Bulls’ Decision Is a Benchmark

Who you gonna’ call when you’re down 15 in the fourth quarter and the Portland Trail Blazers are playing like you always feared they might?

Stacey King, Bobby Hansen, Scott Williams and B.J. Armstrong!

Stacey King?

“It was a pretty motley crew, wasn’t it?” Williams said.

Yes.

In Chicago Bulls Coach Phil Jackson’s best scenario, he’d get three minutes out of these mutts and they’d cut a couple of points off the lead or keep it even. That’s the extent of your expectations-any coach’s expectations-when he goes to the deep, deep, deep end of the bench in Game 6 of the National Basketball Association Finals.

Asked if it was pretty daring resting Michael Jordan with 12 minutes to play, and sending Scottie Pippen out with this crew, Jackson said, “Either daring or stupid.”

The record will show Jordan scored the decisive free throws. It will show Jordan gave the Bulls their first lead in ions, when he stole the ball from Buck Williams off an in-bounds play and slammed it with 4:03 to play. It will show he and Pippen scored the final 19 points in one of the darndest comebacks you’ll ever see. But what should be highlighted is the fact that Jordan never would have gotten the chance, not in Game 6 anyway, unless King, Hansen, Williams and Armstrong hadn’t played the best few minutes of their careers.

Jordan, even when he’s in the best of moods, calls the reserves, “my supporting cast.” Usually, that’s about what they deserve, small print. Sunday night, they deserved Oscars. Usually, they specialize in missing shots, turning it over, putting the other team at the foul line, and generally giving away so much lead that Jordan has to strap on his cape and abandon any rest Jackson might have planned for him. Sunday, they won the Bulls a second consecutive NBA title.

“I felt like a cheerleader, like Cliff Levingston,” Jordan said, invoking the name of the Bulls’ resident towel-waver, Chicago’s version of Boston’s infamous M.L. Carr. “It’s the most I’ve ever cheered on the outside. I was so happy for them. I was trying to show them how much I appreciated their output. All year, Scottie and I have been a 1-2 tandem. (Sunday night), I contributed a little. When I came back in, I wasn’t going to try and break the chemistry that had evolved among them. I wasn’t anxious to get back in, I wasn’t angry. All I wanted to do was blend. I told them, ‘Don’t focus on me, you were doing well without me. You’re already in a rhythm.’ ”

Imagine Jordan telling this crew, “You’re in a rhythm.”

But that’s exactly what they were in. Down 79-64 to start the fourth, it was shocking enough to see Hansen, B.J., King and Williams start the quarter. As Jordan had already said to them at the end of the third, “The last thing we want to see is Game 7.”

Jackson said he was thinking, “They’ve got the fresh legs and the energy,” and he sent them out.

Hansen, whose primary function this series was to play defense on Clyde Drexler and Terry Porter -- because he had done so while with the Utah Jazz -- started the period by nailing a three-pointer. Then he stripped the ball from Jerome Kersey, who committed a flagrant foul. King hit one free throw, and Pippen converted the automatic possession by scoring over Drexler for 79-70.

You might think Jackson would look toward Jordan and John Paxson and Horace Grant and Bill Cartwright by this time. Nope. Not even a glance. Pippen and the CBAs on the floor, and about 60 points a game on the bench. King shot over Drexler, then hit two free throws. After Robinson missed, Pippen backed in Drexler for another turnaround. After Clyde double-dribbled, Armstrong hit a jumper. Now, the lead was five, 81-76.

OK, that’s it, right, Phil? You’re going to bring back Jordan now, right? Time to quit goofing around with these nobodies. No. Jackson leaves them in for one more possession and damned if King, disciple of John “Hot Plate” Williams, doesn’t score over Buck Williams for 81-78.

Portland called time out with 8:36 to play, but the game was over. Right there, trailing by three, the Bulls had won.

Stacey King?

My Supporting Cast had bailed out Jordan and won a championship by staying on the floor for 3:24. That’s 24 seconds longer and about eight points closer than Jackson or any of the Bulls would allow themselves to fantasize.

During that timeout, Jordan came back to the lineup, and you know the rest. Crowd fired up, Jordan fired up, team fired up, doom for Portland. Poor, forlorn, misguided, can’t-even-stop Bobby Hansen Portland.

“I didn’t think I’d be there long,” Jordan said of his bench time, “but as the team came back, I didn’t mind being over there.”

In the locker room, where they usually dress in solitude while Pippen and Jordan explain how they did it, Williams and Hansen and B.J. and King were engulfed by reporters. “No one guy among us can do everything,” Williams said. “Hansen can play defense, Stacey can score, B.J. can score and handle the ball and I can get rebounds. That’s about it. They call us the Red Team in practice, or the Bench Brothers. We had nothing to lose, right? We’re down 15, you figure we’ll chip away at the lead. We got it down to about five or six, and I’m looking back to the bench, thinking Phil’s going to put Michael back in. And he doesn’t.

“It was unbelievable,” he said. “I mean, it can’t get any better than that.”

Across the way, the Trail Blazers were trying to figure out what hit them, if this had been some trick strategy Jackson had gotten from David Copperfield. “It had nothing to do with us relaxing,” Coach Rick Adelman said. “They are a very, very deep team. The guys on the floor really got after us.”

Meanwhile, Jordan reflected. He’d won the MVP of the league and the NBA Finals for the second consecutive time, something no player--not Wilt, not Russell, not Kareem, not Magic, not Bird -- had ever done. And Sunday, he’d gotten something many of us thought we’d never see. Championship support. In waves. From guys so far down the bench Jackson needs a microphone for them to hear him call. Asked how he felt about getting such heavy-duty support, Jordan smiled and said, “It’s all I ever wanted.”