They Have It . . . Made in Chicago : NBA Champions Still Reaping Big Benefits Off Court, but They Aren’t Necessarily the Biggest Team in Town

John Paxson, firing by telemetry, shot 67% during a series of playoff victories that produced an NBA championship for the Chicago Bulls.

Paxson has maintained a hot hand during the off-season.

Earning $325,000 as one of the NBA’s lowest-paid starters last season, Paxson recently signed a three-year, $3.8-million contract with the Bulls, passing up a chance to move to the San Antonio Spurs as a free agent.

He also recently completed a series of commercials for a bank in his hometown, Dayton, Ohio, and is in demand for personal appearances. His fee is $6,000 for two hours, which he received for recent autographing and handshaking appearances at the opening of a refurbished country club and a cocktail reception for a hardware convention.

All of that stems from a championship that allowed Paxson and several teammates to emerge from the financial and artistic shadow of the illustrious Michael Jordan.

It also created a Bull market for team paraphernalia and led to plans for expanded media coverage, but it did not

significantly alter the power structure in an already toddlin’ sports town.

The Bears, White Sox, Cubs and Blackhawks still have their seasons--and often spectacular support.

“The only reason to debate who’s No. 1 in this city is ego,” said Rob Gallas, senior vice president of marketing and broadcasting for the White Sox.

“There’s plenty to go around.”

Consider:

--The White Sox drew 60 consecutive crowds of 30,000 or more before that streak ended Tuesday, including 27 of 40,000 or more. They are on a pace to reach 2.9 million in the first year of the new Comiskey Park, obliterating the club record of 2.1 million. White Sox merchandise is also No. 1 among the 26 major league teams, according to sales figures compiled by Major League Baseball Properties.

--The Cubs, kings of the cable, are averaging more than 30,000 despite a poor first half and will flirt with their club record of 2.49 million.

--The Bears have drawn 60 consecutive sellouts at Soldier Field, and the Blackhawks have drawn 84 in a row at Chicago Stadium, also home of the Bulls.

--And the Bulls themselves have sold out 190 consecutive games, capped the sale of season tickets at 13,000 five years ago and sold out of group tickets in a three-hour shopping spree the other day, prompting management to decide that it will sell group tickets via lottery next year.

“We couldn’t sell any more tickets than we already do, so the impact (of the championship) on attendance and bottom-line dollars will be negligible,” said Steve Schanwald, vice president of marketing and broadcasting for the Bulls.

“The impact has been greater for individual players like John Paxson and Scottie Pippen, who has played Lou Gehrig to Michael’s Babe Ruth for so long. It’s nice to see them get some of the recognition and rewards. And what it’s done for us as a team and organization is help increase the level of interest and enhance our tradition. We have a new and broader fan base, which should make for a stronger franchise post-Jordan.”

It also left the Bulls No. 1 among NBA teams in the sale of merchandise. The Jordan-Magic Johnson championship series alone produced paraphernalia sales of $45 million, more than twice the previous record of $22 million, according to the NBA. The league grossed $1 billion from the sale of licensed products last year, with Jordan and Co. accounting for 20% of that. The league, however, divides that revenue evenly among the 27 teams, meaning the Bulls receive the same as the Clippers.

“The real impact has been to the city,” said Jerry Reinsdorf, owner of the Bulls and co-owner of the White Sox. “Wherever I go, I see (Bulls) shirts and hats, and strangers stop me to say how great it was. People are still excited about it. There’s a tremendous feeling of pride in the city.”

Chicago Tribune columnist Bob Verdi agreed.

“If the White Sox hadn’t been so competitive this summer, fans would be feeding off the Bulls even more,” he said.

Bill Gleason, a longtime Chicago columnist who is a regular on the syndicated TV show, “Sportswriters, Inc.,” took a more cynical view, pointing to a pattern of frustration.

“The big thing in Chicago is that there are no expectations,” he said. “No matter which side of town you’re from, you expect disappointment, so you’re never disappointed.

“The Bulls didn’t transfigure the city because this had been coming. With Michael, the feeling was at some point they’d win a championship. I mean, they were No. 1 for a while, but that’s receding. They’ve got to do it again now. One championship a decade is all anyone can ask for here.”

That cynicism, and the portrait of Chicago as a city of big shoulders and weak teams, may be misleading.

The Bears won the 1985 Super Bowl and five consecutive Central Division championships starting in 1984. The Blackhawks have won five division titles since the 1979-80 season, including the last two. In baseball’s era of parity, the Cubs won division titles in 1984 and ‘89, and the White Sox won a division title in ’83 and experienced an impressive rebirth over the last two seasons.

“That image of Chicago as the second city, as a city of losers, is gone--or should be,” Reinsdorf said. “We have a bunch of competitive teams now, though I do think it would have been a real downer if we had lost (to the Lakers in the championship series).

“The feeling that we were on the verge of having a championship team had been building, and I think the fans might have felt we were never going to get there if we had lost. We forestalled that. We stabilized the franchise and gave everyone in the organization a great lift.”

And gave the city’s other teams a lift in the process, insisted Jim DeMaria, public relations director of the Blackhawks, who suggested each builds on the other.

“I think the success spills over and has a positive effect across the board,” he said. “The Bulls and Blackhawks had the best (regular-season) records in their leagues last year. Our guys were pumped up watching the Bulls, and the Bulls were pumped up watching us.”

The Tribune and Chicago Sun-Times were so pumped that they each put out books and videos on the Bulls’ season, and the Tribune will assign two reporters to the team this year.

Rick Jaffe, new sports editor of the Sun-Times, said: “I’m still getting a feel for the situation, but what I’ve been told is that the Bears own the town, but the Bulls are a close second now. I sit in news meetings with people who don’t know a thing about sports and they suddenly perk up when the Bears are mentioned. I think that’s a pretty good gauge of the interest.”

Said Reinsdorf: “In terms of media attention, the Bears are definitely No. 1. Neal Anderson can run 50 yards against his own team in a preseason scrimmage and it’s the highlight on the 11 o’clock news, no matter what the White Sox or Cubs did that day. I’m a football fan, too, but I don’t think the coverage is always equitable.”

Nevertheless, Sam Smith, who covers the Bulls for the Tribune, said he believes that the championship has enabled many of the Bulls, besides Jordan, “to become as big individually as the Bears, even if their sport isn’t on the same level.”

“The Bulls make appearances now where they’re greeted more as celebrities than objects of curiosity,” Smith said.

Appearance requests have tripled, according to Bulls’ executive Schanwald, and fees have risen commensurately.

Paxson, who has done everything from that hardware show to “Late Night With David Letterman,” will make as much off the court as he did in salary last season, according to his attorney, David Falk, vice chairman of ProServ, the company that also represents Jordan.

Pippen, who has appeared on Oprah Winfrey’s and Arsenio Hall’s shows, among others, can demand at least $8,000 for a 90-minute appearance, but he hopes to bow out of that phase of the market in favor of three or four endorsement contracts that he is close to signing, attorney Jimmy Sexton said.

“Chicago is a sports-crazed town where a two-hour appearance can turn into a circus,” Sexton said. “You get up to leave after the agreed-to time and the 600 people still in line consider you a jerk. You can’t please everybody. Scottie is more geared to business-type relationships.”

Pippen attended a recent White Sox game with the Rev. Jesse Jackson. Pippen left separately and received a standing salute from fans in that area as he walked up the aisle, a measure of his new fame on a team where recognition and Q ratings belonged only to Jordan in the past.

“Michael is a dominating figure who enjoys that role, but when people think of the Chicago Bulls now, they don’t just think of Michael Jordan,” Sexton said. “Scottie and some of the other players have forged a major niche apart from Michael.”

Perhaps, but Jordan’s market value is such that he can afford to share revenue from his post-championship Disneyland commercial with teammates and push for their inclusion in others.

Jordan, who will make $3.25 million in salary next season, makes $20 to $24 million a year from his commercial contracts, including a reported 10-year, $18-million deal with Gatorade, which he recently signed but was being negotiated before the championship.

“Michael isn’t looking to develop a significant number of new associations,” attorney Falk said. “And it’s unlikely any will result strictly from the championship.”

Nevertheless, the championship will mean more money to Jordan.

“Michael has equity in many of the companies he represents,” Falk said. “He receives royalty from the sales, and those sales should increase because of Michael’s performance and visibility in the championship. Michael will probably benefit more than anyone on the team, but only Michael and his financial advisers will know to what extent.”

Jordan seldom appears in public unless it is to play golf in a celebrity event. It has been reported that he switched commercial allegiance from Coca-Cola to Gatorade because Gatorade put fewer demands on his time.

He has received some criticism from teammate Craig Hodges and others, among them former football star Jim Brown, on a recent visit to Chicago, for his failure to visit the poor neighborhoods of that community, to do more on a personal level, to be more outspoken on behalf of black issues. He has also been criticized for a commercial he made on behalf of the Illinois State Lottery, the criticism being that lotteries solicit money from people who can least afford to part with it, many of whom are black.

Hodges and others concede that Jordan has made considerable contributions through his charity foundations and that crowd control at appearances poses a difficult problem. Falk denied that Jordan has sacrificed his social conscience and responsibility in return for financial gain.

“Michael was brought up in a color-blind environment and is proud of that and his identity,” Falk said. “He has never sought publicity for his contributions, which are significant. People are always trying to drag down stars of his magnitude.”

Said reporter Smith: “It’s like shooting off one firecracker on the Fourth of July. Michael has such celebrity status that I can’t imagine it being threatened by what anyone says.”

Air Jordan still travels in his own stratosphere, but he is not the Bulls’ only celebrity now in a city that belongs to more than one team.