This College Reunion Is Fun for Just One : Bulls: Jordan’s moves are too much for the Lakers’ Worthy, his one-on-one opponent when both played for North Carolina.

Michael Jordan and James Worthy used to play one-on-one when they attended North Carolina, where they were teammates on the Tar Heels’ 1982 NCAA championship team.

Jordan has refined his moves since their college days, as Worthy discovered Sunday.

Matched against Worthy in the final quarter of Sunday’s game against the Lakers, Jordan scored 14 of his game-high 33 points in the last 12 minutes as the Bulls rebounded from a seven-point third-quarter deficit to win, 103-97, before 17,505 at the Forum.

“Today, it was like we were back at North Carolina playing one-on-one after practice,” Jordan said.

“We’ve had some good matches, and that experience made a big difference today.”

After scoring only 10 points during the first half, Jordan scored 23. He finished with 11 assists and eight rebounds.

Jordan, who got into foul trouble during the third quarter, made only six of 16 shots in the first three quarters, but he made his first four shots during the final quarter and wound up making seven of 11 during the quarter.

Jordan felt he had an advantage against Worthy because he is quicker than the Laker forward, who was playing out of position at guard.

“I felt they were trying to maximize his offensive ability against me defensively,” Jordan said.

“But he had to do the same thing against me. I had the quickness and all I had to do was knock down the jump shot so that he would come out of a zone, because he was going to sit back and give me a jump shot all game.”

After Worthy was assigned to check Jordan, the Bulls ran isolation plays to free Jordan.

“The isolations were coming strictly by design because I had Worthy on me and I really felt I had the advantage,” Jordan said.

“Once we saw that it was working and I was in my rhythm, why change it? Let’s just milk it until it runs dry, and that’s what we did.”

Worthy was unable to stop Jordan.

“He’s just a remarkable player,” Worthy said. “He wasn’t doing anything different against us than he’s done the last six or seven years.

“You try to deny him the ball if you can and try to make him play hard and take him out of his comfort zone. But after you’ve done that, you’ve done all you can do.”

With the Bulls trailing, 79-75, Jordan scored 14 of their next 16 points, making six shots and setting up teammate Horace Grant for a short hook shot as Chicago took command.

Jordan punctuated the Bulls’ 16-8 run by faking Worthy into the air and driving past him for a layup.

“I couldn’t believe he went for that,” Jordan said. “I’d just hit three outside jump shots and I saw him lunging.

“I went up with the shot one-handed and pulled it back and got him out of his defensive position and was able to drive.”

Said Worthy: “That was an awesome fake. That was the same one that’s in the highlight film against Atlanta.”

Jordan’s fourth-quarter burst was a reversal of his performance during a 102-89 loss to the Lakers in December at Chicago Stadium, when he missed his last 10 shots, including a breakaway dunk.

“They snuck up on us last time,” Jordan said. “We kind of took them for granted and the next thing you know they whooped us. We remembered that.

“We didn’t want to underestimate this team. We wanted to come in and aggressively attack them.”

Jordan also played good defense, blocking a three-point shot by Laker guard Byron Scott in the final seconds of the game.

“That was a foul, but I got away with it,” Jordan said. “I told Byron that’s what happened.”