It was like that moment in The Natural when Roy Hobbs hits one up in the lights and sparks come raining down on the fans, except that it wasn’t overblown movie bathos but real life. Michael Jordan walked out from the end of the floor, cast in a spotlight against a background of darkness, camera flashes going off throughout the Stadium, and it really did look as if he were taking his place in the firmament, among the stars.
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The most jarring event of the night was a Dan asking a Christina in a scoreboard message to marry him. She said yes; they hugged and kissed. Life goes on.
Yet life goes on at a less intense pace than before. Before last Saturday’s game against the Boston Celtics the Chicago Stadium lacked that feeling of excitement common to every Bulls game during the Jordan era. November basketball is an ugly sight (not quite as ugly as October hockey, but close); but when Jordan was on the floor, especially in November, there were always a large number of fans seeing him for the first and only time–perhaps that season, perhaps ever. And always they expected that at some point during the evening he would imprint in their minds the image of something they had never seen done before.
Some of these new Bulls will not be Bulls for long. Center Bill Wennington, Chris Mullin’s teammate at Saint John’s ten years ago, made the team when Scott Williams tore up his knee in a fluke accident, while stretching during training camp. Williams will be back soon enough that Wennington had best get his passport in order if he intends to keep playing basketball. Dave Johnson, a 6-7 guard-forward, joined the team when Pippen went down. The Bulls were ready to draft him out of college a year ago but the Trail Blazers got him first. In Portland, however, he was involved in a sex scandal on the road (underage basketball Annies, evidently) and never really recovered his reputation. Jerry Krause, the Bulls’ vice president of basketball operations, is the man who took Quintin Dailey and other lowlifes off the team in the mid-80s, and he maintains Johnson is a good guy who simply got himself into a couple of bad situations. But the Bulls’ questionable need for an extra swing man when Pippen returns may make Johnson’s personality a moot point.
In the second half, however, Radja returned the favor, bulling his way over Kukoc on two of the rare times they were mismatched. The Celts got back in the game with some tough defense after the intermission, outscoring the Bulls 12-1. And it was Radja, too quick for the Bulls centers to handle, who led them out to the lead. He finished, in fact, with 18 points to Kukoc’s 16.
Yet Kukoc is the real thing; that is abundantly clear. And, while I hope Jordan enjoys his retirement and stays away from the game, I do have a dream, and this is the one time I’ll mention it–that Kukoc becomes so good at fragmenting NBA tactics and returning creativity to the game that Jordan will return just to play with him.
