Stepping Up to Mike

INDIANAPOLIS — It hasn’t been much of a week for Chicken-Fighting Woman.

How would you like to be peering down the barrel of a cannon at the polished head and mocking grin of Michael Jordan, whom you’ve been sentenced to guard for the next week (if the series goes the way Jordan planned it) or two (if you can drag it out somehow).

He got you for 31 points in Game 1 and 41 in Game 2, both of which your Indiana Pacers lost. Then there are the insults.

No, you’re not a woman. You don’t know what Jordan means when he says you play “chicken-fighting” defense, but it doesn’t sound like a compliment.

You’re Reggie Miller, Dream Teamer, one of the game’s bona-fide stars and entitled to more respect than this, which you’d be getting if you hadn’t upset Mr. Gamesmanship.

This is stuff Miller usually does to other peoples’ heads, as in his Scourge of Gotham incarnation, in which he insults the New York Knicks, gives Spike Lee the choke sign and then, when everyone in Madison Square Garden is purple in the face from booing him, guns them down and leaves them sobbing.

Of course, that was easy compared to this. That was merely 20,000 fans making noise. Aside from his usual advantages, Jordan outweighs Miller by 30 pounds, so firing back isn’t Reggie’s wisest course of action.

Miller has figured this out. This is how the next two weeks (he hopes) will go, so he’s just lying low, hoping for a better day.

Meanwhile, the reporters are back.

Someone asks about this “different Reggie” people are talking about.

“Where’s this talk from?” Miller asks.

How about that morning’s Chicago Tribune, in a quote from Miller?

Reggie thinks about it.

“Changed in what way?” he asks. “I don’t know what way.”

More mellow?

“I’ve always been a mellow guy,” Miller says. “I’m just more competitive when I’m on the floor.”

Less high jinks these days? Fewer of the things you used to do?

“Such as?” Reggie asks.

“The things we enjoy so much,” a reporter says.

“Oh, really?” Reggie says. “You guys enjoy that, huh? Well, I’m not going to write your papers for you. No, no, no. . . . I’m out here to win ballgames, If that’s a part of it, so be it.

“Thanks guys. Go get Mark [Jackson].”

He picks up his stuff and starts to stroll away.

Escape From New York

“People say I’ve become a different Reggie Miller. I’m still going to be feisty on the court, but I don’t do some of the things I did a few years ago. For so long, though, I’d been fighting for credibility and respect.”

--Chicago Tribune, May 17, 1998

Some of the things he did, indeed.

Miller would leave UCLA as one of the greatest Bruins since Bill Walton, but who would have suspected it when he arrived in 1983, a rail-thin recruit, and started firing off NBA three-point shots as a freshman?

He was brash to a fault on the court, but off it, his coaches swore by him. He was engaging, upbeat and called reporters “Mister.”

The Millers, of course, were famous. Reggie’s older--and much more celebrated--sister, Cheryl, was the newly crowned queen of the women’s game, and older brother Darrell would play for the Angels. The children of a retired Air Force master sergeant who marched them through domestic close-order drill, they were weaned on competition but were anything but automatons. As respectful as they were of authority, they were exuberant and expressive, to say the least.

Born with pronated hips, Reggie slept with braces on his legs until he was 4. He was a dark horse, even at the college level, the best Larry Farmer, heading into the last gloomy season of his tenure in Westwood, could do after blue-chippers Reggie Williams, Antoine Joubert and Tom Sheehy turned him down.

Around the Pacific 10 Conference, fans chanted “Cher-yl!” at the Bruin with the body of a waif. Yet, there was no way to keep him down. He entered the NBA as a first-round pick, even if there were questions admirers had to answer first, after pranks such as Miller’s fingertip-rubbing gesture to Lute Olson at Tucson, suggesting the Arizona coach had paid off the referees.

“When I drafted him, there was this idea that he was some bad kid,” Pacer President Donnie Walsh says. “That was going through the whole draft. When I brought him in, I thought he was one of the nicest kids I ever met.”

Not that Indiana fans felt like hearing about it.

The Pacers passed up Indiana’s beloved Steve Alford to take Miller. Of course, the beloved Alford was gone before you could sing the IU fight song, but for Reggie, burning with ambition, better than anyone thought and driven to prove it, it always seemed to be something.

If stardom was where Miller was going, there were bigger, stronger players he’d have to show, and did. The bigger they came, the more their fans booed, the better he did, as in New York, where he drew down on an entire metropolis while the other Pacers prayed for him.

“Yeah, I did,” Walsh says. “I think he did too. But he seemed to rise to the occasion there too. I thought he was just caught up in the emotion of it.

“A lot of guys told me, ‘This guy won’t last, look at his legs, look at his body.’ And I used to laugh at that. Then when we started playing against the Knicks, I started to worry about it. This was back when they were really good and they were after Reggie. They hit him after every single play, hard. They would knock him down and he would get up, hit the three and say take that, you. . . .

“That was when I compared Pat Riley to Hannibal Lecter. . . . One game, Reggie went to break to the ball, they overplayed him and he cut backdoor. And [Charles] Oakley was coming to help and when he saw Reggie go backdoor, he knocked him so hard, I didn’t think the kid was gonna get up. Reggie never saw him. They didn’t even call a foul.

“But that’s the way he was treated back in those days. Yet, he just picked himself up, shot the ball.”

With time came stardom, riches (Miller is now at $9 million a year), even something like security. The Pacers, who had never won a playoff series in the NBA, had a giddy ride with Larry Brown, making the East finals in his first two seasons, but it soon went south. Brown did what he does, alternately blaming himself and zinging his best players. Miller just rode it out, never responding, as when the coach complained his leaders lacked leadership.

“If Larry says we lack it,” Miller said, letting another one sail by, “we lack it.”

Says Walsh: “Reggie, since he’s been here, I’ve never heard him say anything about a coach, ever. Nothing negative, ever. He never has.

“The only thing I know, Reggie never, ever said anything publicly. And I admire him for that because Larry does put a lot of pressure on the guy in Reggie’s position, both privately and publicly.”

Now for This MJ Guy . . .

“There’s no question he [Miller] has hit more game-winning shots this year than I did probably in my whole career. . . . I once talked about putting myself in at the end of games. I’d probably put myself in now to pass him the ball.”

--Larry Bird

Of course, this was only a warmup, compared to facing off against Jordan.

There was never any question of who the best was. Miller saw it four times a year, the one-and-only Jordan, whose team was only 200 miles away as the crow flew, but seemingly on another planet.

Jordan put opposing guards to the torch, spear-carriers and superstars alike, as when he greased Clyde Drexler, a top-50 player, original Dream Teamer, 29 and in his prime in the ’92 finals, when Jordan outscored him, 215-149, and outshot him, 52% to 41%.

Drexler, at 6 feet 7, 220, was a physical match for the 6-6, 215-pound Jordan. Reggie was . . . Reggie.

After years of weightlifting, he has bulked all the way up to 6-6, 185, but he had something more important upstairs. As much as Jordan, he played his best in the postseason. Jordan’s career average rose from 32 in the regular season to 34 in the playoffs; Reggie’s went from 20 to 25.

And so they warred through the years.

The Bulls won most of the games, but Miller let Jordan know he was around. Miller couldn’t be intimidated. Jordan didn’t like opponents putting their hands on him, but Miller did. Jordan would later tell ESPN the Magazine it was like “chicken fighting with a woman.”

Miller once sneered, “What do they have besides Michael Jordan over there?” Once they fought, with Jordan clawing Reggie across the face.

Jordan had long since proved his courage against the Bad Boy Pistons and Riley’s Knicks, but Miller got under his skin. In an April game in the United Center, which the Pacers won while Jordan shot seven for 19, Jordan got so frustrated, he hit Mark Jackson in the head with the ball.

But Jordan and Miller never met in the playoffs . . . until now.

“I think this is the matchup most people want to see,” Miller says. “Michael and I have never gone into a series before. . . . Because of the fights before, the history between the two teams, like I said, we’re writing your papers for you. . . .

“I look at it as a challenge. I look at it this way: Whatever he does, he’s supposed to do. Whatever I do is going to be gravy. I’m in a win-win situation. He’s supposed to do whatever he’s gonna do, but if I do something, I’ll have more of you guys around me, so I’ll come out smelling like roses.”

Of course, this isn’t for the faint of heart, or the weak of mind.

“Yeah,” Miller says, “but I’ve always been strong-minded. I think he’ll do less talking because he already knows that. Whereas I see him doing all this talking and other stuff to other teams, he won’t do that to me, ‘cause we’ve already gone down that road.”

Of course, Reggie never posed as direct a threat to one of Mike’s dreams as he does at this moment, which may be why Jordan declared psychological war, to try to get some space on the court or in Miller’s head.

You think Miller isn’t boiling inside? But there really must be a New Reggie, because he lets it go for the moment, hoping for the day when he can drop the Ultimate Three on the greatest star who ever was, turn to him and announce:

“That’s Ms. Chicken-Fighting Woman to you, chump. Now you’ve got the rest of your life to work on your golf game.”

It might not be the way to bet, but in Reggie Miller’s stellar career, it never has been.