One For All

Bring him the Nikkei closing prices, the Detroit score . . . and two aspirin.

Michael Jordan picked a bad year to be “CEO Jordan” in that TV commercial for his new shoe company. He has many more worries than the Japanese stock market. He’d better stop running back to the office at halftime to inspect sneakers because the Chicago Bulls need a full-time savior.

Actually, one isn’t enough, as they’re learning nightly on their long march to Scottie Pippen’s return--try January--while absorbing the tong blows of an unfeeling universe, trading fire with their own front office and wondering when, or if (or which) Dennis Rodman will show up.

For the moment, the old “supporting cast” is just a tad too heavy and not supportive enough.

“What’s happened is, [opponents] have attacked the snake at its head and gone after Michael with two and three people,” Coach Phil Jackson says. “And when they do that, there’s always been somebody to step into that gap and it’s always been Scottie, for all of Michael’s career.

“Now we’ve got to figure out who’s going to be the next guy to step in when they try to neutralize Michael with an all-out defensive attack.”

OK, let’s see who they have who can play forward but will actually be a 6-7 point guard, who can score 20 points, take eight rebounds and make the all-defensive team?

Oops, looks like they’re fresh out of Scottie models!

For all of their virtuosity, the Bulls never had much firepower. Rodman only looks at the basket after someone else has thrown a basketball up there. Ron Harper recently went two games without a field goal. Steve Kerr, who has 11 of their 25 three-point baskets, is hurt.

Not even Jordan can stop this implosion. This cast may be his most humble since Laney High School (it’s not as good as his North Carolina teams with James Worthy and Sam Perkins and may not even match his first Bulls’ club with Orlando Woolridge and Quintin Dailey.) Jordan now averages 7.5 rebounds--and has career lows going in scoring (25.2, compared to his 31.7 lifetime mark), shooting (41%, compared to 51%), even free-throw percentage (71%, to 84%).

Now he has to endure the “old” question, as when a CNN anchor asked if he’s fading at 34. In the spring, Jordan is a living legend--remember his El Cid Game 5 when he slew the Jazz before Pippen carried him off the court?--and in the fall, he’s decrepit.

“I like to think I’m in better tune with my body than anybody else would know,” Jordan murmured with a calm that belied the fact he considered the question an insult and will remember it when he’s back scoring 40.

In a way, it’s a compliment. After the Bulls went 141-23 for two seasons--the closest team was Seattle, 20 games back--and 75-21 in five postseason title runs, there are people who think he could win a title with 11 mannequins.

A more sophisticated perspective has emerged. Now we know the Bulls need Jordan, Pippen and 10 mannequins. OK, Jordan, Pippen and 10 role players.

Pippen, who is accompanying the team as he rehabilitates from toe surgery, was asked if Jordan is begging him to return.

“Not yet,” he said, grinning. “Maybe after this West Coast road trip.”

THE BEST LITTLE DISORGANIZATION EVER

“Basically, the problem with the offense has been, they haven’t been shooting well. . . . Maybe it’s our age. Maybe some of the older players, their legs aren’t as lively as they could be.”

--Tex Winter, assistant coach

*

That’s Bulls’ assistant coach Tex Winter.

Even if it’s true, it’s unusual for one of their own coaches to acknowledge age as a problem. However, Winter designed their famous “triangle”--known to skeptics in Chicago as “three ways to get the ball to Jordan”--and takes great pride in it.

Besides, these are the Bulls.

In the long history of chaos, there have been few sports organizations like theirs, not even George Steinbrenner’s Yankees or Charlie Finley’s A’s.

None shrugged it off as the Bulls have, rolling to five titles in Jordan’s last five full seasons, even as the power struggle between Jackson and General Manager Jerry Krause surfaced, and Jackson entertained offers, and Krause courted the presumed successor, Iowa State’s Tim Floyd, and owner Jerry Reinsdorf made it clear Pippen won’t be re-signed, and camp opened with a debate over whether players or organizations won titles.

Now there’s a chasm through the middle of the organization and you can’t read between the lines without a scorecard:

Key Krause guys: Reinsdorf, who lets the general manager stay out front and take the flak but remains doggedly loyal to him; Winter, whom Krause hired several head coaches ago and pushes annually for Hall of Fame selection; Toni Kukoc, whom Krause stole in the second round of the 1990 draft.

Key Jackson guys: Jordan, who’s comfortable with the coach and vows to leave when Jackson does; Pippen, who long has been at odds with Reinsdorf and Krause over his pay, and Rodman--amazing but true.

No one was in a better position than Jackson to know how thin the Bulls’ edge had gotten, so last summer, when he made Reinsdorf fly all the way to Whitefish, Mont., to re-sign him, the coach also got permission to bring Rodman back.

Of course, contract negotiations were bruising, in the Bulls’ style, and Rodman reported to work late and agitated, even for him.

He since has threatened to retire after most games that they lost or in which he didn’t get double figures in minutes or rebounds. In a recent home victory, he arrived as the game started, explaining he’d been stuck in traffic.

Why hadn’t he left earlier, since snow had been forecast?

“I didn’t want to leave my house early and come in and waste my time,” he said.

Jackson, who has great patience and a high threshold of zaniness, fined him a token $100. That didn’t go down well among Bull fans, who are tiring of Rodman--a local TV station recently superimposed a “Worm Apologist” graphic over Jackson--but then, the coach needs the rebounds.

In basketball terms, it’s too early to be in trouble, but for an organization as riven as the Bulls, bad times are dangerous. If the losses mount, the spirit droops and they turn on each other. Then, Pippen might not be able to save them unless he brings along Grant Hill or Shaquille O’Neal.

But the Bulls are holding up OK. Of course, Jordan did advise Rodman to “go home” after Rodman had announced he couldn’t get interested. Then after they were routed in Cleveland, Jordan noted, “I’ll tell ya, it gives Chicago what to look for in the coming years, huh?” And when Pippen was asked here if the Suns would be attractive if management broke up the Bulls, he said, “It would be attractive to me if the team were not broken up.”

They’re the Bulls and it’s only good fun, at least until the end of this season.

“I think there’s a lot of feelings within the organization,” Jordan says. “But I think as a unit, as a basketball team, we are together. . . .

“How I view it? I don’t think the organization steps on the basketball court. I think the players are stepping on it. The organization is putting the players together, yes, but we have to go out there and earn our living.

“Doesn’t matter if you don’t like whoever’s in the organization. You still got to do your job, once you step on the basketball floor.”

Thursday night Jordan, looking spry for an old guy, scored 30 points. The Bulls cut a seven-point deficit to one in the last 1:08 and would have gone ahead, except that Rodman blew a layup after a pass from Jordan. The Bulls fell, 89-85, another hard night on the way to January.

They’re on a seven-game trip that takes them from the Sports Arena tonight (first sellout, thanks Mike) to the East Coast, so they may have more horror stories by the time they’re back in Sweet Home Chicago. Whether they needed one or not, they have a real challenge, at last.

Or, looking at it another way, maybe this is the season the rest of the league has an even chance.