This story originally ran in the Chicago Tribune on June 13, 1991
All this started with New York almost two months ago and, fittingly, ends with Los Angeles.
The Bulls have swept across the National Basketball Association landscape in a remarkable cross-country run to the title that has left no doubt about the location of the basketball capital of the world.
Chicago is second to none.
”(The championship) means so much,” said Michael Jordan, in tears after the game talking to a national television audience. ”Not just for me but for this team and this city. It was a seven-year struggle. It’s the most proud day I’ve ever had.”
Jordan was named Most Valuable Player of the NBA Finals, which the Bulls won 4 games to one — including three straight on the road in Los Angeles.
Yes, the Bulls have taken the gold in their silver anniversary season, a tempest of effort finally sending the proud Lakers sinking into the Pacific Wednesday night in a hard-fought 108-101 game and letting loose a tidal wave of exhilaration and emotion.
The Bulls are champions!
Roll it around in your mouth and savor the sweet taste of victory. Close your eyes and see them raising the banners in honor of the Bulls, in honor of all Bulls teams and, really, in honor of all Chicagoans. Get ready for Friday’s noon rally at the Petrillo Band Shell in Grant Park.
Because the Bulls have been Chicago’s team, winning with a bit of Gold Coast glamor and a lot of stockyards effort.
This not only has been an inexorable march to glory, it has been a 100-yard dash to success. The Bulls sped through the playoffs with a 15-2 record, equaling the best since the NBA went to the current postseason format and posting the second-best all-time playoff winning percentage.
The Bulls did it with some of the best marksmanship an NBA Finals seen and a suffocating defense that broke records for fewest points scored by their opponents, yet they refused to allow the beauty and grace of the game to be diminished.
Jordan, with 30 points and 10 assists Wednesday night, danced on air. Scottie Pippen, who tallied a game-high 32 points in the Game 5 clincher, joined him in a duet. Fred and Ginger never did it with more style.
The Bulls made fewer mistakes than any playoff team. John Paxson-who scored a clutch 20 points Wednesday, with 10 in the final minutes-and Bill Cartwright, if not always graceful, were certainly unerring. Fellow starter Horace Grant always showed up where most needed.
And those other guys, the Cliffs and Wills and Scotts and B.J.s, the Staceys, Dennises and Craigs. If not setting off the sparks of the high-tension starters, they were always there to keep the Bulls from getting their lights turned off.
This was a year the Bulls became the matador. The Bulls became the best, not the Lakers, not the Celtics, not the dreaded Pistons. They`re all the Lilliputians now. And the Bulls are Gulliver.
And, finally, the fans, long-suffering and leather-lunged, get to exhale and smile.
”I remember just before the Finals started,” recalled Cartwright. ”A guy stops me and says that the Chicago teams get to the big show, but they never do anything. These people deserve a championship.”
And they got one, and right where the spotlights are the brightest and the stars the biggest. Forget Jack and Dyan and all the rest. The real stars now wear red and 1991 NBA Champion Bulls rings.
And it would be a cakewalk in many respects.
The Bulls were two desperate three-point field goals away from going undefeated in the playoffs. Hersey Hawkins and Sam Perkins stood in the way of immortality.
But not the game’s immortals.
The Bulls swept by the Knicks in the opening round of the playoffs, and then Patrick Ewing talked about being traded.
The Bulls, elusive as tumbleweeds and starting to show a confidence born of acclaim, withstood a single bump in the road in Philadelphia and left Charles Barkley hogtied and wistfully considering whether and where he might play basketball again.
But those were supposed to be just the preliminaries. The biggest fight was to be with Detroit, but it would turn into a one-sided four-rounder complete with knockout, the blow so stunning that observers said it was time to cart this team away on a stretcher and start over.
You may forgive your enemies, but you never forget their number.
The Bulls stampeded the Pistons and broke down the fences of doubt that had inhibited them in the past.
”We wanted to play Detroit, and everyone thought we were crazy,” said Pippen. ”But we wanted to show just how good a team we were.”
But the best was yet to come, the Magic, the excitement in the Air. It was all there with the Lakers and the Bulls. Magic Johnson was starting to run out of hands for his championship rings. The Lakers had the experience and then, surprisingly, Game 1 in Chicago.
The Bulls apparently had been tripped up in the basketball minefield. But they sprung up the next game like a field of wild flowers instead of going belly up. A well of suppressed emotion and skill was tapped, and the Bulls blew the Lakers sky high.
And confidence became a sedative for national doubt. The Bulls knew they were better than the Lakers, quicker, faster, stronger, younger, healthier and hungrier.
And they came to Los Angeles and simply ate up the guys who were making their eighth trip to the Finals in the last decade. The Bulls turned tough into tofu and left the Lakers feeling like they’d never be back, Johnson so beaten that he began to talk about retirement.
The Bulls were as brilliant as the noonday sun in the Lakers` backyards. They sparkled like diamonds and were as hard to cut up for the Lakers.
The Bulls swept through Los Angeles like the smog. They were everywhere, and there was nothing the Lakers could do about it. They refused to let the Lakers win a single game at home. Their pressure left the Lakers without a breath, and the Bulls’ skywalking offense left them breathless.
And then it was done, the Bull finally piercing the heart of the matador, and the straw of expectation had been spun into the gold of victory.
The Bulls were the champions of the NBA for the first time. And they weren’t too proud or preoccupied to say thanks as reserve guard Craig Hodges gathered the team in a prayer while network cameras recorded the scene.
They had made Phil Jackson the most successful coach in NBA playoff history, and Jordan had remained the greatest scorer in playoff history, if also now one of the best at all phases of the game. He was truly a Most Valuable Player.
Pippen finally stepped out of the shadow. It would not kill the growth. And Cartwright and Paxson smiled knowingly and contentedly. It tastes so much better when you’ve had to stomach so much bile for so long.
They had worn promise like an old coat and finally shed it for the new look of respect and success. And they wore it well, if a bit wrinkled with all the hugging going on.
But why not? They were No. 1 and Chicago was No. 1, and all the smug guys from New York and smoggy guys from L.A. could do was wave as the parade passed them by. It’s coming to Chicago now.
