It doesn’t do justice to the intense passions involved between the Bulls and the Detroit Pistons to call their series of battles over the past few years a rivalry. The Bulls and the Pistons–and their fans, across the country–have developed such hatred for one another, such conflicting styles, strategies, and criteria, that theirs is the sort of enmity found only in the high-pitched emotional traumas of classical tragedy. If the Bulls’ second annual five-game victory over the Philadelphia 76ers in the second round of the playoffs was simply putting a younger brother–a younger, more emotional, but less experienced and, in the end, a mite lazy sibling–back in his place, then moving on to the third annual conference title series against the Pistons was, at least in the minds of the Bulls and their fans, like fighting for the conscience and direction of the family. The Bulls have prepared for this series from the earliest point of the season as if it were ordained by fate; they begged to meet the Pistons even after Detroit fell behind the Boston Celtics 2-1 in their second-round series; and in the end, after the Pistons won the next three in a row to advance, the Bulls embarked on the series with a steely and almost chilling sense of purpose. They were out to slay the father: no more, no less.
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The Pistons have dominated the National Basketball Association for two seasons and have intimidated the league for longer than that. They are aging, however, and they saw their record decline this season thanks to injuries and inconsistent spurts. Yet anyone who doubted their ability need only have tuned in to their last three games with the Celtics. The Pistons got back into the series with a win at home after losing the previous game in Detroit, they pulled ahead with an upset in Boston Garden, and they dismissed the Celts with an overtime victory at home last Friday. Isiah Thomas, back from a wrist injury and suffering from hamstring problems, rallied the Pistons with two incredible shots in overtime: one, a desperate three-pointer off the backboard as the 24-second shot clock was about to expire, the other a long jumper just inside the three-point line, off-balance, on the dribble, and clutch all the way. The old man had a buzz on and the belt off and was advancing on Chicago with but one day’s rest to once again show who was boss.
The larger meaning of the game wasn’t lost on anyone; it couldn’t have been. This is not mere rivalry that the media are expected to hype; this is a battle for the future of the sport. Michael Jordan made that point both on the court and in an interview played during the NBC broadcast: he displayed an uncharacteristic willingness to mix it up orally and physically with the Pistons’ Dennis Rodman and Mark Aguirre, and he told a television interviewer that the Pistons had intimidated the league for years with their style of play and that the discouraging thing was that other teams were now emulating the Pistons’ roughness. Jordan was out to prove nothing less than that his artistic, creative, improvisational style was the way basketball was meant to be played.
A few final words about the Sixers’ Charles Barkley: I love to watch him play. Moody as he is, it is clear in every second he is on the court that he loves to play basketball. He should be the first person chosen for the 1992 U.S. Olympic basketball team for that reason and because he epitomizes the strengths and the excesses of the U.S. citizen. Over 100 years ago, Mark Twain and Henry James staked out their literary turf with depictions of U.S. citizens abroad. The American was naive, forthright, fresh, and uncynical. Barkley displays the modern-day equivalents of those qualities. He is brash, emotional, rude, unfettered, and exuberant. The whole world should see him play. He is the contemporary American, love him or leave him.
I got my first look at the Veeck’s home-run fireworks. The Sox have a team based on strong pitching, built by Larry Himes to play in Comiskey Park, and they’ve struggled at the Veeck, which seems already to be establishing itself as a hitter’s park. I hadn’t yet seen a White Sox homer in the new stadium until Cory Snyder hit one in the second. The fireworks are comparable to Comiskey’s, but they seem so much less festive at the Veeck for some reason, without the natural boundaries of the upper deck of the bleachers. (The fireworks at Comiskey always seemed to have to work so hard to get up above the upper deck.)
