Photo: Corbis.
The plane back from Detroit to Chicago felt like a funeral. Long, tired faces, a feeling of helplessness, fed up, a new Bulls project doomed to go to hell. Just a few hours earlier, at the Palace of Auburn Hills, the Pistons Isiah Thomas, Dennis Rodman, Bill Laimbeer and company had won by twenty-one points. Nice way to start Christmas, December 19, 1990, almost 20 upon arrival at O’Hare Airport.
It was supposed to be the great season for the young Bulls, after three consecutive eliminations against the “Bad Boys”, but the team had not quite reached the desired level: Scottie Pippen he was too worried about getting good stats for his renewal, Horace Grant he felt lost, unable to get anyone to pass him the ball properly, and even the coach Phil Jacksonthe phlegmatic and zen Phil Jackson, feared he would lose his temper at any moment.
Michael Jordan, for his part, had complied. Jordan always complied, of course, but complying was not enough as the years progressed and he approached dangerously close to thirty. Seven years watching his team improve “little by little”, only that “little by little” in professional sports, that of constant emergencies, meant nothing. Not for him, at least. Leaning back in his seat, he decided to take a look at the match statistics, carefully looking for who to blame for the disaster.
When he got to Pippen, with his 2/16 shooting from the field, he knew the hunt was over. She turned to him and said, in his deep, clipped voice, “Another headache, Scottie?”
If Pippen hadn’t been Pippen and Jordan hadn’t been Jordan, it would have ended with fisticuffs. Scottie had been reading for months in the press how he had been eliminated from Game 7 of the Eastern Conference final the previous year, also against the Pistons, also in Auburn Hills. The others remember a young boy lost and disoriented while he remembers a terrible migraine that did not even allow him to focus amid so much light and so much shouting.
Jackson, of course, heard the comment but said nothing. Better to do than say. If the boys were going to continue blaming each other, it would be impossible to once and for all get rid of the Pistons, whose game was based precisely on that: destabilizing the rival in such a way that the tension prevented them from developing their basketball. In that sense, Jordan and Pippen were by far his favorite victims. Something had to change: vent frustration directly against his rivals, play their game, yes, and without remorse.
“You have to hit someone in the next game,” Jackson told his assistants. “You have to push them, physically dominate them, even if it costs them an expulsion.” The technicians nodded silently until one of them pointed out the problem: “And exactly which of our guys is going to be in charge?” Indeed, the Bulls were a fast, spectacular, talented team… but with a reputation for being soft. That summer they had signed Cliff Levingston to add more character already Levingston his testicles still hurt, courtesy of a kick without a ball from Vinnie Johnson.
Whether the Bulls were going to continue to be intimidated or not we would find out quickly: just six days later, the NBA had scheduled another game against the Pistons for Christmas Day, this time to be played in Chicago.
NBA on NBC
Since ABC broadcast the first national Christmas game in 1967, December 25 had become for the NBA something similar to what Thanksgiving was for the NFL. We are talking about times when basketball could barely compete with the other major American leagues: baseball, American football or even ice hockey.
Aware of the opportunity, the commissioner Larry O´Brien and especially his successor David Stern They decided to schedule five main matches for that day, one of which was usually a repeat of the previous year’s final or the reflection of a rivalry that guaranteed that the Americans, while eating Christmas Eve leftovers, were watching the television.
This decision had left us with several unforgettable moments such as the sixty points that Bernard King scored with the Knicks in 1984, still the franchise record today, and he would still leave us many more as the years went by: the duel between Kobe Bryant y Shaquille O´Neal in 2004 after both were about to appear in the news pages for their bad relationship, the continued displays of Tracy McGrady or Phil Jackson’s thousandth victory, achieved on December 25, 2008 against the Celtics.
All in all, probably the best story often mentioned about an NBA game on Christmas Day takes us back to 1986, with the Boston Celtics and the Indiana Pacers as the protagonists. The day before the game, the then rookie Chuck Personnicknamed “The Rifleman”, had no better idea than to go to the newspapers to say that “the Rifleman was in the city ready to hunt the Bird.”
“The Bird”, obviously, was Larry Bird. During warm-ups, a seemingly calm Bird approached one of Person’s Pacers teammates: “Tell the rookie for me that I have a Christmas present for him.”
The game remained tied until, with just a few minutes remaining in the final quarter, Bird scored an impossible triple in front of the Pacers bench that gave the Celtics a definitive lead. Instead of celebrating, Bird turned around, looked at Person, sitting after a horrible game, and yelled at him, angry as a monkey: “Merry fucking Christmas.” The message was clear and the phrase remained as a Christmas classic, although somewhat distorted by its legend… in reality, as far as no one knows, that match was played on December 17.
So let’s go back to 1990: NBC had just bought the national rights and wanted Michael Jordan as an attraction no matter what the cost. With Larry Bird injured in his back and Magic Johnson’s Lakers trying to rebuild the team without Kareem Abdul-Jabbarthere was no history in the NBA better than that of the Detroit Pistons, with two consecutive championships, and the eternal contenders, the Chicago Bulls.
His hatred went far beyond the sporting and reached the personal. It was not only Isiah Thomaswhose bad relationship with Jordan and Pippen would leave him out of the “Dream Team” of 1992. He was Bill Laimbeerera Dennis Rodman, era John Salleywas the loudmouth of Mark Aguirre…
The day was approaching and Jackson was still looking for the man to turn around so much abuse. The man who could lose his temper full of rage and finally respond to the Bad Boys’ provocations. When he found it, he knew very well how to light the fuse.
Photo: Corbis.
The making of a dynasty
Horace Grant was probably the team’s weakest link emotionally. Of course, on the field, his ability and talent were beyond any doubt: despite some difficult first years because he did not seem to have enough strength to play as a power forward or enough speed to play as a small forward, Grant had done his homework. and had established himself as the undisputed starter in one of the best teams in the league, with an excellent sense for rebounding.
That didn’t mean that everything was happy: “the boy,” as Jackson called him, thought he should receive more balls and thus score more points. As many, at least, as his twin brother Harvey, who averaged twenty as a star for the Washington Bullets. Apart from the relevance in attack, there was the problem of his contract: he was still one of the lowest paid players on the squad along with his great friend and promotion partner Scottie Pippen.
If Pippen felt threatened going forward by the Bulls’ continued interest in Toni KukocGrant was facing a much closer threat: the rookie Stacey King. King had arrived that summer with the aura of a star and a self-confidence that he did not fully endorse on the court. Despite everything, the fact that the Bulls had signed him with one of the highest picks in the draft forced Grant to be cautious, even paranoid: Will they want to get me out of the way so as not to renew me and give my minutes to the kid?
It wasn’t the idea. Not until December 25, 1990, when Phil Jackson, aware of the situation, decided to tighten the rope a little more at the right moment: against the Pistons, in the big game on national television, the starter would not be Grant but King . When Grant found out, he flew into a rage. An anger that mixed with desperation in such a mercurial personality. From the bench, Horace had to watch how the Pistons once again dominated the Bulls at ease: 26-29 in the first quarter and 50-55 at halftime.
Although Thomas and Dumars were in charge of scoring the points, the damage was done by Laimbeer, Edwards and Rodman with their rebounds. It was time to stop testing: breaking an unwritten rule in the NBA, Jackson decided to change his starting five to start the second half. A hungry Horace Grant would step out in place of the lost and outmatched Stacey King.
That was the hand of a saint: Grant’s defense not only held the Pistons to fourteen points in the entire third quarter, but his four clean baskets allowed what was a five-point deficit to become a nine-point lead at the end. end of the period. Up to this point, nothing we had not seen before: the Bulls used to beat the Pistons in their home field, it was another thing to do it in Auburn Hills, with its crooked hoops and a series of stratagems typical of Red Auerbach’s mythical Celtics.
Something, however, seemed different this time. Something that indicated that times were going to change forever: with eight minutes left in the game, with the Bulls twelve points ahead, Joe Dumars tried to score the basket when he found a Horace Grant completely crazy: the Bulls guy didn’t think twice, he pushed him with both hands, threw him to the ground and then faced him as if he wanted to repeat “Merry fucking Christmas” in his face. Then, the usual brawl and Grant’s expulsion.
Jackson and Jordan smiled the way proud parents smile.
Yes, things had changed and they had changed in front of the entire country. This was not just a Christmas gift, it was the beginning of one of the greatest dynasties in the history of professional sports, as would be proven in May, when the Bulls swept the Pistons 4-0 on the way to the first of their six titles. Grant would get the million-dollar contract from him, just like Pippen. Given what he had seen, Kukoc decided to stay two more years in Europe. But that, of course, is another story.
2024-05-25 19:13:30
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