Bulls Market : Rise of Jordan and Company’s Stock Seems to Have No End in Bid for Another 70-Win Season

Another town, another team that wants a piece of them.

This may be the biggest night of the regular season to you (you rubes) but to the Chicago Bulls, your local heroes are just another bunch of wannabes they have to deal with. Take a number, they’ll get to everyone when it’s their turn.

The NBA isn’t so much a league any more as a backdrop for these guys. Michael Jordan’s supporting cast isn’t only Scottie Pippen and the fellows now, but Shaquille O’Neal, Hakeem Olajuwon and Jeff Van Gundy. Commissioner David Stern’s real purpose in life is to spank Dennis Rodman.

The season now consists of counting Jordan’s 50-point games (two) and Rodman’s suspensions (two) and waiting for the next bizarre turn. President Clinton recently tendered advice to Rodman, as did the Rev. Jesse Jackson. Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott and House Speaker Newt Gingrich have yet to be heard from, but it’s early.

“I guess he doesn’t have to worry about other things in the country,” Ron Harper said after Clinton commented on the Rodman situation, “like crime, people getting killed and kids not being able to read.”

Yes, America, it has come to that. When the Bulls seem to have things in better perspective than our national leaders, it’s time to worry, but that seems to be where the ‘90s are headed.

The Bulls, who play the Lakers tonight at the Forum, are now bigger than the NBA, bigger than anything else in sport, bigger than life, it seems.

Their TV ratings run far ahead of the NBA package. Sportmart recently reported its top-selling jersey nationwide was Jordan’s red Bull top, followed by his black Bull top, Rodman’s red jersey, Rodman’s black jersey, then Anfernee Hardaway, Jerry Rice, Steve Young, Emmitt Smith, O’Neal and Pippen shirts. Jordan’s cologne has sold 1.5 million bottles, $35 million worth.

Forget basketball. A year ago, the Bulls became the first 70-game winners. This season, with no intention of getting caught up in that hysteria and wearing themselves out early again, with Coach Phil Jackson suggesting he’d settle for something in the low 60s, they’re back on a 70-plus pace.

Their winning percentage on the road is better than anyone else’s overall percentage (again). So is their record without Rodman (11-1, 2-0 during his first suspension, 9-1 on this one.)

Like an engine that can run on anything, the Bulls have turned Rodman’s latest debacle into one of those happy events--a challenge!--that makes Jordan’s eyes wide as saucers and lets everyone else know they’ve got trouble.

“I think people understand, we’re a team,” Jordan said a couple of days ago, after the Bulls overmatched the Seattle SuperSonics, their finals opponent last spring.

“We look for challenges. Dennis gave us a challenge in some ways. We dealt with it. Hopefully, he can come back and add to the success of this team thus far.

“I think he can, but we’re not going to lay by the wayside for anybody.”

Deal with that, Rodman and all you contenders aching to dethrone them. The Bulls can win without Rodman. How are you going to beat them when he’s back?

You might consider the plan now favored by Eastern teams like the Miami Heat, Detroit Pistons and Indiana Pacers--allow a year or two for them to pack it in and get in position to make a push after that.

Jordan can’t keep this stuff up that long. (Can he?)

A MODERN FAIRY TALE: THE RODMAN PHENOMENON

People around the Bulls have a common reaction to the hysteria that attends Rodman’s every prank and pratfall:

Why would anyone take this guy seriously, much less invest 10 seconds of time thinking about him?

Rodman, himself, although totally alienated and no one to envy, is lucid enough, appearances notwithstanding, and will cheerfully acknowledge doing this stuff for entertainment value. Earrings and rainbow hair may not be your idea of entertainment, but Rodman knows how to make the moving lens stop on him, the requisite of fame in the TV age.

Announcers at NFL games may revile end-zone dancing, but TV cameras follow players into their boogaloos and directors put their shots on the air. The alternative is dead air, guys shuffling back to the huddle. Next thing you know, no one makes a play without five seconds of choreography and Rodman is dating Madonna.

When Rodman kicked the cameraman at Minnesota, Jackson joked about it, acknowledging later he hadn’t understood how serious it was, especially after “TV got ahold of it.”

Of course, it was TV that got ahold of the NBA, turning a lot of coaches and players making five and six figures into ones making six and seven figures. The lens made Rodman a star, so it was poetic justice the lens exposed him. Eugene Amos’ own camera caught Rodman’s face, a mask of fury, as he lashed out with his foot. That was the lasting image, and Rodman was on his way to a three-week, $1 million-$2 million vacation.

So the politicians pulled up their soapboxes. Rodman did his outlaw act on ABC’s serious news program, “PrimeTime Live,” making it clear he regretted most the inconvenience to himself, and missed the appointment Stern made for him with a Chicago psychiatrist. The closest Rodman got to the prescribed “counseling” was allowing a shrink to sit in when he met with the commissioner in New York.

Meanwhile back on Earth, the Bulls kept rolling. It isn’t as if someone indispensable--like Jordan--were gone.

“We don’t even pay attention to it,” Steve Kerr said before Rodman’s reinstatement Tuesday. “It’s like whoever’s here is going to play and we feel confident we’re still going to win, no matter who’s out.

“I read a quote the other day from [NBC’s] Marv Albert, he says he thinks the Bulls are fed up with the Dennis situation, we wish it would just be resolved and get him out of here.

“I don’t know where that came from because we just play. We’re just enjoying ourselves and having fun, and we hope Dennis is back because we’re a better team with him. And if he’s back, we’ll be fired up and if he’s not, we’re just going to keep playing and see what happens. But it’s not like it’s the talk of the locker room. . . .

“I don’t think Dennis is going to come back and apologize to us. We’ve been with Dennis for a year and a half, and he really doesn’t say much of anything. He doesn’t have to tell us he cares about us. All we need him to do is come back and play hard.”

Or as Luc Longley, the Bull closest to him (go figure) put it recently, “We need you, Dennis, wherever you are. We’ve got your ruby slippers here. And bring Toto with you.”

With Rodman, as always, you don’t know whether to laugh or cry.

HIGHER LIFE FORM

“You can say a lot of things about Michael Jordan, but my basketball skills, I don’t think you can say much about.” --Jordan, last weekend.

Not if you’ve got one brain cell left, you can’t.

In real life, Jordan is not the anti-Rodman but a man with good attributes and bad ones. Like anyone, he often says one thing and does another. Like anyone with a few hundred million dollars, he’s a creature of whims, some of which surprise him too.

In the little world of basketball, however, he’s a higher life form.

A year ago, he was a driven man, trying to get back to the niche he had carved out. Of course, his niche was so far up, eagles couldn’t fly that high.

He was as serious as the punch with which he blackened the eye of the mascot-sized Kerr in a practice skirmish. There was a suggestion their divergent labor views in the troubled summer of ’95 might have entered into it, but Kerr insists that was just Mike last season.

“Didn’t surprise me, especially the way Michael approached training camp a year ago,” Kerr said. “I mean he had a chip on his shoulder. He had something to prove.

“Every day was a war out there and he set the tone right from the beginning, the first day of camp, and I thought that was the reason we had such a great season because from day one it was established we were going to get after it and that meant from day one, on the practice floor too.

“There was a much different tone this year. We were much more relaxed. We didn’t have anything to prove any more, so the edge was gone. We were approaching it more in terms of a marathon.

“Phil gave Michael and Scottie a lot of rest in training camp. Michael was clearly at ease with himself and his game and his place in the game. The previous year he had been knocked by some reporters and opponents, and he took it personally.”

After 46 games of this marathon, the Bulls were 41-5, compared to last season’s . . . 41-5.

Jordan, averaging 30.8 points, is back in his niche, lord of all he surveys, except for an opponent here and there who still forgets himself the tiniest bit. . . .

“You know what?” asks Jordan, incredulously, before the Seattle game. “It’s not really the players any more. It’s the coaches trying to get in my head and all the different accusations. Everyone’s thinking for me and thinking they know me better than I know myself. That’s the difference. The players don’t say much. The coaches say more than the players . . . whether it’s a con job, as Van Gundy once mentioned [after which Jordan scored 51 on the New York Knicks].

“The same here with George Karl, who said I’m taking it easy, I’m afraid to go in the middle. . . .

“If it’s a ploy, I’m not falling for it.”

Ever in need of someone’s face to walk on, Jordan has heard in Karl’s suggestion that Jordan now primarily shoots jumpers “to protect himself,” a code way of saying he’s old.

Ooh, Mike hates it when people say that. He may turn 34 in two weeks, but he doesn’t like anyone but his family celebrating his birthdays.

To show Karl who’s in charge here, Jordan pumps in 26 points from the perimeter--in the first half--as the Bulls go up by 18, treating the SuperSonics like pesky children.

In the second half, Jordan rests, at Jackson’s suggestion, to let the other guys get involved. When the SuperSonics go on a 15-4 run to creep within 60-58 with Key Arena roaring for Bull blood, Jordan arises again.

First, he makes a 17-footer from the left wing, but the referee waves it off, calling a foul on his defender before the shot.

Jordan goes to the other side of the floor and makes a 17-footer.

Next time down, he makes a 16-footer.

Next time down, he dribbles the ball off his foot, races back to pick it up before it rolls over the half-court line, then, pinned by two defenders, leaps into the air and hits Jason Caffey under the basket for a layup.

The SuperSonics go back into their hole. With 4:30 left in the game, Jordan has 45 and the Bulls lead, 88-70. From the time Seattle got within 60-58, it has been Jordan 19, Seattle 12, rest of Bulls 9.

“We cut it to two and he made two incredible jump shots,” Karl said later. “There’s no way you can say, defend him better. We were there, he fades, he’s in the crowd, we’re near him and he hits them.”

Jordan doesn’t take another shot in the last 4:30 and still winds up the only Bull in double figures. He has made 18 of 27 shots; they’ve made 16 of 45.

“He [Karl] was saying he’s scared to drive to the hole,” Harper said. “The man been doing it all his career! The man is a scorer, he don’t have to drive the ball to the hole anymore.

“The name of the game is score two points, and if George Karl don’t like the way he scores his two points, tough on him! I like seeing him score, I don’t care how he does it, I just like seeing him score, inside, outside. Hey, it was a good show, I thought, Jack. Any other coaches got something to say, puh-lease, say it now!”

By now, you couldn’t pry a word out of Del Harris, and if the brash Lakers know what’s good for them, they’ll restrict their greetings to, “Did your lordship have a good trip?”

Michael Jordan may be going on 34, but he’s not going away quite yet.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

The Rematch

Bulls at Lakers

Fox Sports West, 7:30 p.m.