Great Debate: Was It Bulls or Jordan?

When it was over, the Bulls donned “Greatest Team Ever” T-shirts, which was either a deserved tribute to themselves or a final delusion of grandeur, depending on your point of view.

Of course, around here, the list of great teams might go like this:

1. ’96 Bulls. Best record ever, 87-13.

2. ’93 Bulls. First three-peat in 27 years.

3. ’92 Bulls. Won title, plus 67 during season.

4. ’91 Bulls. First titlist, 15-2 in the playoffs.

5. ’94 Bulls. Would have won a title if referee Hue Hollins hadn’t cheated us in Game 5 at New York.

In 20 years, of course, these Bulls are likely to be on the dust heap of history and people may still be raving about Michael Jordan. This wasn’t just his salute to his departed father. In case anyone doubted he could do it--and everyone did, starting with Jordan himself--this was the icon coming all the way back.

Jordan’s own greatness is easy to establish, because many of the old-timers who were grinding their teeth at this best team stuff think he’s the best ever.

Jerry West, one of the finest players to walk on a court, the silhouette on the NBA logo and a hard judge, actually believes Jordan is underrated.

ESPN’s Jack Ramsay, general manager of the powerhouse 1967 Philadelphia 76ers, says that team was better than the Bulls but he can find no peer for Jordan.

“Wilt [Chamberlain] was dominating in a different way,” Ramsay says. “He was power dominating. Michael dominates almost every place he plays. He’s a terrific individual defender. He can bring the ball up. He shoots threes. He can post up. He can penetrate and pass . . . .

“Wilt, in a seventh game against Boston [in the ’68 Eastern finals], did not take a shot in an entire second half and his team loses. Do you think Michael would allow that to happen? No. Never.”

It now seems as if Jordan never really went away, but he did. When he returned 18 months later, rusty and inconsistent, even such players as Orlando’s Nick Anderson, a friend, dared to sneer at him (“No, 45 doesn’t fly like No. 23.”).

TV anchors wondered if Jordan was past it. Even this season, ESPN ran charts showing how the old guy did in the second of games on consecutive nights.

They were entitled to their doubts. Jordan had his own.

“Lots,” he said last week in Seattle. “I had a lot of doubt in myself because I never experienced that [drop-off] in my game.

“I’ve said it many times, I’ve always tried to cover up all the holes that people may have seen in my game and last year my game was exposed.”

It is now obvious that trading for Dennis Rodman was inspired but when it happened, it was controversial, especially among the Bulls, who remembered him as the Detroit Bad Boys’ loose screw.

From Day 1, Rodman’s outlaw act and Jordan’s global appeal made this history’s most celebrated team, bigger even than the Wilt-West-Elgin Baylor Lakers, giants of a more innocent time. In a surprise, the Bulls turned out to be a great team too, not just a famous one.

By the time they hit 41-3, everyone was on the bandwagon. At midseason, when they won 18 in a row--by an average of 15 points--they were awesome, indeed. But by the playoffs, showing the toll taken by the hype and the pursuit of 70 victories, they weren’t the same team anymore.

Scottie Pippen, averaging 21 points at the All-Star break, had become a shell of himself. The Bulls struggled to score. It was remarkable that they still went 15-3 while their crack defense held opponents to 44.6% shooting--and they shot 44.3%.

Their games were tortured, with only a few flashes: Jordan’s fireworks show at the end of the Game 3 loss in New York; the rally from 18 behind in Game 2 against the Orlando Magic; Jordan’s 15 in a row in Game 3 at Seattle.

As a whole, the playoffs were an artistic dud. For the first time, no team averaged 100 points. The 162 points the finalists totaled in Game 6 were 13 fewer than the Minneapolis Lakers and the Knicks scored in the last game of 1953--just before they put in the shot clock to speed the game up.

On the other hand, who cared?

Torpid games and lack of suspense notwithstanding, TV ratings were robust. The ’96 finals are expected to be No. 2 all-time to ‘93’s, when the Phoenix Suns and Charles Barkley made a series out of it. This one was little more than a chance to see Jordan, an undeniable privilege, and partake of the Rodman Experience.

The NBA even let Rodman get near an open mike at the end and paid the price. Dennis said he’d “worked his [rear end] off,” and said of his archenemies, the officials, “Screw ‘em!” By then the truck must have been screaming in Jim Gray’s ear to get Rodman off before he really left them something to remember him by.

Actually, he already had. It was the 1995-96 Bulls, history’s most memorable team, if, perhaps, only one of its best.