Wilkins Is Taking Air Out of Jordan

This time it was Gerald Wilkins celebrating to the thunder of the crowd, offering slapped palms and luxuriating in the fact the crowd wanted his hand. They wanted his hand and he needed their cheers.

So he spread his arms in the middle of the court, smiled broadly and waved his pointed No. 1 fingers. He took it all in. “I heard cheers and cheers and saw towels and towels,” Wilkins said in the warmest afterglow of his career.

He had gone head-to-head and chest-to-chest with Michael Jordan, a challenge that has burned better players to a crisp, and had won. He had worn Jordan down. And the New York Knickerbockers -- even with Patrick Ewing far less than dominating -- won the game, 93-86, to tie their series at two games each.

“It was the biggest win of my career,” Wilkins said. He paused a beat and added “to date.” If they’ve split four games with the defending champions, the team of Michael Jordan, “there’s no telling what can be.”

The thought of what can be was in every throb as the Knicks roared out with the first seven points of the fourth quarter to take a 73-67 lead, and Jordan couldn’t put the Bulls together again.

“Who’da thunk it?” Wilkins said. He’s been with the Knicks seven seasons, long enough to have absorbed some of the language of the people along with an understanding of what makes them cheer and what makes them boo. He has excited their imaginations and tried their patience. The nature of the circumstance made this his finest hour--38 minutes, to be precise.

He contained Jordan, held him to 29 points, a figure more suitable to mere mortals than Jordan when his team is losing a game in the playoffs. “I think I did a hell of a job,” Wilkins said. And he did. He didn’t let Jordan win the game.

Wilkins produced 17 points himself, but most notably he contained Jordan to nine second-half points.

What the Knicks have done in eliminating Detroit and now in hanging tough with the Bulls has changed the point of view of the crowd. Those people are no longer eager to see a bravura performance by Jordan; they wanted to see Wilkins stop him; they wanted to see the Knicks win the game.

They loved seeing Wilkins and the demands of games on consecutive days wear down the indefatigabull Jordan.

Wilkins had done well defensively the first three games of the series, playing some erratic offense -- but that’s what he does. If the game were a track meet, he’d be an All-Star, but that’s always been a problem for him. It’s not just burning rubber; sometimes it’s playing in control, taking the right shot and passing up the wrong shot. That’s why the crowd burned his ears with boos in the fifth game with Detroit. Boy, he’d been doing that to the crowd for years.

He didn’t try to deny he heard every voice as if inside his head. “Everybody who’s ever been booed knows it’s going to hurt,” Wilkins said. “That’s why tley do it. They want you to know how they feel. That’s why they clap and cheer, too. I know what they mean; they want to see me do well.”

He feels all of that pressure multiplied by the fact this is the last year of his contract, or perhaps the last week. If the Knicks had lost that game, it might have been the last home game he played as a Knick. Getting under the salary cap is a front-office goal.

And he was matched against Jordan as he was the first three games. He’d done well enough, but, he said, “I know I got to do 20 pounds better.

“I know he’s not going to get tired. You play him and he’s doing stuff and you think, ‘How’s he still doing it?’ And then he goes on a tear for five or six minutes. You know he has the ultimate green light; at the yellow light, he speeds up. When he has a red light, he goes through. That’s what he’s always done. I’ve got to be ready to feel like I’m about to die.”

Jordan made nine of 15 shots in the first half for 20 points. Wilkins said he knew Jordan couldn’t do it again. Perhaps it was reasoning after the fact, but it was the case. “It was my thinking,” Wilkins said, play the man front or back but always close.

“In order for us to win, I’ve just got to work like I’ve never worked anybody before -- like three-straight hours non-stop like in the summertime.” He smiled. “Funny, I don’t feel I wasted any energy.”

He played the game at both ends of the court. At one point in the third quarter he was close enough to Jordan to sweat on his uniform, staying with his man and forcing Jordan to throw up an awkward jumper to beat the 24-second clock, off the rim.

Jordan made three of 11 shots in the second half. With the game down to the point where the Knicks needed poise more than points, Wilkins contained himself -- well, mostly. “It’s not a perfect game,” he said. “It’s not a perfect team.”

All of what he did was with full appreciation of his circumstance. He had no grudge for the crowd, he said. But he had been booed at home, which is one of those things a Broadway actor can explain. “It’s like walking into my house and my mother throwing me out,” he said.

He said he didn’t think about that between games any more than he didn’t think about his impending free agency. Not much. “I’m playing for the New York Knicks, not thinking about any other team,” he said. “I’ve been here seven years. I’m still here.”

He’s done his time: December and January, he said. “I’m out of the woods,” he said. “I’m going to know something in July.”

He has tantalized management. There are things he can do. He has tantalzed the crowd. Last week he responded by raising two fingers to the boos the way a man might signal to a rude driver on the expressway.

“Tonight I was celebrating for them as much as for me,” Wilkins said. “They were different fingers.”

He had outdone Michael Jordan.