Officials Celebrating Peaceful Celebration

The aftermath of the Chicago Bulls’ championship left 650 people arrested in 6 1/2 hours and 38 stores looted or broken into. City officials were happy to declare victory.

“They’re just criminals,” Mayor Richard Daley said Monday of those who took part in the violence.

The numbers were down dramatically from Chicago’s three previous NBA championship celebrations, especially 1992’s, when rioters set fire to businesses and damaged scores of police cars, city buses and subway cars. The damage that year was estimated at more than $10 million.

The number of arrests was down significantly from the 1993 championship celebration, when 906 people were arrested, police spokesman Pat Camden said.

And of the three homicides reported during the period, investigators decided none was related to the Bulls.

Police blocked off streets, closed expressway exits and forced motorists away from the city’s entertainment district, where swollen bars disgorged thousands of rowdy customers after the game.

A kind of mobile mosh pit, in which hundreds of people body-slammed into one another, was kept more or less under control by mounted police.

*

NBC received a Nielsen rating of 17.2 with a 33 share for its telecast of Game 5 of Friday night.

It was the fourth highest Game 5 rating ever and gave NBC a five-game average of 16.3-30, second only to the 17.5-32 for five games of the 1993 series.

Game 6 and total series averages will be available today.

*

The Seattle SuperSonics returned home Monday to an airport crowd of hundreds of boisterous, sign-waving fans who were certain their team was anything but a loser.

Nate McMillan, who saw limited playing time because of a back injury, promised brighter things.

“A lot of people feel that we were just happy to get to this point,” McMillan said. “That’s not the case, by no means. Next year and the next few years we plan to be in this position, and hopefully I’ll be posing with a gold, shiny object.”

*

Dennis Rodman got two of the 11 votes for most valuable player (Michael Jordan won with six and Shawn Kemp got three).

“I just think that this makes the game of basketball worthwhile for me because the last four years have been pretty much hell for me,” Rodman said.