“Air’ Has Bullets Gulping; Is Anyone Surprised?

This just in: “Michael Jordan tough to stop. Film at 11.” (So Jordan got 55, huh? Who were the Bulls playing, the Denver Broncos?)

You’re not really surprised, are you? I mean, it’s not like Jud Buechler did it. Once or twice a year Jordan does this. He’s like Pat Sajak spinning the Wheel of Fortune -- whichever team comes up, Jordan drops 50 or so on them, and they go home with some lovely parting gifts and a home version of the game. (Thank goodness it was in prime time; it saved me from having to see another Ellen DeGeneres interview. The fall of the Berlin Wall got less coverage.)

I don’t know what anybody on the Bullets is saying to console Calbert Cheaney, but there’s one guy in Seattle who can empathize totally with what Cheaney is going through: Craig Ehlo.

When Ehlo played for Cleveland it was an annual rite of spring to see him valiantly trying to defend Jordan, only to suffer helplessly as Jordan made an impossible shot to break Ehlo’s heart. Ehlo stuck as close to Jordan as Jordan’s new cologne, and still it did no good.

I’m guessing Ehlo sees Jordan in his dreams, and wakes up in a cold sweat. If Ehlo watched what happened to Cheaney on Sunday, he probably had sympathy shivers.

What more could Cheaney have done to stop Jordan? Legally, I mean.

“Yes, I hit him with a bat, your honor. But I’m pleading justifiable homicide. The guy was killing us.”

“I got in that zone, and I couldn’t get out,” Jordan said, making it sound like he locked himself in the rest room at a gas station.

For the longest time I was one of those aging, know-it-all Baby Boomers who argued that: 1) Nobody could be better than Oscar Robertson. And then, after Magic Johnson came along, that: 2) Nobody could be better than Magic.

Jordan’s better.

Jordan’s the best basketball player ever. Maybe Bob Knight is correct when he says that Jordan’s the best player in any team sport ever.

In a weird way it may be one of the highlights of Cheaney’s NBA career that Jordan dropped 55 on him. Think how hard Jordan had to push to get 55. Cheaney, Ehlo and John Starks can console themselves with the fact that they brought the best out in the best player ever.

Now the question for the Bullets is: How can they stop -- Okay, how can they contain No. 23 Wednesday night?

a) Get him on Congressional Wednesday. Let him play 36. Let’s see him get 55 after that.

b) Put him up in the Lincoln Bedroom Tuesday night (c’mon, Bill, make it a freebie), and make a fuss over him in the Rose Garden. You might recall that the last time the Bulls were in town they took a White House tour in the a.m., and got beat in the p.m.

c) Bring in the last guy who shut down Jordan: Dean Smith.

It might be a sign of things to come that as great as Jordan was on Sunday, Chicago needed every breath he took. Without trying to cause a panic in the Reinsdorf household, the rest of the fellows appeared beat-a-bull.

Let’s remember we’ve got a No. 1 seed against a No. 8 seed, and the No. 8 seed has been in position to win each game. Neither Toni Kukoc nor Dennis Rodman seems whole yet. Kukoc has done squadoosh, and Rodman doesn’t seem to have as much lift as he had before hurting his knee. (Now that the knee brace is off, maybe it’s the eye shadow weighing him down.)

And I guess F. Scott Pippen is off writing a novel somewhere. People ask if the Bulls are vulner-a-bull. Off the first two games you’d have to say: They might be. As great as Jordan is, the Bulls can’t expect him to win 15 games by himself.

There is some sense, especially from the gracious postgame comments Jordan has made, that this series is a glimpse into the Eastern Conference future -- in a few years these teams could be passing each other, heading in opposite directions. This may explain the respect the Bullets have shown the Bulls so far, and account for the many self-effacing references that have been made to “the learning experience” the Bullets are undergoing.

My question is: When did the playoffs become a Stanley Kaplan SAT Prep Course?

Don’t get me wrong, learning is great. But this wild mythology has grown up that teams need to get drilled in their first playoff experiences in order to become champions: In Jordan’s first three trips to the playoffs, his Bulls went out 1-3 to Milwaukee in 1985, 0-3 to Bird’s Celtics in 1986, and 0-3 to Bird’s Celtics again in 1987. Isiah Thomas’s Pistons went out in the first round twice and the second round once in his first three trips to the playoffs.

But getting swept doesn’t automatically make you smarter. The only thing it automatically makes you is out of the playoffs.

Enough Pyrrhic victories. Enough thoughtful ruminations about how there’s no shame losing to the greatest basketball player of all time. Enough learning experiences. How ‘bout one of them Ws before they sew the “Wizards” on the jerseys?

This isn’t Orlando-Miami, where the Orlandos have quit like dogs. The Bullets have been in both games late. There’s no reason they can’t win Wednesday at home. So let each of you write this with your hands, keep it in your hearts and shout it from the rooftop-or from someplace even higher up, like those $17 “family seats” in the top two rows, where you’re likely to be sitting with a family of ospreys:

Woulez Boulez!