Record So were the 1996 Bulls
Jerry Reinsdorf, owner of the Chicago Bulls, once confessed to Michael Jordan that his determination reminded him a lot of
Jake LaMotta, that primal and brutal boxer that Martin Scorsese portrayed in 'Wild Bull'
and that Muhammad Ali said about him. ring was capable of ripping out the heart of anyone. "The only way to stop you would be to kill yourself," Reinsdorf joked. "Who is this Jake LaMotta?"
LaMotta, said his coach, Al Silvani, reacted with suicidal aggression when he looked beaten. And that fire burned inside Jordan
after falling in the 1995 playoffs.
against the Magic of Shaquille O'Neal and Penny Hardaway, the future heirs to the throne. It was only two months since he had returned to the NBA, but not even that made the defeat more palatable. Nothing ever did.
And even less with the words of
Nick Anderson
, who after stealing the ball in a key possession gave him that of "The number 45 is not the same as 23". Jordan rescued his old number, but not the tie. And Anderson, by the way, would go down in history weeks later missing four free throws in the last eight seconds of the first round of the Finals. With just one they would have won. They lost the match and the Finals.
That mattered little to Jordan, who, according to his partner
Ron Harper
and his personal trainer, Tim Grover, had started training the day after the elimination. "You want number 23? I'm going to give you 23."
Space Jam and a punch
Jordan had made baseball slower and heavier, which demands a much more powerful upper body, and that summer he pushed himself to readjust his body to basketball. At 32, he would no longer be so athletically superhuman, but his dominance would be fierce. Since that summer he had promised to shoot 'Space Jam', he
demanded that Warner Bros put up a gigantic tent to continue training
.
The shootings were from seven to seven with two hours of rest at noon that he used to do strength work. At the end of the day, he would organize games against NBA players like
Reggie Miller, Charles Barkley, Pat Ewing, Grant Hill
or even Dennis Rodman, but on that a little later.
It is no accident that Michael Jordan's two most famous preseasons were those of 1990 and 1995, as both followed disappointments in the playoffs. In the first, he underwent intense muscle-building work to better withstand that extreme aggressiveness
of the 'Bad Boys'
, and in the second, to regain a throne that he felt was his.
And it is in that maniacal chase where that
infamous punch to Steve Kerr
is framed
in training. Pippen was the only player left from the team that had won the first three-peat and Jordan didn't know who he could trust.
Krause's hand
It is true that some of Jerry Krause's movements seemed more aimed at underlining his power than at meeting the needs of the team (the successive attempts to transfer Pippen) but also that, without his extraordinary ability to detect talent, it would not have been the same. And the Bulls, in Jordan's second leg, put together
a more veteran team
, but deeper and better built.
Just days before Jordan announced his first retirement,
Toni Kukoc
, Krause's great obsession, had finally landed in Chicago. Ron Harper, who in another life had been a great scorer, understood that the return on 23 was going to change his role and he knew how to reinvent himself as an excellent defender. And Rodman ...
Rodman was radioactive material. He had been an important piece in the two rings of the 'Bad Boys', yes, but in the last season he had dynamited the Spurs' playoff options from within. As David Halberstman wrote, from
his relationship with Madonna he
had learned to turn provocation into an art and at that point it was impossible to know how far this dissent was real, where the artifice ended and where the rage and despair that had led him to the war began. verge of suicide two years earlier.
The Bulls had failed to cover the hole that
Horace Grant
had left
in the inside game
and Rodman, despite all that 'baggage', was an extraordinary defender and one of the best rebounders in history. As his biographer Tim Keown wrote, "Rodman played each possession as if it were a referendum on his worth as a human being. He was capable of going to the utmost limits to convince the world that basketball did not define him as a person, but at the same time he played as if nothing else mattered. "
Krause arranged a meeting at his home with
Phil Jackson
and Rodman to find out their degree of commitment. And of course, before moving, they called Chuck Daly, who for him had been like a father, and asked for the approval of Jordan, who that summer had already tested him in the games between shoots of 'Space Jam'. The Bulls were a perfect ecosystem: Jordan's authority kept him at bay and Jackson, who recognized in him the rebellion that he himself had had as a young man, had a left hand to carry him.
A modern team
Jordan defined that team in terms that stand the test of time. "We are a group of small, versatile players who can occupy different positions. It is where basketball is going. The dominant center is disappearing. It has been eight years since a team has won the ring with a dominant center. And don't tell me what
Olajuwon
because he is more of a forward playing center. "
A few words that could be used for so many teams of the current elite, starting with the most recent Warriors. And a 'prophecy' the redefinition of the concept of center, which has been fulfilled. Almost ago 20 years that a team does not win the NBA with a dominant center and as many as a 'five' does not win the MVP. Because if Olajuwon was a forward playing center, the favorite for the award this season,
Nikola Jokic
, is a point guard playing pivot.
with Jordan as a
global icon with the aura of the three rings, with Phil Jackson or, why not, with the eccentricities of Rodman, those Bulls over the border of the basketball team to become a cultural phenomenon. According to
published then 'Sports Illustrated', of the
3 billion dollars in merchandise
that the NBA sold that season, the Bulls were responsible for 40%.
The overwhelming start
(41-3 in early February)
turned the spotlight to the Lakers' record of 69 wins from 1972. As Phil Jackson recalled, local televisions followed the team by helicopter on their way to the stadium for the game against Milwaukee in the one that would surpass that legendary mark. There were cigars of victory, but above all "a feeling of relief" in the locker room, according to the Montana coach.
A passing relief because, as columnist Bernie Lincicome wrote, the record was just "a brilliant souvenir of a journey still incomplete." As Harper said,
"72-10 is no use without the ring"
("72-10 ain't mean a thing without the ring". The rhyme is lost along the way).
You can ask the Golden State Warriors.
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