Bulls Apply Direct Pressure and Get Well

Led by the magnificent Shaquille O’Neal, the Orlando Magic rebounded from its ignominious Game 1 lie-down to grab an 18-point lead Tuesday night and ease to a . . .

Whoops! Before you could say “I thought you brought the life jackets,” the Chicago Bulls threw on a withering full-court press that turned the United Center into a raging storm and swallowed the young Magic whole. The Bulls won, 93-88, and lead the Eastern Conference finals, 2-0.

The rally was led--surprise--by Michael Jordan, who scored 17 of his 35 points in the third quarter, starting it all off with one of his four steals.

Afterward Jordan, 33, said he was so tired and cramped up, he could barely sit in the interview room.

“That pressing is a lot of work, isn’t it?” someone asked.

“Yeah,” Jordan said, grinning. “I guess I should ask for $36 million, huh?”

The turnaround couldn’t have been more dramatic, nor the pressure any more devastating. In the last 6:16 of the third quarter, after Orlando had taken a 64-46 lead, the Bulls outscored the Magic, 21-5. In the first 11:30 of the fourth quarter when the Bulls took the lead and drew away, they outscored the Magic, 21-12.

“I think you saw the Bulls at their finest tonight,” Coach Phil Jackson said, “as far as building pressure.”

Said Magic guard Penny Hardaway: “It was like we lost our confidence in the fourth quarter. We didn’t have enough left to finish the game.”

They didn’t start the series with much either, after lying down on the tracks in Game 1, getting run over by the Bulls’ Express to the tune of 121-83 and losing power forward Horace Grant in the process.

It wasn’t a pleasant two days in the Windy City, what with the local press sneering at the visitors, especially O’Neal. The Tribune called him “a sad waste.” The Sun-Times held an impromptu contest to see if area teenagers could better Shaq’s one-for-7 performance at the foul line. The paper chose four kids--two boys and two girls, all of whom beat O’Neal and ran their pictures in a full-page spread.

Tuesday night, it was a different O’Neal who showed up and took it to the Bulls. He had 26 of his 36 points by halftime, at which time he had made 11 of 16 shots. He even made four of his first six free throws.

The Magic was up, 53-38. In the dressing room, Jackson told his players, “We’re just where we want to be.”

Of course, that wasn’t how he really felt, but they still had a half to play.

“As much as you warn the players,” Jackson said, “as much as you anticipate this [a letdown] happening . . . I told our players at halftime, everything we didn’t want to do and we anticipated them doing, they did and we didn’t.”

The Bulls came out and turned the pressure up. The Magic stood up to it. The lead grew to 64-46 on O’Neal’s jump hook with 6:16 left in the third quarter.

The Bulls kept the pressure on. The Magic wilted.

Jackson had in a small lineup, with 6-8, 220-pound Dennis Rodman defending the 7-1, 320-pound O’Neal, with lots of help. Jackson had to junk his defensive scheme, playing Shaq one-on-one, giving the Magic the three-point shots it lives on. However, the Magic’s three-pointers didn’t go down. Instead, the Magic did.

“We were careless with the ball,” O’Neal said. “Whenever we get the lead, we have to take care of the ball.”

Said Hardaway: “They started coming quicker [to double-team O’Neal]. That was really what we wanted, but we couldn’t take advantage of it. I had two wide-open three-pointers that I missed. It came at a crucial time, when they made that run. If I make them, we stop the run.”

Said Jordan: “We’re hesitant to use the press. We’re probably the oldest team in the playoffs. We try to conserve energy and it takes a lot of energy to press. But we were 14 or 18 down and we didn’t have a choice.”

And the Magic, it turned out, didn’t have a chance.

“You can prepare for their press,” Magic Coach Brian Hill said, “but you can’t match with your second unit what their first unit is like when they put pressure on you. You can’t match Scottie Pippen and Michael Jordan and Ron Harper and Randy Brown.”

They couldn’t match the sound of 24,395 howling like banshees at them, either, but at least the Magic players are finally going home, where the cheers will be for them, they hope.