There’s Optimism in the Air

Michael Jordan vs. Magic Johnson is still the main event of Bulls vs. Lakers, but it’s not the whole game, not anymore.

I wonder if anybody realizes to this day just how close Chicago came to winning the 1989 NBA championship.

Everybody got so caught up in Detroit’s domination and Joe Dumars’ jumpers and Worm Rodman’s defense and all that “Bad Boys” business that they don’t fully appreciate how the Bulls came within a couple of veronicas of succeeding the Lakers as world champions.

“Give us Scottie (Pippen) back for Game 6, and I still think we could have gone all the way,” says Jordan, who is in town for tonight’s Jordan-Johnson summit meeting at the Forum.

Consider the evidence:

--Only one team, Chicago, was able to defeat Detroit during the 1989 playoffs. The Bulls beat them twice in their best-of-seven Eastern Conference championship series.

--Pippen, now a certified NBA All-Star, was knocked unconscious in the first minute of Game 6, leaving Jordan without his No. 1 helper for the rest of the night.

--Game 6 was at Chicago Stadium, where the Bulls are extremely tough to beat. So, with a full squad, there is a good chance that they would have taken care of business and sent the series back for a seventh game in Michigan.

--Furthermore, the Bulls already had beaten the Pistons once on the road, winning Game 1 at the Palace of Auburn Hills. There is no reason to think they couldn’t have done it again, what with Jordan on their side.

Now, I realize there are a lot of ifs here, but let’s just say that Chicago had defeated Detroit and advanced to the NBA finals. The question becomes: Could they have taken the Lakers?

They sure as heck could have. What you would have had was Michael Jordan operating against a Laker backcourt minus Magic and Byron Scott, both of whom were injured. Jordan wouldn’t have scored 50 points in a game; he would have averaged 50 points a game.

And just for good measure, consider this: The Lakers, with Johnson and Scott, played the Bulls twice last season. The Bulls won both games.

“I think about it,” Jordan said. “I think about it a lot. So close, and yet so far.”

No, Air. So far, and yet so close.

Had Chicago not lost Pippen, it could be going for back-to-back championships right now, and Doug Collins might still be coach. Nobody fires somebody who wins the whole thing. Case in point: Steve Fisher at the University of Michigan.

Jordan, a realist, doesn’t get too caught up in regrets. “I’m not saying we had the best team. But we had a real chance, a chance that doesn’t come along every day. We worked hard to get where we were, and then Scottie gets knocked out of the biggest game of the year by (an elbow from Bill) Laimbeer.

“I picked us to win before the Detroit series, and everybody gave me strange looks. What I said was, if we could win that first game at their place, we’d win the whole thing. And we would have, in my mind, if Scottie Pippen would have played those last two games. We were on a roll. Detroit wasn’t unbeatable, and neither were the Lakers. Nobody’s unbeatable.”

Since things turned out the way they did, though, two arguments remain.

One is this: Is Michael Jordan a winner because he carries an otherwise ordinary team as far as he does, or will Chicago have to win a championship before Jordan is considered a winner?

The other is the old standby: Who’s the most valuable player in basketball, Michael or Magic?

Magic won last year’s votes, and lobbyists already are conceding this year’s MVP award to Patrick Ewing, who has the advantage of playing in New York, where every Mark Jackson who comes along is immediately proclaimed to be the greatest player in the history of basketball.

Voters in Johnson’s corner have new ammunition. He recently was weakened by illness, and the Lakers, even with two other All-Stars in their lineup, went down the tubes. They even got manhandled by the Ron Harper-less Clippers.

It’s too bad that a faction led by Detroit’s Isiah Thomas got together to scotch the one-on-one war that Michael and Magic were planning. It wouldn’t have told us much, seeing as how Johnson’s specialty is passing, but it sure would have been fun.

Jordan got off a great line on Thomas, saying that what Isiah really wanted was to play Magic himself. “Of course, nobody would have wanted to see that,” Jordan said.

Bad blood has thus been spilled again between Jordan and Thomas, who had had another falling-out a few years ago. Now they have to work side by side in the Eastern Conference’s starting backcourt in Sunday’s All-Star game at Miami.

“Business is business,” Jordan said. “When we play the game, he’ll be my teammate and that’s it. Feelings don’t enter into it. You play with your teammates and against your opponents. That’s the only way to play.”

As for all those Lakers he’ll be playing against?

“Hey, they’re the best,” Jordan said. “They’re the best until somebody proves different. All Detroit really proved is that they could beat the Lakers without Magic and Scott. We’ll see this year if they can do it again.

“But first, they’ve got to get by us.”

Not just us. Him .