COMMENTARY : For Suns, Beating Bulls Is a Riot

In the good news, the city is safe.

Three hundred members of the Illinois National Guard went off alert. One hundred fifty reinforcements from the State Police went home. The Chicago Police Department went back on its normal schedule.

Those videos they had been showing all day with Michael Jordan asking for “a three-peat, but not on the street” went back on the shelf.

In the bad news, the city is a little depressed right now.

Chicago averted a riot Friday night, but not in the manner intended. The beloved Bulls were nosed under, 108-98, and now must break through in Phoenix again or they’re going to be airlifting psychiatrists in here.

“It’s funny,” said Charles Barkley, fed the fattest straight line in a life where none were required.

“You see the mayor, everybody saying don’t destroy the city. I told the guys let’s forget about the game and just go back to Phoenix for Happy Hour.

“I’m walking down Michigan Avenue today and I don’t see anything in the stores. I got worried for a second. I thought I was back in the neighborhood.”

Chicago went into its home run trot Wednesday when the Bulls went up, 3-1. The twin tasks were to assess the Bulls’ place in history--high according to Bull players, lower according to experts--and prevent a recurrence of last year’s riot, when the enraged offspring of Yuppies ran through the streets.

The Suns, though competitive through Games 3 and 4, were an afterthought.

“Right Here, Right Now,” said a huge headline in the Chicago Sun-Times.

Barkley, predictably droll, reviewed these events before the game.

“This,” he said, “is like dividing up the will before the person is dead.”

Not only did the Bulls have the outcome planned, but the script leading up to it.

They were not going to go prone again and wait for Michael Jordan to sling them over his shoulder. They were going to “step up” and prove they were a real basketball team and not 11 caddies.

Jordan didn’t touch the ball in the first four possessions, in which time the Bulls scored no points and got one shot up to the basket.

Also, the Suns’ offense, roaring since it hit Chicago, kept on going. The Bulls are used to shutting teams down, but these undermanned, undersized, under-respected Suns remain a puzzle for them.

“You guys all talked about them guarding me with one man in Game 1,” Barkley said. “I just missed shots.

“You ever try to guard me with one man again, I’ll have 20 by halftime. Ain’t one player can guard me. You can write that down.”

Midway through the second half, the NBA passed out an advisory to the press on postgame procedure in the event of a Bull victory.

The trophy presentation would be on the floor and would last 15 minutes. For writers on deadline, NBC’s interviews would be fed over the Chicago Stadium public-address system.

This was OK with the newspapermen as long as intrepid news-hound Ahmad Rashad was on the case.

Rashad: “Gosh, Your Eminence, that was tougher than you thought it’d be, wasn’t it?”

Jordan: “Yes, it was, Ahmad. When we’re done here, could you pull my car around?”

As it turned out, normal post-game procedure prevailed.

Barkley confided to NBC’s Hannah Storm that God wanted the Suns to win, then showed up in the interview room with a huge smile, so happy he didn’t once remind the press corps to get a life.

“I believe there’s such a thing as destiny,” Barkley proclaimed. “And I told Michael that at dinner.”

What’d he say?

“He said he read a different Bible than I did.”

With the world turned upside down, it was only appropriate that Jordan give the press its nightly lecture.

“That’s the difference between you guys and us,” he said. “You guys will never know what it takes to play a game like this. Sometimes the desire, the heart and the energy is there, but the body and mind doesn’t act as one.

“I think Horace Grant is probably feeling the worst of all of us. . . . He did not play the way he wanted to play. He should not hang his head low. He should hang his head high.”

That’s how the Bulls left Friday night, their heads hung high.

The Suns left as they arrived, laughing. What, them worry?

“All I know is Michael said he isn’t coming to Phoenix,” Kevin Johnson said. “So if he doesn’t, this series is over.”