped Joe Dumars with a vicious elbow, a flagrant one really, to the chest, knocking Dumars down in front of the Pistons’ bench. There would be no call. The Bulls also felt the league was sending another message: that it was going to let teams retaliate against the Pistons.
Pippen found himself being challenged, too. “You’re dead, Pippen, you’re dead,” Aguirre yelled at him. “I’m getting you in the parking lot after the game. Don’t turn your head, you cocksucker, because I’m gonna kill you. You’re fuckin’ dead. Dead, Pippen, you’re fuckin’ dead.” The monologue continued almost all game.
“It actually got kind of funny,” Paxson would say afterward. “Aguirre was calling Scottie into the parking lot all game and Scottie was just laughing.”
Laughing in the face of this kind of pressure was a new experience for the Bulls. It showed maturity, especially on the part of Pippen, who had surprised the coaches with his seriousness. He was watching game tapes now for the first time in his career. He was working hard in the gym and in games; on defense he was now less like a matador, with a wave and an ole, and more like a bull. He made a steal, one of his six in the game, and hit a jumper to give the Bulls a lead in the third quarter, but Isiah Thomas tied the game with a three-point field goal. Pippen would be fouled and hit a pair of free throws to get the Bulls the lead back, 68–65, after three quarters, but a Bulls win was by no means assured. And Jackson intended to stick with his plan, resting both Pippen and Jordan to open the fourth quarter; both had played virtually the entire third quarter, and Jackson didn’t believe Detroit was capable of putting the game away in the next few minutes.
The Pistons clearly were tired from their Game 6 overtime victory over Boston less than two days earlier. Their weary starting five would combine for just 37 points in Game 1 as Aguirre would lead with 25 points off the bench while Vinnie Johnson came in and scored 21.
The Bulls reserves had performed reasonably well in the New York and Philadelphia series, but they had never done well against the Pistons. As he always does, Bach had put together an edited tape before the Detroit series on specific players. He had focused on the reserves and showed the tape to Jackson before the series started. It was horrific: missed shot after missed shot, rebounds dropped, turnovers, belly flops. Jackson had known the reserves had performed badly against Detroit, particularly remembering an 0–15 shooting run in an earlier game that season, but it hadn’t seemed this bad.
“John, did you just pick their bad plays?” he asked Bach.
“No,” Bach replied. “I tried to make it their highlights.”
“We won’t show it to them,” Jackson decided.
The reserves would provide their own highlight film today. They entered the game and all of a sudden the Bulls led by 9 points, 81–72. B.J. Armstrong hit a couple of free throws and Craig Hodges a long jumper and later a three-pointer. Will Perdue hit a short jumper and Cliff Levingston a short jumper and a tip-in. They combined to hit 5 of 7 shots; the Pistons would miss 4 of 7 and the game would slip away, with the Bulls going on to win 94–83.
“The key to the game was when we took that nine-point lead,” Jackson would agree later.
And a surprising key would be Levingston, the lost man. He’d played a little against New York and Philadelphia and was feeling he was done for the playoffs, if not also done with the Bulls. “I figured when I didn’t get in against the Seventy-sixers, and those guys don’t even box out, that was it,” Levingston had admitted to a friend before the Detroit series began. But Jackson’s methods are both sensible and instinctive. Jackson usually sits for a while at home on game days, trying to visualize what will happen in the game. He saw Levingston as someone aggressive and willing to match blows with Detroit, since he had played with the Pistons years before and had endured several physical series with them when he was with the Hawks. Jackson wasn’t sure what the result would be, but he felt the enthusiastic Levingston could give the team the kind of emotional and physical lift it needed.
Jordan and Pippen returned to the game with just over six minutes left and Detroit would never get closer than 7 points.
It would not be a brilliant game for Jordan offensively, but it may have marked a turning point for the Bulls franchise. Jordan had led the Bulls with 22, but was just 6 of 15 from the field with a game-high 6 turnovers.
After the game, he slumped into his seat in front of his locker and said, aloud, “Thanks for picking me up.”
No one said anything.
Afterward, Jordan dressed quietly and went to the mass interview session, the national media crowd now growing in anticipation of the Pistons’ being dethroned. Jordan’s comments there were a little less gracious.
“You have to give credit to my supporting cast,” Jordan said about Pippen coming up with 18, Bill Cartwright 16, and 30 points from the bench. “I basically had a bad game today,” Jordan added. “Maybe I had a headache.”
Jordan’s remarks seemed curious to some, insensitive to many. He seemed to be making sure the spotlight would shine on him, no matter what his effort. But it was not surprising to those around the team. He had taken shots at Pippen before, in part out of resentment and in part to motivate the kid some were calling “the Air apparent.” And Jordan had started in recent weeks to call the rest of the team “my supporting cast.”
“I wish I hadn’t used that phrase,” he told a friend later, “but, hell, everyone thinks that way, so why not?”
It had been an uncharacteristically emotional game for Jordan. He had always been a quiet player, not particularly animated on the court, except for his slams. He liked to joke with players sometimes, but he always preferred to lead through his play. He often backed away from the traditional leadership role, and while he remained the team leader in the public’s mind, he rarely spoke with his teammates other than to taunt them with his rapier wit.
But on this day he was in a curious emotional frenzy. There was that flagrant elbow early on that had even caught the referees by surprise, and late in the second quarter Jordan found himself jawing halfway down the court with Dennis Rodman.
“We’re gonna kick your butts,” Jordan bellowed into Rodman’s face. “I’m comin’ after you.”
Jordan’s reactions surprised even him, but he had been unusually somber leading up to the series and had told friends he was determined to defeat Detroit this time.
“We’re not winning any title,” he said. “But I want to get by Detroit this time.”
Even Jordan’s teammates had never seen him rise up in this sort of volcanic fury, and the coaches, though unprepared for it, were pleased. They believed Jordan was behaving the way he was, in part, to embolden Pippen and Grant.
“Is he trying to make Horace braver?” Bach said. “Is he trying to make Scottie more confident? Sure. He’s trying to make these guys better, but also braver. That’s the difference in playing Detroit.”
The Bulls believed a year ago they were more talented than the Pistons, but were not sure they were better.
“They knew we were more talented than they were a year ago,” said Armstrong. “But they also knew they could beat us. This year, they talked and we talked, they hit and we hit. The big thing about the game was we answered some questions about ourselves.”
The respite between Games 1 and 2 would be brief, just a day, before the May 21 second game. Then the teams would wait four days, until Saturday May 25, Memorial Day weekend in Detroit. The TV networks chose the dates for playoff games to accommodate their schedules, and while players and coaches groused a little, Jackson tried to put the situation in perspective for the team.
“That’s why you guys are earning as much money as you are,” he said.
John Paxson wondered if that meant his games were being televised on local cable access. But things were looking up; Paxson was starting to believe he might be back, and unbeknownst to him, Reinsdorf had been thinking the same way with Kukoc now out of the picture.
“1 always felt we hurt the White Sox when we let Jerry Koosman go,” Reinsdorf told an associate. “There are these kind of chemistry-type guys who you just need around. I think Paxson may be one.”
All of this led to an entertaining conversation with Cartwright, also a free agent. Cartwright had been telling Paxson about his experiences as a free agent when he was with the Knicks, and he said that if Paxson could get an offer in Chicago he probably was better off staying, for Cartwright was now also leaning that way.
Cartwright had had five successful seasons in New York, making the All-Star team as a rookie, and there had been some demand for his services, since centers remained a rare commodity. He was a restricted free agent, which meant the Knicks could match any offer made to him. But Cartwright thought he would test the market.
Cartwright, along with his agent, Bob Woolf, and an old friend and adviser, Dan Risley, went to meet with the Dallas Mavericks. The Mavericks prided themselves on their committee approach to personnel matters, so general manager Norm Sonju, basketball operations director Rick Sund, and owner Don Carter were there.
Carter, an iconoclastic owner, a garrulous man with a deeply religious side, spoke. Everyone else listened. For fifteen minutes Carter went on about the evils of free agency. He said his team would never sign a free agent, that it wasn’t right for a man to sell his services like that, like a vagabond or prostitute, to the highest bidder. It wouldn’t be done in a Don Carter organization. Free agency was going to kill sports and he wasn’t going to have it. His voice rose and trembled. Finally he stopped and stared at Cartwright. No one but Carter had said a word the entire time.
“Son,” Carter said to Cartwright, “do you love your mother?”
“Sure,” Cartwright responded.
“Are you faithful to your wife?” Carter asked.
“Yes,” Cartwright said, now beginning to wonder just what was going on.
“Do you believe in God?” Carter demanded. He stared into Cartwright’s lazy, liquid brown eyes.
“Yes,” Cartwright said.
Carter thought for a few moments. Then he turned to Sonju, said, “Sign him,” and got up and left the room.
“You’ve got to be ready for free agency,” Cartwright said. “It’s crazy.”
Both Jordan and Jackson had work to do between Games 1 and 2. For Jordan, it was a chance to expand his realm, as the league announced that he had won the Most Valuable Player award for the second time in his career. For Jackson, the effort was to limit Jordan’s world and expand that of Jordan’s teammates. Jackson was proud of Jordan’s aggressive play in Game 1 as a signal to his teammates, but Jackson was also worried about some of Jordan’s choices on offense. Paxson had gotten just 5 shots in Game 1 and Grant, 2. The distribution had to be better.
So Jackson put together a tape of Jordan, focusing on his choices when in the post and where his teammates were. Jackson remained subtle with Jordan, but the message was clear: Don’t fight the double- and triple-teams. Pass out of them.
Jordan went to accept his MVP trophy Monday May 20 and took the occasion to both praise his teammates and bash the media about its voting for such awards in what some saw as an I-should-have-won-this-every-year vein. Jordan addressed the long-held belief that he doesn’t make his teammates better, one reason given for why he didn’t win the MVP award more often. “I’m no baby-sitter,” he said sharply. “You’ve got to step up and get your own respect. They’ve got to want to play better.” Brilliance could truly be a curse sometimes.
But Jordan dropped that angry edge and called for his teammates when NBA commissioner David Stern offered another MVP presentation at halfcourt before Game 2. Jordan seemed overcome by the moment, the loud ovation washing down on him while he was surrounded by his teammates. He was in the spotlight, which was fine with Jackson, but the coach knew it had to widen.
And one of those Jackson knew needed to see more light, reflected or refracted, was Horace Grant.
Grant had taken 2 shots in Game 1. He’d hit them both, but both were lay-ups. Grant had often complained during the season about his lack of participation in the offense, but the coaches noticed that Grant was starting to avoid the medium-range jumpers that were an important part of his game.
At home, David Orth was shaking his head and saying to himself, “I told you so.”
Orth is the Bulls’ ophthalmologist. Before the season began, he had fitted Grant with prescription goggles. Grant’s vision was terrible; Bach had noticed that Grant would read a newspaper an inch or two from his nose, so he suggested Grant get an eye test. It turned out that Grant needed glasses to drive a car. He had tried contacts once in college, but had rejected them. He couldn’t stand putting something in his eyes. It made his skin crawl. But he’d try the goggles. And they seemed to work. Grant developed more range on his jumper and shot a career-best 54.7 percent in 1990–91. But in the series against the Knicks, Grant discarded the goggles after Charles Oakley kept pulling them off when the officials weren’t looking.
Grant shot an air ball in his first field-goal attempt against the 76ers in round two of the playoffs. Orth began to keep score. Grant missed 8 jumpers beyond fifteen feet at one point, although he would shoot a respectable 54 percent against the 76ers without the corrective lenses and almost 70 percent against Detroit. There didn’t seem to be a need to change. But Orth thought otherwise.
“Without the glasses he has zero depth perception,” Orth complained to Reinsdorf. “But the big concern is when he’s under stress and the game’s on the line. He’s not going to be at maximum efficiency. He’s been shooting a basketball long enough, so he can pick out a landmark and make a lot of shots. He might make ten or fifteen in a row in practice, but when he’s under stress and pressure he won’t have that maximum vision.”
Orth went public with his observations and Krause went into fits, calling the doctor and berating him. But Orth believed the point had to be made. Reinsdorf agreed. Before Game 1 against the Pistons, Reinsdorf made a rare appearance in Jackson’s office in the Bulls’ locker room. “We’ve got to do something to get Horace to begin wearing his glasses,” he told the coach.
Detroit got Joe Dumars going in Game 2, as the smooth guard opened with 15 points in the first quarter. The Pistons are the kind of team that looks for a scab on defense and then probes and picks away at it. They found Dumars getting free by running Jordan through two or three screens, and they kept going to him. But by the end of the first quarter they trailed 27–22, as the Bulls spread the scoring around. Grant led with 9, Pippen had 6, Paxson had 4, Cartwright had 4, and Jordan had 4. The system Jackson had so often talked about appeared to be working, though with some important modifications.
Detroit was one of the best teams in the league at breaking down the so-called triangles that formed the Bulls’ motion offense. Players were to form triangles on either side of the court to get the offense going, but Detroit could squeeze the triangles against the corners of the court and leave the players nowhere to run. So Jackson had done a little redecorating for this series, building on something he’d used against Philadelphia. The Pistons’ strength had always been their three-guard rotation, and against the Bulls they were always able to run Paxson or Armstrong off the ball or force them to work harder to advance the ball up the court. As a result, Jordan would get the ball without enough time to run an offense, and he would make a one-man rush into the teeth of the defense or throw a return pass to another player with little time remaining.
So Jackson made a switch. He sent Paxson off on the wing, where he was best for his spot-up jumper anyway, and had Pippen carry the ball upcourt more. This removed the pressure from the ball—while also keeping it out of Jordan’s hands—since the Pistons then had to try to contest the ball handler with a forward or leave themselves in a major mismatch against Pippen once the ball got upcourt. It was the culmination of the maturation process Jackson had long planned for Pippen.
The process had started earlier in the season when Jackson began leaving either Pippen or Jordan on the floor with the reserves. Ostensibly, Jackson did this to keep a scorer out with the bench players. But Jackson also wanted to push Pippen into developing on his own. He knew Pippen had difficulty taking charge and getting his shots when he played with Jordan.
“But now he was the guy,” Jackson said. “He had to make the decisions and take charge and score.”
Pippen would grow comfortably into the role; it had been a major factor against Philadelphia. And now, against Detroit, the pressure seemed to fall away from the Bulls’ offense while on defense the Bulls continued to apply pressure of their own. They swarmed over Detroit, making it hard for the Pistons to run their deliberate offense. The Pistons always played ball-control basketball since they were not a great offensive team; they’d control the clock and the backboards, and a 4- or 6-point win by them was like a 15-point win by another team. But they never could get control of these games from the Bulls, no matter what they tried.
For Game 2, the Pistons tried their bully act. Early in the second quarter, Dumars took down Armstrong hard. Flagrant foul, called Darell Garretson. It was a good sign, the Bulls thought, that Garretson was in for the game and making the tough calls. It was a message directly from the league’s supervisor of officials. The Bulls went on a 14–2 run and led 41–24. The Pistons then scored 9 straight before Pippen went down hard on a drive. Flagrant foul! It meant two free throws and the ball.
“The referees sent a message to the Pistons,” Jackson would tell the media later. “They’re saying, ‘Enough of that rough stuff and let’s get down to playing basketball.’”
The Bulls led 49–41 at halftime and began to open up the game behind 12 points from Jordan in the third quarter. Jordan had been quiet, with just 8 in the first half to 16 from Pippen, but then his jumper started falling. The Pistons were still being watched carefully; Tree Rollins, in for an ineffective James Edwards, was called for a pair of offensive fouls, and then, as the Bulls began to stretch out their lead in the fourth quarter, Jordan was knocked down hard; another flagrant foul call, this one on Thomas, the third of the game. It was time for the referees to begin counting over the Pistons. Like an aging fighter, they were starting to go more quickly than anyone had thought possible.
The Pistons hadn’t lost a home game yet, and they still believed, despite being outplayed twice in a row, that they could intimidate the Bulls into a loss. But the Bulls’ defense had taken away so many things the Pistons did well. The Bulls doubled quickly on Edwards, identifying him as a player who didn’t pass well. They countered the Thomas-Laimbeer screen roll with Pippen’s lightning-quick reactions. And they shot twice as many free throws as the Pistons, which hadn’t gone unnoticed.
“Phil Jackson complained about our defense when they were playing New York,” noted John Salley. “They’re on the foul line all the time. He’s gotten everyone convinced we’re dirty players.”
The Bulls won Game 2 by 105–97 and made still another symbolic statement late in the game. Pippen got the ball out on the break, ahead of everyone and ready to go in for a slam, when he spotted Armstrong trailing alone. Pippen stopped, waited for Armstrong to catch up, and then handed off the ball for a lay-up. It was a nice statement: We’re all going to be a part of this.
The anticipation was high and the Bulls’ mood buoyant as they entered their personal Palace of Horrors for Game 3 on Saturday. It was Memorial Day weekend and the Bulls had a barbecue in mind: hot dogs like Laimbeer, big ears from Rodman, and buns courtesy of Mark Aguirre. All the ingredients were there and the Bulls felt they could turn up the heat despite being 2–13 since the Palace at Auburn Hills had opened. Yes, the Bulls seemed self-assured.
The visitors’ locker area in the Palace, unlike most in the NBA, is divided into two rooms. Jordan occupied the stall next to the inside door in the back room. He was relaxed preparing for Game 3; he hadn’t been at his best, yet the Bulls had won the first two games rather easily. As a result, he seemed to have the confidence against the Pistons he’d never had before, even if he doubted his personal feelings toward the guys he played with would change.
“The thing is, this is a business, and in business you don’t have to like everyone, but you’ve got to work with them,” Jordan said. “What we’ve been able to do this season is separate. Basketballwise, our focus has been the same from game to game. It’s been proven the best teams don’t always have to get along together, and if everyone likes one another, it doesn’t mean you’re going to win. The difference is in the play.
“But I can’t say that I saw it coming,” Jordan admitted. “I can see it with Pippen and Grant now. I think they feel the pressure now, the pressure that I’ve felt. The blame is going to be on them now if we lose and they know it. And they’re playing like it. I think that’s the difference. If they don’t continue to step up, we’re not going to win, and they’re under the microscope to perform. I don’t think they’ve ever felt like that before. They didn’t seem to care. But they’re different this year.”
And so was Jordan, at least from the Pistons’ perspective. They’d studied him hard and made it to the Finals twice by taking advantage of his temper, his stubbornness, and his lack of faith in his teammates. It didn’t seem as if it was going to work this time.
“Last year,” said John Salley, “if we made a rally, Michael would start yelling at everybody and they’d get pissed off. This year they seem to have more confidence and aren’t always looking for Michael.”
And Michael, the Pistons realized, wasn’t always looking to score as in the past.
“I think he finally realized,” said Pistons assistant coach Brendan Suhr, “that one player can’t win at this level, that the farther you get in the playoffs, teams can always stop one man. He finally sees that.”
Jackson had finally come up with a quote he liked for this series. It came from Jung.
“Perfection is only possible with God,” he wrote on the players’ scouting reports. “We expect excellence.”
The Bulls had that to open Game 3. First they knocked down a psychological barrier, then a mental barrier, and then a physical one.
They took on the “bad basket” in front of the Pistons’ bench and scorched it. The lead was 24–8 before the Pistons’ closed the quarter with 8 straight points. Detroit would rally for a 38–36 lead in the second quarter, but the Bulls didn’t wilt. They were all over the place, forcing the Pistons into 3 straight turnovers (2 consecutive Grant steals) and getting 2 baskets from Pippen and 3 from Cartwright to go into the break ahead 51–43. They had shot nearly 55 percent in the half and turned back the Detroit surge. More than that, they had taken the Pistons out of their slow, bruising style and were getting into their own faster transition game. The Pistons had gone to a smaller, scoring lineup in an effort to counteract the Bulls’ speed and quickness. The change reduced the Pistons’ brute strength, their biggest advantage. It now seemed just a matter of time before the Pistons crumbled.
The Pistons remained helpless and the Bulls unflappable as the third quarter of Game 3 unfolded.
“They stole our playbook,” Salley would complain later. “Talking junk, talking garbage, their intensity on defense, making sure there is only one shot, keeping people out of the middle, making us beat them with the jump shot. That’s what we usually do.” And one more thing: remaining cool.
Edwards knocked Grant down hard in the third quarter and Grant started to pick himself up slowly when Jordan came running at Grant, demanding, “Don’t let him see you’re hurt. Don’t touch anything. Don’t look hurt. Just get back in there.”
The Bulls would lurch ahead by 16, but the Pistons zoomed within 5 on a run lashed together by Thomas with a tip-in, a three-point play, and a rebound of his own miss. The Pistons were heading into the fourth quarter down 8 and their championship clearly was on the line, for no team has ever recovered from a 3–0 deficit to win an NBA playoff series.
The Pistons fought desperately, but the Bulls would not fold. They hit 6 of their first 8 shots on the friendlier rim and took a 94–83 lead with about seven minutes left in the game. The Pistons were battling; they would come away with 9 offensive rebounds in the quarter in the kind of game they’d always won. Vinnie Johnson put in his own miss and Thomas did, too. Laimbeer hit a jumper and Aguirre a three-pointer. And when Laimbeer tipped in an Aguirre miss, the Bulls lead was just 5 with 2:31 left.
Pippen brought the ball up, and Aguirre got a hand on it, swatting it ahead to Johnson, who was breaking alone for the basket. It would be Bulls by just 3. But in came Jordan, zeroing in on Johnson. Jordan started to extend his pace and Johnson took a look over his shoulder. Seeing Jordan ready to swat away his lay-up attempt, Johnson slowed to try to let Jordan go past so he could drop the ball for Joe Dumars. But Jordan anticipated the move.
“I basically was trying to maneuver defensively to confuse him,” Jordan would explain later.
With Jordan in position, Dumars could only throw up an off-balance shot, which Jordan would rebound.
“One of the great stops of all time,” Jackson would say later.
And a stop, finally, for the Pistons, as Pippen stepped up to hit a jumper to give the Bulls a 105–98 lead with two minutes left and little for the Pistons to do but offer some petty assault, Rodman fouling John Paxson hard and then shoving the ball into Jordan’s stomach during a break in play. The Bulls would just laugh. The final score was 113–107 Bulls. The Bulls shot 57.5 percent and grabbed as many rebounds as Detroit in the game Detroit had to win. Jordan led with 33 points, but Pippen had 26, Grant 17, and Cartwright 13. The Pistons’ starting front line combined for 12 points. There was no more emphatic way the Bulls could win.
It was 3–0 Bulls on a bright, sunny Sunday before Memorial Day. The Bulls were having a picnic at the daily media session. For the conference finals and NBA Finals, the league arranges a half-hour media session for each team. One team practices, then stays an extra half hour, and the other team comes a half hour earlier and then practices. Jackson had warned the players about saying anything incendiary before the first session in Detroit. He didn’t want to provide any fuel for the Detroit fires, but the players hadn’t been sure what he’d meant with a story he told that day to reinforce the point.
“My wife often tells me I’m talking way up here,” said Jackson, motioning with his hand above his head. “But I’ve always felt that even if you catch a little, something’s got to stick.”
But some chose not to listen.
Jordan took the stage and got a few things off his chest. “People are happy the game is going to get back to a clean game and away from the bad-boy image,” he said. “People don’t want this kind of basketball, the dirty play, the flagrant foul, the unsportsmanlike conduct. It’s bad for basketball.” He continued for almost the entire half hour, saying how the Celtics were more worthy champions than the Pistons because they played a classy game, how everyone he knew wanted the Pistons to lose because they were dirty, how evil could triumph on occasion but never conquer. It’s doubtful it was all meant to chasten the Pistons; he was just pointing it out, really. It would be a headline story in all the Detroit newspapers the next day, before Game 4.
“So what about your message to the team about not supplying ammunition for the opponent?” Jackson was asked before Game 4.
He offered a sly grin.
“Some guys,” Jackson said with a wink in his voice, “have their own media agenda.”
The Pistons had one last stand left in them, although the Bulls were not too worried. “We’ll be watching our backs,” said Jordan, and for much of Game 4 he refused to leave his feet. Even Jordan knew just how far he could carry his bravado.
Before the game, Pippen sat and thought about Rodman, who had been his insulting best throughout the first three games, taunting, pointing, jabbering, challenging, and then patting everyone on the butt in an ersatz gesture of good sportsmanship.
“They really need to get him some help,” Pippen was saying to Grant. “Really. This guy is crazy. It’s the one thing I’d never realized before and I was always too stupid to not let his stuff bother me. But now I can see it. I think he does have mental problems and needs help. Really. I don’t like him, but I think he is sick and it’s just not right that people like that are allowed to walk around free on the streets. They ought to get him some help. The boy is flat-out crazy.”
And Pippen was sure about something else, not just the impending victory. The Pistons had named the street leading into their new arena One Championship Drive, and when they won a second time they changed it to Two Championship Drive. Pippen was wondering aloud if it would now become Four Sweep Drive.
“You can tell M.J. has more confidence in everyone,” he added. “And I’d have to say it’s come just in these playoffs. He’s playing team ball and for the first time I can say he’s not going out there looking to score. He seems to have the feeling, and we all seem to, really, that if we play together everyone can help. It’s like even with Will [Perdue]; when I throw him the ball now, I feel like he’s gonna score. Nobody felt that way two months ago. But I just have confidence in him and I think M.J. does, too. It’s just a feeling, but it seems to be working.”
The Pistons were working hard at the outset of Game 4 trying to run with the Bulls, a sure way to run to a quick defeat. The Bulls coaches loved the strategy, but Pistons coach Chuck Daly felt he had no alternative; he was adjusting as best he could. And it didn’t take long for the Pistons to start taking their best shots.
Laimbeer was first, shoving Paxson hard out of bounds as Paxson drove for a basket.
“I’m not backing down from you,” Paxson yelled at Laimbeer.
“I won’t back down from you,” Laimbeer shot back.
As he walked to the free-throw line to shoot, Paxson thought the confrontation stupid. But Paxson admitted, “It got me going a little bit.”
Paxson made his two free throws, then hit three straight jumpers with two more free throws in between for 10 consecutive Bulls points, 12 in all in the quarter, and a 32–26 Bulls lead after one. “The question was not whether his shot was going in,” said Cartwright. “It was whether he was getting the ball.”
The Pistons would never get closer than 5 the rest of the way before the game turned into a rout for the Bulls in the third quarter. But before then, the Pistons would give their critics plenty of ammunition.
Midway through the second quarter, Rodman shoved Pippen hard out of bounds and into the stands; Pippen slammed into the floor behind the basket and suffered a gash in his chin that would take six stitches to close. The Bulls’ bench exploded and moved toward midcourt as a flagrant foul was called. Assistant coach Jim Cleamons engaged in a colorful screaming match with a fan who began making obscene gestures. Pippen moved hazily into a sitting position.
Watching at home, owner Reinsdorf was both incensed and worried.
“That’s good, Scottie, relax, relax,” he said to the TV screen. “Don’t retaliate. You’re behaving like a man.”
Pippen would later tell Reinsdorf that he didn’t retaliate because he couldn’t remember where he was.
“You play, you play, we don’t get involved in that stuff,” Grant instructed Pippen as Pippen rose unsteadily to his feet.
But Rodman wasn’t done. He had let himself loose into that hysterical world that Pippen had wondered about, even if Pippen was in no condition to hear.
“You think that’s something, I’ll do it again,” he screamed at the referees. “Makes no difference to me. We don’t want no fags out here and he’s a fag. I’ll get him again. He’s going down. He’s going down harder this time and see if I care. We don’t put up with none of that fag-ass shit out here.”
Detroit was a beaten team. These guys were done. Jordan, with 29, and Pippen with 23 points and 10 rebounds, took over from Paxson after the first quarter, and the Bulls led by 17 after three. The final would be 115–94.
The only surprises would come at the end. The fans began to chant for the Lakers in the Finals; this series had become so bitter and Jordan’s comments were so stinging that the fans of the tough guys came to favor tofu. And with a few seconds left, several Pistons players marched off the court over Daly’s objections, directly in front of the Bulls bench and out to the locker room, without offering any congratulations to their conquerors. This gesture would set off a storm of protest within days as columnists called for Daly to be removed as 1992 Olympic coach and writers around the country castigated the Pistons for their boorish exit.
For the Bulls, there was almost a stunned kind of relief in the locker room immediately after the game.
“We didn’t come this far just to get here,” Jackson told the team. “No one remembers who finishes second in the Finals.”
A somber note modulated the players’ joy. Dennis Hopson began crying as soon as he sat down in front of his locker. He’d played three minutes at the end of the game, when the Bulls led by 25, his first playing time against Detroit. He’d played the least of anyone on the team, getting token appearances at the end of blowouts in four of the twelve playoff games. It wouldn’t change in the Finals.
“I’d never cried before at a game or after or any time, and never in front of guys,” Hopson would say afterward. “But I couldn’t help myself. I wasn’t a part of this team and I knew it. My own team didn’t need me and it hurt.”
So Hopson, a likable, quiet man, sat and couldn’t control himself. Paxson patted him on the back and assured him he was a part of the team. Cartwright also tried to console him, as did his close friend Armstrong. But Hopson couldn’t stop. Tears rolled down his cheeks and he could barely catch his breath. He was gasping for air. Several of the players looked on and all could understand. Hopson had been the king before, in college and as the leading scorer with the lowly Nets. Now all he could be was a cheerleader while those around him shared in the glory they would never forget.
He called his mother and told her. She was quiet for a long while. There was nothing to say.
The plane ride home took on a more lively tone. Jordan sipped from a bottle of champagne. “All I ever asked for is one shot,” he said. “One shot. This ain’t the time to come in second.”
Krause, the portly and unpopular general manager, began dancing in the aisle.
“Who said I can’t shake my booty?” he started to chant. “Watch this, watch me shake my booty.”
The players became hysterical.
“I know the pilot’s up there calling the tower going, ‘Problem up here. Someone seems to be shaking the plane,’” Perdue said to Cartwright.
“Shake it, Jerry, shake it,” yelled Pippen as he got up to do a mock dance with Krause.
“You guys made me look good,” Krause gushed in trying to put his arms around Cartwright and Perdue, who were sitting together.
“Nobody could do that,” said Perdue.
It was a happy team that stepped off the charter at O’Hare. Rookie Scott Williams would prove to be the only casualty; his troublesome left shoulder would pop out again on the way home when he saluted his teammates with his arm thrust out his car window as they drove by. He had to pull over and flag down Horace Grant to help him pop his shoulder back in.
June Jackson came to the airport to pick up Phil. She rarely did it, but this was a special night. And Phil wasn’t that great a driver, anyway. His family always questioned whether he could drive a car safely because when driving he tended to lose concentration. June could remember him making dozens of snap decisions in a basketball game and then leaving and driving around a parking lot for thirty minutes until he decided what parking spot he wanted. Phil talked about the pleasure of sweeping the Pistons, about the emotion of the game, about Hopson and about the coming Finals. As June wheeled the car into the family’s north suburban Chicago home, Jackson smiled.
His children had encircled his car with dozens of brooms.