The Jordan Rules (41 page)

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.