Walking on Air : Bulls Keep Elite Status Without Jordan

Who are these guys?

Old What’s His Name is back in Chicago practicing with the college coach who got Madonna ready for her baseball movie, but the Bulls--the Jordanaires, “my supporting cast”--don’t seem to have noticed he’s gone.

Only one of Michael Jordan’s nine teams ever beat this season’s 32-13 start. Without their leader, their idol, their crutch, their sometime-tormentor, they’ve had to grow up overnight and have.

“Pete Myers put it well,” Horace Grant said a few days ago. “ . . . He said since Michael retired, it seems like the flowers in the garden are starting to bloom.”

That’s nice. Just who is Pete Myers, anyway?

Of course, there’s another explanation for the Bulls’ success: fluke.

“Come June, they’re going to miss that superstar,” said Jordan’s buddy, Phoenix forward Charles Barkley. “When it’s time to take that shot, they’ll have their thumb in their ears. I don’t think the Suns can win without me, and I don’t think the Bulls can win without Michael. It’s really amazing to me and it confirms what I’ve always thought. Some people are asses.”

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Call it character, call it a good team in a weak league, but “some people” remain among the NBA elite.

When the Bulls recovered from their 4-7 start and began winning, Coach Pat Riley of the New York Knicks said Chicago still had more talent than any team in the East, perhaps less of a compliment than a needle for his rival, Bull Coach Phil Jackson. But when the Bulls took off again in mid-January, Riley’s praise was unqualified. “The Chicago Bulls,” Riley said last week, “probably play the game of basketball better than anyone in the league.”

In fact, the Bulls are modestly talented and acknowledge it themselves. What they’ve done is a function of playing the game well--of their peculiar triangle offense with its premium on moving the ball and cutting, of great chemistry, of a roster happy to attend to the unglamorous details that give it a chance to win.

“They’re a different team now,” Sun Coach Paul Westphal said. “When they had Michael, I think people could see the team stall and hesitate when he was out, and they assumed they would keep doing that with him gone. What’s happened is they’ve just really grown.

“They have three All-Stars, that’s a good nucleus. And the guys they’ve added are really just good complimentary players. They know what they’re doing defensively. They play to win. They play together. I think they’ve surprised everybody, probably even themselves.”

Despite three consecutive titles, the Bulls were never an imposing team. They didn’t have great size. Their center was old. Their bench didn’t have a 10-point scorer. Their point guards were spot-up jump shooters, waiting for Jordan to draw the defense.

Then Jordan left.

Bill Cartwright, John Paxson, Scott Williams and Scottie Pippen went on the injured list.

Who were the 1993-94 Bulls?

Steve Kerr?

At 28, he arrived as a free agent on a one-year, minimum-scale, unguaranteed contract, hoping to avoid early retirement after aging a lifetime in a half-season on the Orlando Magic’s bench.

“In the NBA, if you’re out of sight, you’re out of mind,” Kerr said. “I mean, there’s no question. Two years ago in Cleveland, I started the last 20 games and four or five playoff games. I had no doubt I was going to be in the league for a long time. I had a lot of teams that were interested.

“And then last year, I didn’t play at all, I’m a free agent over the summer, and anybody literally could have had me. But they all saw what I did in Orlando and they figured, ‘Well, he’s washed up.’ I hardly had any offers at all over the summer.”

Pete Myers?

Tired of being the final cut, he fled to Europe for steady work. He wanted a shot with a team that didn’t have five guards with guaranteed money. With Paxson out and Jordan gone, the three-time defending champion Bulls were suddenly the land of opportunity.

The Bulls offered a chance and a one-year, minimum-scale, unguaranteed contract.

Bill Wennington?

Best remembered in the NBA for waving a towel on the Dallas Mavericks’ bench to fire up the fans, he, too, was back from Europe, with more game, added confidence . . . and a one-year, minimum-scale, unguaranteed contract.

“Steve Kerr and I had arrived two weeks before camp started,” Wennington said, “and we started working out with some of the coaches and some of the guys over there (at the Bulls’ suburban facility).

“And one Friday they said, ‘Well, don’t come in till 1 o’clock in the afternoon.’ And it’s on the news! Michael’s on the air at 10 in the morning when we’re usually there and he’s retiring! “We thought, ‘Oh well, things will definitely be different and not what we expected.’ ”

Stunned to the soles of their feet, the Bulls made the standard denials: We’re still a good team; this is going to be an opportunity; we’ll all divide up Mike’s role taking the big shot, etc.

To themselves, they said: Look out below.

“I did feel that in training camp we weren’t very good,” Kerr said. “And there was a major transition to make. The whole team was built around him. . . .

“If you take our three top guys, I’d put ‘em against pretty much anybody: Horace (Grant), Scottie (Pippen) and B.J. (Armstrong). But if you look at the rest of the team, we’ve got guys like myself, Bill Wennington and Pete Myers who’ve just been around and played all over the world, played in different leagues for different teams. We got a few castoffs on the team.”

Nor was there anything reassuring about their 4-7 start.

“I didn’t think we really had it,” Myers said. “ ‘Cause so many guys were hurt. It was spooky at the beginning. It was very spooky. We went on a West Coast trip and came out like 2-5. I thought we’d be a little below .500, maybe .500.”

How fast can it turn around?

Pippen returned, and the Bulls took off. Coming into tonight’s game against the Clippers at the Sports Arena, they’re 28-6 since he got off the injured list.

For a half-season, at least, they’ve been a team of destiny.

Wennington threw down a windmill dunk over Patrick Ewing in a nationally televised game.

Kerr was above 50% on three-pointers until mid-January.

Toni Kukoc won three games at the buzzer, including one over the Indiana Pacers with a running, banked three-pointer.

Kerr won a game with a buzzer shot.

Grant beat the Lakers and the Charlotte Hornets at the buzzer with offensive rebounds.

Until this West Coast swing, they hadn’t defeated a team with a winning record on the road, but they bopped the Jazz and the Warriors on successive nights. In Salt Lake City, Wennington scored six points in the final 4:40 of a 94-85 victory over Utah.

The headline in the next day’s Salt Lake City Tribune read: “Air Wennington Makes Jazz Forget Jordan.”

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Of course, now everyone has been alerted and the Bulls are getting the big treatment.

By the time they got to Phoenix Sunday, the Suns were psyched and won, 89-88. Barkley, who was injured but vowed in NBC promos to make his presence felt, renewed his disdain for the Bulls to a nationwide viewing audience.

“Everybody’s making a big deal out of how the Bulls are doing,” he said afterward. “Let’s see, all the stuff is gonna come clean in June.”

How about an NBA finals rematch?

“Longshot, at best,” Barkley said. “I don’t really think there’s a silver lining (to Jordan’s departure). I think until reality hits, as long as they’re playing well, everything is fine. They’re on an emotional roller coaster right now but it’s just going up.

“But hey, I don’t think it’s really that impressive in the regular season of the NBA to play that well right now. How many teams are there in the NBA? (27) How many above .500?”

Twelve.

Let’s just say there are still skeptics in the world, and maybe there should be. When you see it and you still can’t believe it, you’ve got an authentic phenomenon or the 1993-94 Bulls.