Defense and You-Know-Who Come to Rescue for the Bulls

At the Chicago Bulls’ age, you need a lot of wake-up calls because they keep hitting the snooze alarm and falling off again, as Sunday when they started another series by spotting another commoner another lead on their home court.

Having trailed the New Jersey Nets by nine points in Game 1 and the Charlotte Hornets by 15 in Game 1 before losing Game 2, the Bulls saw the Pacers go up by nine before Michael Jordan found his game and went for 31 the hard way--taking 28 shots, scoring 25 in the second half--as they beat the Indiana Pacers, 85-79, in the opener of the best-of-seven Eastern Conference finals.

“We’ve had some real slow starts here,” said Coach Phil Jackson. “ . . . I think we’ll find a rhythm. I think the guys are going to focus on it. I’m going to bring it to their attention again.”

Good idea. While he’s at it, he should tell them not to miss 31 of their first 40 shots as they did Sunday, when Jordan started one for nine--the basket was a layup off an offensive rebound thatbounced at his feet--and the Pacers went up, 40-31.

The Bulls were only this close because of the inspirational play of Dennis Rodman, who led them with nine points at the half. That’s how bad their offense was going.

Rodman might have had even more but he was coming off thebench, having been demoted for a day after blowing off a recent practice to celebrate his birthday. As Jackson noted before the game, Rodman doesn’t regard a birthday as a one-day event, nor does he confine himself to one city.

Jackson told NBC that Rodman celebrated all over the Midwest, although Rodman is known to prefer Las Vegas.

The coach was asked later if he’d been kidding or was on the level.

“Well,” said Jackson, “a little bit of both.”

That’s why they call them the Bulls. They can still rise to the occasion, even if they created the occasion.

They still have that defense of theirs, and they jumped the Pacers in the third period, forcing nine turnovers--five in seven possessions in one spurt--and turning the game back around.

“They’ve got the ability to get up into you,” said Pacer Coach Larry Bird. “With their quickness and the way they play together, that’s something you don’t see that often around the league.

“Their defense was just cranked up to the max today. I thought they did a good job of staying into us and really making it hard for us to get wherever we wanted to go. But they’re a great defensive team. We might as well get used to it.”

Don’t the Bulls know it?

After Jackson explained why he had had his small forward, Scottie Pippen, guarding the Pacer point guard, Mark Jackson--and hounding him into seven turnovers--Pippen confided that actually he, Jordan and Ron Harper had decided who they wanted to guardbeforehand and asked their coach if it was OK.

Jackson wisely said yes.

And defense led to offense.

On the Pacers’ first possession of the second half, Jackson tossed a casual entry pass to Chris Mullin on the wing. Jordan, hoping for just such an opportunity, pounced on it like a wolf on a lamb chop, took it to the other end and dunked. Guess whose game was back in town?

“You know in that situation, when you’re not shooting the ball, you like to get easy shots,” Jordan said. “That was a pretty easy shot.”

The Bulls shot into a lead that grew to 64-50. The Pacers, hanging in gamely, cut it to 66-65 early in the fourth quarter but then Jordan went up for a 15-footer with two Indiana players in his face and one--Derrick McKey--went for the block, got Jordan on the hand and was called for the foul.

Jordan made two free throws. The next time down, he drove through three Pacers for a layup. The time after that, he scored on a pretty hesitation move on a reverse layup, was fouled and made that free throw.

By then, the Bulls were ahead, 73-65, and finally looking good, for the moment, anyway.