In olden days sports reporters described how one team won and the other lost, often slipping in some fancy language to impress their readers. (“Outlined against a blue gray October sky, the Four Horsemen rode again.”) This kind of writing was OK, but so un-Freudian.
“The Bulls and a city now face an emotionless series. [Pat] Riley, the motivator with all the psychobabble catchwords, already is trying to inspire his players with bold talk.” Mariotti predicted the Bulls would dispatch the Knicks “in a quick four-game exercise.”
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The Bulls lost the second game at home, 94-89. “It was very much a wakeup call,” wrote Mariotti. “Though this prognosticator is red-faced today, having forecast they would win in four and make Riley swallow his bold words, expect the Bulls to win in five games. They are angry and interested now, and when that happens, they usually are at their supreme best.”
The Knicks won the sixth game by 14 points. The Bulls “have become an ordinary team, a team choking on its heart,” Mariotti diagnosed. “Most disturbingly, you suspect they are a team that doesn’t want to win nearly as much as the maniacal New York Knicks. When it was time to prove their manhood . . . they shriveled up and disappeared.” On he went. “They are playing like a team that doesn’t want to wake up in the morning and read how one or two players lost the game. So they lose it collectively. It is a cowardly approach. That word hasn’t been used about the Bulls in years, but it is used today. They have become such a shadow of their former selves.”
In a column published on the eve of the finals against Portland, Mariotti inked lines that every schoolboy who wants into the bigs should tape to his locker door. “Anymore in the NBA, the game isn’t about who scores more points, defends better or gathers more rebounds. It’s about who wins the mental edge, who is trickier at unearthing the other’s insecurities.”
Media junkies (we don’t pretend your numbers are legion) have been hit by some bad news. The Tribune’s James Warren is leaving his media beat. In a large-scale reshuffling, the paper is moving him up to Tempo editor.
Our changing America–the bicoastal perspective. The June Life, published in New York, reports that the CBS TV affiliate in San Francisco “did some research and discovered that 42 percent of Bay Area viewers are in bed by 11. The CBS affiliate shifted prime time, traditionally eight to 11 p.m., a full hour earlier. Another local station quickly followed suit, and now stations around the country are waiting to see how this new California trend flies.”
