Just One of Those Nights for Jordan

Rick Mahorn and Charles Barkley were sitting in a locker room last week, conversing about the news of the day. Michael Jordan’s name, as it often does, came up. Barkley was asking Mahorn if he knew Jordan wears a new pair of sneakers every game.

“Did you know that, Ricky?” Barkley asked. “That’s because he wears them out. You probably need 40 games to go through one pair. No lift.”

Barkley said he sure doesn’t go through a pair of shoes a game.

“Charles,” Mahorn said, “you’re no Michael Jordan.”

No one is. Not Magic Johnson or Larry Bird or Patrick Ewing or Akeem Olajuwon. They all are great, but no one is Michael Jordan. That was certainly driven home after Jordan went for a cool 69 points in a 117-113 overtime victory against Cleveland Wednesday night, the ninth-highest scoring output in NBA history and the best one-game explosion in almost 12 years.

“It was just one of those nights,” Bulls Coach Phil Jackson said, “where the guy was just incredible. We got a lot of it just out of our offense. A lot of it happened because they started (Winston) Bennett out on him, and (Craig) Ehlo had (Scottie) Pippen. With that matchup we tried to get Scottie going and it didn’t really work, and with about four minutes left in the quarter, he just got going.”

“I’ve had big nights before,” Jordan said, “but we lost. I didn’t want to let that happen again. I kept telling myself, ‘Don’t stop, keep pushing.’ I had my outside shot going, then I knew I was on my way. Ehlo had to come up on me, or else just back off. He didn’t know how to play me because I had everything going.

“When you see a defender going back on his heels like that, it’s a great feeling.”

Jordan scored 16 points in the first quarter, 15 in the second quarter, 20 in the third, 10 in the fourth and eight in overtime. And in between, he grabbed a career-high 18 rebounds.

It’s easy to tell when Jordan is going to have one of these games. You play him to drive early and make him shoot his jumper. If he scores from the perimeter, look out. If not, you back off completely and make him beat you from outside. That’s what the Washington Bullets did last week, and he scored but 21 points.

Wednesday, no such luck: He shot 11 of 15 in the first half.

“At the half,” Jackson said, “I just said, ‘Let’s see if he’s still hot, and let’s just ride him.’ ”

He was, and Chicago took a 17-point lead late in the third quarter. Jackson took Jordan out for some rest, but the Cavaliers immediately got within seven. Jordan returned, made a big jumper with the 24-second clock running down (“Just really took their hearts out,” Jackson said), and kept Chicago from completely blowing its lead. Ehlo hit a three-pointer to tie with 11 seconds left in regulation, and Jordan missed a three-pointer at the buzzer.

Of course, scoring 61 in four quarters tends to stagnate the rest of the offense. Jackson is trying his best to put a good face on the fact that one man (with six assists) was responsible for 69 percent of his offense.

“The reason it works well on our team,” he said, “is we know what he is and that he can have nights like this. It wasn’t that other people didn’t have shots. (John) Paxson had just a horrible night because he got in foul trouble early. ... We just talked about the fact that we didn’t want guys to stand around watching Michael. But he was the one. Guys were looking for him.”

You get the feeling Jordan is angry at Cleveland. In the 1987 playoffs, he averaged 45 points in a five-game series. Last spring he crushed the Cavaliers’ postseason plans with a last-second, hanging-till-eternity jumper to win the first-round playoff series.

This year?

In the season opener, Jordan shot 19 for 31 from the floor, 15 of 17 from the foul line to score 54; the Bulls won in overtime, 124-119. On Jan. 3, he went 15 of 32, eight of nine for 38 points; Chicago won, 93-87. Last Friday, he shot 18 of 32, five of six, scoring 41; the Bulls took a 102-95 victory. Add Wednesday’s 23 of 37, 21 of 23 and you have:

A .538 shooting percentage (71 of 132) from the field and .907 (49 of 54) from the foul line for 202 points, a 50.5 average.

Jordan has scored at least 40 points 98 times, 19 against Cleveland. And six of his 24 games of at least 50 points have come vs. the Cavaliers. Ehlo usually has been the guy looking up as Jordan flies by.

“A guy like that,” poor Ehlo said, “should score 70. I thought he had 71. He’s amazing.”