It was just about this time a year ago that the Bulls were being told–and in some cases were telling themselves–they couldn’t win a championship with the players they had. Now, the Bulls–who remain essentially the same–are arousing speculation that they may be the greatest team in the history of the National Basketball Association. There is persistent, albeit unwanted, talk of the Bulls becoming the first team to win 70 games in a season; with Sunday’s win over the Detroit Pistons they went to 33-5 almost midway through the 82-game campaign, which puts them on a pace to do it. There have been teams with more all-around talent–like the Los Angeles Lakers of Wilt Chamberlain and Jerry West, who set the record of 69 wins in 1971-72, and the Lakers of the 80s with Earvin “Magic” Johnson and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. And there have been teams that were more unified in their purpose–like the Boston Celtics of the 60s and the New York Knicks of the early 70s. But the Bulls may well be the best ever at combining great athletic ability with an astute understanding of that ability–their strengths and weaknesses and how they apply to the sport.
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For instance, last Friday against the San Antonio Spurs (one of the best teams in the Western Conference) the Bulls fell behind 54-45 at the half. Now, one would expect the Bulls to come out in the second half and try to pick up the game’s pace, turning it toward the open-court, pell-mell style at which they excel, and against most of the other teams in the league that would have been the case. Yet the Spurs too excel at that game. Jackson called them “a great defensive team” with “great quickness and athleticism,” a description that could be applied to the Bulls as well. The Spurs posed unusual problems, requiring an unusual solution.
The Bulls opened the second half with deliberation and set plays. Ninety seconds into the third quarter, Jordan drove, attracting three defenders, and passed behind his back to an open John Paxson for an easy jump shot that cut the lead to 56-51. A minute later Jordan faked his man, Willie Anderson, into the air, then drove the lane, leaping, showing Robinson the ball, bringing it back down, and laying it in under Robinson’s outstretched arms. That tied the game at 56. The Bulls had erased a nine-point deficit against one of the best teams in the league in two minutes and 45 seconds.
Sound as that sounds, it has to be applied to the game. Momentum doesn’t fall from the sky or the scoreboard. Yet just as the Bulls know how to apply their skills in the abstract–speed and athleticism–to the game at hand, Jackson knows what strategic moves to make to swing the momentum in the Bulls’ favor. Only a week before, against the Utah Jazz, the Bulls came from a 62-54 second-half deficit with a deceptively simple piece of Jackson advice: strive harder to get loose balls. With scrum specialists Perdue and Cliff Levingston on the floor with Grant, Jordan, and B.J. Armstrong, the Bulls rallied to take the lead at 73-72 on an Armstrong jumper and went on to win comfortably, 105-90.
The Bulls hit their first seven shots from the field, then–with Jordan on the bench with two early fouls–they went into one of their droughts, falling behind 31-20 at the end of the first quarter. Momentum was important–B.J. Armstrong led the Bulls back into the game in the second quarter, when the Pistons scored only 14 points, with Isiah Thomas on the bench for much of the period–but in the second half it became almost irrelevant. The referees had discouraged dirty play by calling a tight game, and after halftime it simply became a matter of hard, tight defensive play and determination.
