January 8, 2005
Today is Saturday, and for the first time in three weeks, Mom, Dad, Mike and I are having our weekend lunch at C.J. Arthur’s, a popular diner in Wilmette. Last Saturday was New Years Day; Mike and I were both sleeping during lunch. The Saturday before was Christmas. So after two weeks away, we are back, bringing Meghan along for this one, her first Silverstein family Saturday lunch at C.J.’s.
We moved here from Evanston during the summer of 1995, and shortly there after we started going to C.J.’s every Saturday for lunch. It wasn’t planned; those things never are. It was just the way it went. Great food, great atmosphere, great location…that’s really all it took. The tradition had begun. No matter what was going on Friday night, no matter how busy we’d been all week, we knew that Saturday C.J.’s was on the books. Over the years we met the owners and the staff. We met the regulars, and then became the regulars, and within that tradition we developed others, most notably the straw-shooting battles that serve as a competition for the four of us and initiation for all newcomers. Today it’s Meghan.[1]
The plan was to meet there at 1 PM, but Meg and I had a long morning and didn’t leave her house until five to one. My dad calls a few minutes later.
“Hey Jack. Where are you?”
“In Wilmette,” I say as I dart around the cemetery that divides Rogers Park from Evanston. “We’re coming up on the Bahai Temple.”
“Alright. We’re running a bit late, but we’ll be parked in a minute or so. Just wanted to see if you guys were waiting for us.”
“Nope. Just coming along.”
“Well we’ll see you soon then.”
“OK! Sounds good.”
I look over at Meg. She’s staring at me.
“Wilmette?”
“Yeah?”
“Wilmette.” She laughs. “Bit of a stretch, don’t you think?”
“We will be there. That’s what matters.”
“Lemme ask you something. Do you do that to me when you’re on your way to my house?”
“No…”
“Are you lying?”
“No…”
“Are you lying about lying?”
“Maybe…”
Despite our late start, we get to C.J.’s in fine time. Mom, Dad, and MJ are already there, and all they’ve done is ordered drinks: R.C. for Mike and Mom, and a Green River with extra sugar for Dad. He stands to greet me.
“Wilmette, huh?”
“It’s in-state.”
Hugs from my parents for both me and Meghan, and after giving Meghan a hug, Mike and I do our brotherly handshake, followed by him suddenly bear-hugging me and lifting me about a foot off the ground, followed by me threatening to head butt him in the forehead, followed by him squeezing my ribs, followed by me winding up and kicking him right in the kneecap, followed by him putting me down and rubbing his kneecap. Point, Jack.
Sondra, our longtime waitress, comes through with drinks for everybody including me.
“Hey Sondra,” we say.
She sets the drinks down. “I brought you an R.C., if that’s OK.”
“Beautiful.”
“And for you?” she asks Meghan.
“I’ll have a Coke.”
“Is R.C. OK?”
Meg laughs. “Oh…duh. Yeah, that’s fine.”
“I thought it was ‘no duh,’” Mom says.
“No, it’s just ‘duh,’” says Dad.
“Are you sure?”
“Very.”
“What was ‘no duh,’ then?”
“Was there a ‘no duh?’”
“See,” she says, “you don’t even know.”
“Duh.”
While all of this is going on above ground, Mom, Dad, Mike and I are eyeing each other, twisting our straws under the table and trying to decide if the others can be trusted. When there is a newcomer as there is today, the four of us shoot the newcomer as some kind of crude initiation, but then the battles between Mom and I got so intense that we would use the newbie as a decoy, turning suddenly to shoot each other. Everyone likes the idea of teaming up against the newcomer, and yet at the same time we’re all very suspicious of each other, wondering if one of us will forget Meghan and aim at the family. It’s like the final Mexican standoff in The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.
Finally we pull out our straws and aim at Meghan, and just before shooting, Mike and I turn and fire at Mom. Mine gets Mom in the forehead, which is sweet, because with straw shooting you want to smack against the skin, or else they don’t really feel it. Mike gets her in the arm…not as good…and poor Mom gets nobody because her straw is wet.
“Not fair!” she yells. “Mine was wet.”
“Ha ha!” I exclaim, pulling out a secret straw from under the table and firing again at Mom. This time, though, she’s ready, and she flashes her hand up and catches it between her pinkie and her ring finger.
“Ah! Busted!”
“Nice Mick,” my dad says, extending his fist towards her. “Pound it.”
“You think you’re so cool with all of your lingo, don’t you? Don’t you?”
He laughs.
“Hon, what are you going to order?”
“I’m not telling.”
“Come on. Tell me.”
“Nope.”
Meghan looks at me, curious. I explain:
“Dad doesn’t want Mom to order the same thing as him.”
“Why not?”
“We don’t know.”
And then, from the other side of the table—
“Just tell me this: are you going to have the tuna pocket, because if you are we can share it, because that’s what I want too and I’m not hungry enough for a whole one.”
“You’ll have to make your own decision.”
“Just tell me if you’re going to have the tuna pocket.”
“No.”
“Come on!”
Sondra comes over with Meghan’s drink.
“Ready?”
Mike goes first, getting a C.J. Club with no mayo. Sondra looks at me: “You want your cheeseburger?”
“Yes please.”
And then Sondra, as a statement, one that does not require validation: “Medium, American, no veggies.”
“Excellent.”
Meghan gets a burger as well, and finally it’s up to my parents, who are still being beyond childish with their ordering.
“Go Mick.”
“You go.”
“Mom!” I say. “Just order.”
“Fine. I’ll just have a bowl of the mushroom barley.”
“And for you?”
“I’ll have the tuna pocket, please.”
Mom glares at him. Sondra collects the menus.
“Anything else?”
Mom looks up. “A few more straws.”
The food is great, as always. After a bit of focused eating, our conversation begins again.
“Where are you guys headed from here?” my mom asks.
“My grandma’s in the hospital, so we’re going to see her.”
“Your mom’s mom or your dad’s mom?”
“Dad’s mom.”
Sondra brings a few more straws, with Mike coldly snatching two of them. But Mom is unfazed, dropping her hands below the table as she eyes me. We laugh, innocentally, even though we’re both plotting, and then all of a sudden she whips the straw up and shoots it, but it goes flying past me and hits Art Falzer, who is talking to another table.
C.J. Arthur’s is a family owned and run restaurant, and the family is the Falzers: Art, Cindy, and son Jason (older than me). Art is a stout man, with dark hair and a goatee. He loves his restaurant, his customers, and baseball. His favorite ballplayer, as indicated by the framed picture over the register, was Gil Hodges of the Brooklyn Dodgers. But he is a Chicago fan, more Cubs than Sox, and he loves talking the game, particularly the old days. It’s almost guaranteed that when my dad and Art start talking baseball, they will find a way to steer it towards the ’69 Cubs and the ’59 Sox. Without fail. In fact, they don’t even necessarily have to be talking baseball. Just talking. Trust me. They’ll figure it out.
Art picks up the straw wrapper and walks to our table, Mom pretending to be deep in conversation with Mike.
“This yours?” Art says, walking over.
Mom puts on her incredulous face. “I don’t know where that came from.”
He laughs heartily. “And how is everybody today?”
“Great Art. You?”
“Doing well.” He shakes hands with my folks, and then does the cool-person shake and snap with my brother and me. “What do you think about this whole Sosa thing, huh?”
Dad takes a long sip of his Green River. “He’s gotta go. It’s time.”
“You might be right.” Art sets his hands on our table and leans forward. “It’s too bad, though. They really had a good thing going.”
“Yeah,” Dad says, “but that’s the game today. No loyalty. No longevity.”
Mom jumps in. “I think its awful. Jerry Rice playing for the Raiders. Didn’t Joe Montana end up somewhere else?”
“The Chiefs,” I say.
“Oh, right. Just disgusting. Those guys are 49ers.”
“It’s just not the way it goes anymore. It’s so different from when we were kids.”
(Mom, mostly unheard: “Am I gonna get some props for knowing that Jerry Rice went to the Raiders?”
Me, to Mom, extending my fist. “Well done.”
Mom: “Thank you.”)
Art continues. “OH yeah. Sports were different then. Those guys,” he says, apparently referring to athletes from his childhood, “those guys went to a team, and they just played there. Gil Hodges with the Dodgers, ya know?”
Dad nods. “Santo with the Cubs. Same thing.”
I try to hold back, but I can’t. “Gil Hodges ended his career with the Mets and Santo ended his with the White Sox.”
“Now how do you know all that?” Dad asks, but he’s being facetious. I’ve got a well-known mind for stats. The Hodges bit is cheating though; I only just saw that on Art’s picture above the register.
Dad continues.
“Well, how ‘bout Banks then? There you go. He played his whole career with the Cubs.”
“That he did.”
“And he changed positions when he had to, because it was best for his career and for the team.”
“Oh yeah. Mr. Cub.”
“Now that was a great team.”
My mom grimaces. “Let’s not talk about it.”
Art, not realizing, goes on. “1969?”
Mom: “Must we?”
“I’d stop,” I say. “She becomes unruly.”
The discussion moves quickly away from the specifics of ’69 and onto the team itself, with the names Santo, Sweet Billy, Fergie Jenkins, Ken Holzman, Leo the Lip, Kessinger, Beckert—(Mom: “Glenn Beckert, right?”)—and Randy Hundley all provoking smiles. Art moves on to another table. After lunch there are hugs all around, and Meg and I go to the hospital to visit her grandmother.
January 9, 2oo5
The FedEx Orange Bowl was earlier this week, and it was a laugher. USC, possibly still bitter about their exclusion from last season’s national title game, came out firing and put on a good old fashioned mollywhomping on Oklahoma. I didn’t really care who won, so long as it was a good game. It wasn’t. But the second best thing to a good game is an impressive blowout, and in that category USC delivered. Even a good blowout wasn’t enough to keep my attention though, and my friends and I left the bar after the first half. Despite a marquee matchup like USC-Oklahoma, I really wasn’t that pumped for the game, which sucks, since college football is great and shouldn’t have its title game focus shifted off the field every year. Yet that’s what happens more and more, with USC getting whored out of a title game spot last year and Auburn complaining about the same thing this year. (Though let’s be honest: Auburn did not deserve a spot over either the Trojans or the Sooners.) For me, the bigger impact of this game is that college football is over, which means that my collegiate focus can shift strictly over to hoops. But more on that later…
…because right now, it’s NFL playoff time. Yesterday’s kickoff to Wild Card Weekend featured matchups between the Chargers and the Jets, and another one between St. Louis and Seattle. Today was the Colts and the Broncos, and a nightcap of Green Bay at home against the Vikings. Even with the Bears out of it, I still like watching the NFL—football is my favorite sport—and this weekend provided some quality games. The Chargers-Jets game went into overtime, and featured a missed field goal by the San Diego kicker in overtime that allowed the Jets to come back to win. The Rams and Seahawks had a good battle, with former Bear receiver Bobby Engram dropping what would’ve been a game tying touchdown pass in the endzone for Seattle. Peyton Manning and the Indy offense put on a show against Denver, dominating from the opening kick, while Brett Favre fell apart at home with four interceptions to aid the Vikings. What made these games interesting was where they put me as a Chicago sports fan.
When watching a game that does not involve a team that you are emotionally attached to, other factors come into play in determining who you will be rooting for. One huge, often overriding factor is money, but as I said earlier about fantasy football, gambling does not make you a fan. You’re not rooting for a team, you’re rooting for an outcome. On the surface, it’s the same, but your mentality is much different because you’re being driven by money instead of love. All that being said, gambling wasn’t an issue for me this weekend, so now you have to consider other factors. For me, those factors are pretty simple: how do I feel about the teams playing, and how do I feel about the players on those teams?
I was pretty much up in the air for the first three games played. I like the Jets and Chargers, dislike St. Louis and Seattle (though I dislike the Rams more), and while I find Manning and the Colts to be annoying (they play on turf, and Peyton’s a football dork[2]) I really love watching their offense work. As for the Packers-Vikings, I would never root for Favre and the Packers, but I knew that I would rather watch Favre play another round of football than the Vikings. So this weekend was kind of a wash. A better example of how to root during a game that you have no emotional interest in came during last season’s playoffs, when the Tennessee Titans hooked up with the Baltimore Ravens for a Wild Card game.
First, the Titans. I don’t have much against them, except for the fact that a young, stupid friend of mine roots for them in an incredibly annoying fashion, most notably in his insistence to rip up the Bears every chance he gets despite the fact that he is from a suburb of Chicago. His reason for liking Tennessee is that he got into them when he was young and impressionable, and I suppose that’s true, as only a young sports “fan” could root for a team simply because, and these are his words, “they have cool jerseys.” So the very fact that this guy would have found time to rub it in mine and every other Bears fan’s face that the Titans were winning in the postseason while the Bears were not even there was reason enough for me to root against them. On the other hand, I really like Steve McNair and Eddie George. Those guys play hard every game, they play hurt, they play tough—they’re just old school football players. You could see them suiting up for the Bears in the ’60 s and grinding out the tough yards in the mud and the slush of Wrigley Field. So for that reason, I like the Titans, because I like to see those guys succeed.
Now the Ravens. I don’t have anything against the players on this team; Ray Lewis happens to be one of my favorite non-Bears. However, this is one team that I really don’t like, the reason being that I don’t like their owner, Art Modell, who took the Cleveland Browns away from Cleveland and moved them to Baltimore over stadium arguments. This is something that cannot be tolerated,[3] because moving a team against the city’s will hurts the fans in a way that we never think possible. As you grow up, you discover death. Someone close to you dies, and you come to grips with the reality that you will never see that person again, a person who has become a meaningful part of your life. You also realize that one day, you will die, and that nothing lasts forever. And yet, sports teams do. I grew up watching the Cubs, as did my parents, and their parents, and with that comes the knowledge that my kids will have an opportunity to watch the Cubs, as will my grandkids, as will their grandkids. Yes, it’s entirely probable that the day will come in which baseball is no longer played, but until that day people will be connected and brought together throughout the generations by one common thread: their interest in a baseball team. Something so simple, yet so powerful, and most importantly, something that was here before I was born and will be here after I die. For an owner to take that away…well, I can’t even imagine what it would feel like.
Which is why I find it interesting that the fans in Baltimore took so quickly to the Ravens in 1996. Did these people forget that just thirteen years earlier, it was their beloved football team—the Baltimore Colts—that was snatched away in the middle of the night by a greedy owner and moved to another city far, far away? I would think that the people of Baltimore would have a little more sympathy for the pain of the people of Cleveland rather than just gleefully accepting their new football team. And yet, maybe this reveals something very telling about sports fans: that along with fandom being a true love, it’s also part addiction, and we will do whatever we can to get our fix.
Learning the Hard Way
My parents became friends in 1972, meeting in Boston where they were both living. For eight years they lived on the East Coast, dating on and off until they decided to get married in 1980. I was born a year later while we were living in Brooklyn, MJ was born two years after that while we were living in Connecticut, and in 1984 we moved back home to Chicago in an Evanston apartment as my folks had always planned on doing. As a three-year-old who had Chicago sports fandom rich in his blood, I really could not have asked for a better time to move back. While an apocalyptic year in literature, 1984 was the beginning of a great era in Chicago sports. The Cubs won the division that summer, going to the postseason for the first time since 1945. The Bears, buoyed by an incredible 1983 draft, dominated in the fall and went back to the NFC Title game, and though they lost to the Niners the seeds were planted for their incredible 1985 run. But the city’s most significant move came in the middle of the year, when the Bulls used the number 3 pick in the draft to select Michael Jordan, a junior guard from North Carolina. This was the landscape of Chicago sports when I was growing up, and from 1984-1998, I saw some pretty incredible feats:
1. I saw three Cubs teams go to the playoffs, (I’ve since seen a fourth), and despite the fact that they are thirty years older than me, my parents have also seen the same four Cubs teams go to the playoffs. I also saw three MVPs (Sandberg ’84, Dawson ’87, Sosa ’98), two Cy Young winners (Sutcliffe ’84, Maddux ’92), and two rookies of the year (Walton ’89, Wood ’98).
2. I saw Northwestern’s moribund football program have arguably the greatest “Cinderella season” in any sport at any level with their 10-1 1995 season that ended with a Big Ten title and a trip to the Rose Bowl. The Cats then followed that up by sharing the title with Ohio State the following year on the strength of a 9-2 season, and coupled it with another bowl game appearance.
3. I saw the GREATEST TEAM EVER, the 1985 Chicago Bears, dominate their sport and their city like no team in any sport anywhere ever has. They were unlike any team that came before, and unlike any team that has come since.
4. Most of all, I got to watch arguably the greatest basketball player of all-time lead my Chicago Bulls to six titles in eight years during the 1990s.
Throw in the White Sox 1993 division title and the Blackhawks 1992 trip to the Stanley Cup Finals, and it’s beyond obvious that I’ve been blessed with the opportunity to watch great teams and great players bring pride and respect to my home town. I really, truly believe that if you watch your teams for long enough and stay loyal to them, good things will eventually happen and you will know the joys of victory. But it is not the postseason berths and championships and MVP awards that define my childhood sports fandom. Those are simply the high points, the rewards that come eventually when you faithfully root for your teams regardless of rank or record. No, what stands out most in my childhood fandom is the pain of losing.
That Bulls team in the ’90 s was unlike anything we’d ever had in Chicago. I didn’t know it at the time, though I’ve certainly learned it since, but the Bulls of the ’90s were a blessing bestowed upon this city by the sports gods themselves. Like most great teams in Chicago’s history, the other teams I listed above were ultimately brought back down to Earth in cruel fashions. Even the ’85 Bears could not escape the city’s bad karma, mocking Chicagoans with dreams of becoming the NFL’s next dynasty before going down in flames and turning into the greatest one-and-done team in the history. The Bulls were different. Six titles in eight years, and more importantly, six straight titles in which Michael Jordan suited up for a full season. Yes, the team was broken up after number six, but it was probably time for it to end anyways, and if Krause had been able to quickly build a contender rather than struggle to build a 20-win team, we probably wouldn’t be so focused on “The Breakup of the Bulls.” You really can’t ask for much more than what we had. We won six championships, and for ten years no matter what else was happening on the Chicago sports scene, we always were able to carry with us the knowledge that we rooted for the best basketball team in the world.
But to fully appreciate the Bulls of the ’90s, you had to have made it through the trials and tribulations of the ’80s. Jordan quickly turned the Bulls into a playoff team, but turning them into a championship team was a lot more difficult, because in order to win a title we had to defeat the Eastern Conference’s roughest, toughest, and best team: the Detroit Pistons.
Led by Chicago-native Isiah Thomas, the “Bad Boys” Pistons bullied their way to three NBA Finals appearances and back-to-back titles from 1988-1990. The Bulls were a young team back then: Pippen and Grant were rookies when the Bulls lost to Detroit in the 1988 playoffs, and Jordan was only a fourth year guard who people said could not lead his team to a title. Detroit, on the other hand, had been coming together and battling their way up the ladder for about five years. Along with Isiah, one of the greatest players of all-time, the Pistons had a Hall of Fame coach in Chuck Daly, two future Hall of Famers in Joe Dumars and Bill Laimbeer, one should-be Hall of Famer in Dennis Rodman,[4] one maybe Hall of Famer in Adrian Dantley, and a bunch of great NBA role players in John Salley, Vinnie Johnson, James Edwards, and Rick Mahorn. They held their own in epic postseason battles with Bird’s Celtics and Magic’s Lakers, and while Jordan was named the NBA’s MVP in 1988, the Pistons clearly had his and the Bulls’ number.
Three straight years the Bulls battled the Pistons in the playoffs, and three straight years we left bruised and beaten. In 1990, the two teams met in the East Finals for the second straight year, and we took them all the way to a seventh game. But Game 7 turned into another awful Chicago sports meltdown as Scottie Pippen suffered from his now imfamous migraine, and the Bulls watched the Finals from home.
Even as a young fan, I knew what was happening. I felt the pain of those three seasons, the growing pains that come with watching a young team make mistakes, and the pain of watching that team get beat up year after year by the same group of guys. To make matters worse, one of my best friends at school, Aaron Wightman, was a Piston fan. His family was from Michigan, and he loved his Pistons, and even though he was an incredibly nice kid and never rubbed it in our noses, we all knew that he had something over us. My friends and I would get together to watch the Bulls and the Pistons battle, and at the end of it all Aaron was smiling while we were silent. The Bulls-Pistons rivalry dominated my childhood. Nothing else was close. And because Aaron was our good friend, and because we saw him every day at school, the pain of that rivalry was particularly bitter and overwhelming. Aaron wasn’t the kind of kid to brag about anything. He didn’t have to. It was understood that no matter what happened with the Bears and Lions, Blackhawks and Red Wings, or Cubs, White Sox, and Tigers, and no matter what happened when we played our own games at the school yard or in our backyards, nothing else mattered but this: Aaron rooted for the Pistons, we rooted for the Bulls, the Pistons dominated the Bulls, and there was nothing we could do about it.
It got to a point where it wasn’t even about basketball anymore. The Bulls-Pistons rivalry obtained legendary status in all of our imaginations. In my mind, Bill Laimbeer was not a basketball player. He didn’t even seem human. He was a supervillain, the Devil himself, a life force of pure evil sent to this planet to destroy our heroes, the Chicago Bulls. There were two supervillains in my childhood (and I say this with zero hyperbole): one was Saddam Hussein, and the other was Bill Laimbeer. The Bulls were Batman and Superman, but unlike Lex Luthor or the Joker, Laimbeer held the upperhand against the forces of good. To put it another way: imagine if Rocky had fought Apollo in all five movies and lost every time. Slowly, the emotional triumph and moral victory of the first film would be sucked out of the series until all that was left was the Italian Stallion bloodied in his corner, alone, crying, and coming back for more. He may have Adrian’s love, he may have Mickey’s guidance, but he’ll never beat Apollo, his most hated enemy.
That’s how it was in Chicago during those years: regardless of what our other teams were doing, we knew that beating Detroit was all that really mattered. I vividly remember the ’89 Cubs; they were a fun team, and they gave the city a lot to be happy about. But they lost in the NLCS, and they flamed out in 1990, and by the time the Cubs went back to the playoffs in ’98 it was a totally different club. When people reminisce about the ’89 Cubs, they don’t talk much about losing to the Giants or the fact that they were a one-year wonder. They just remember the fun they had with that team. The Bulls of the late 80’s were different. It wasn’t fun. It was painful. It took hold of our collective psyches…we HAVE to beat Detroit this year, we just HAVE to. I can’t take another year of this. The Pistons weren’t just a team; they were a metaphor for all of the pain the city had endured in the past. The rivalry transcended sports. When we played against them, we weren’t just playing a game of basketball; we were battling against all of life’s hardships. That’s the way it felt. Every time the Pistons knocked Jordan or Pippen to the floor, every time they glared menacingly after a hard foul, every time they walked off the court victorious as we nursed our injuries and shook our heads, it felt like the whole city had taken a beating, like we tried our best and our best wasn’t good enough. It wasn’t just one basketball team beating another; it was a vicious and calculated attack on our way of life.
After all, we are Chicago, a blue-collar city, a city that believes that hard work pays off and that success has to be earned the right way. The Pistons were the “Bad Boys,” a team that blurred the line between tough play and dirty play to the point where the two were nearly impossible to distinguish. They pushed the limits as far as they could, pulling back at just the right moment and getting us to lose our cool at the game’s most crucial juncture, like an older brother who knows exactly when Mom and Dad will be looking and mocks his younger brother up to that point, letting the younger brother hit back in his parents’ sight and then going to watch TV while his brother accepts their parents’ punishment. When we lost to Detroit, it wasn’t because they were more talented than we were. We could have accepted that. No, we lost to Detroit because they were tougher than we were, and smarter than we were, and more experienced than we were, but the most frustrating thing of all was that they bent the rules and got away with it.
Then came the 1990-91 season. It was Jordan’s seventh year with the team, Paxson’s sixth, and the fourth for Pippen and Grant. Doug Collins had been fired as coach after the 1989 playoffs and replaced with assistant coach Phil Jackson, but even under Jackson the result was the same: a loss in the Conference Finals to Detroit. Both the team and the fans knew what was at stake coming into the season: the Bulls were at a breaking point. It was clear that this team’s identity would be defined by their success or failure against Detroit, and another loss to the Pistons at the end of 1991 would be their fourth in a row. How long could we do this? How long could we get to the same point, challenged by the same team, and fail? We are optimists in this city—you have to be, if you plan on having any sort of longevity as a fan—but we carry a heavy heart. I was only in third grade at the time, at an age when anything is possible because you’ve got all the time in the world, but I remember feeling like if we couldn’t do it this year, we couldn’t do it at all.
The Bulls had the same sense of urgency, and dominated the season in a way they had never done before. With a conference-high 61 wins, we finally had home-court advantage throughout the playoffs. We swept the Knicks in round one, and beat the 76ers in five games in round two, and for the third straight year our reward for getting to the conference finals was a date with Detroit.
I have to admit, even though we were finally the favorites, and even though we finally had home-court, I was nervous. By 1991 I had experienced a lot of hardship with this Bulls team, and I knew Chicago’s history. I knew about the ’69 Cubs and the Black Sox scandal and I had watched as the Bears of the ’80s fell apart. But then the series started, and everything changed. The Pistons tried all of their regular tricks, but nothing worked. They knocked us down, but we just got right back up. In the past, their physical play wore us out, and every time we hit the ground we got weaker. This time, it was the opposite. They wore themselves out, because every time we hit the ground we grew stronger, and every time we came back at them they panicked. You could feel the trends changing…as a fan, you could really feel it. It was palpable. We were confident going into the series, yet in the back of our minds we were still thinking: “Please don’t let them burn us again.” But they didn’t. The Bulls stayed tough, and after winning Games 1 and 2 at home, the series moved to Detroit, and that’s when we felt like it would happen. You could feel the momentum grow in school and in the city, our confidence growing both in our teams and in ourselves. It really felt like we, not just as sports fans but as Chicagoans, were growing stronger, and when we beat Detroit in Game 3 at the Palace, we knew the series was ours. Like the older brother who suddenly realizes that his younger brother has surpassed him and his tricks are no longer effective, the Pistons came apart like children, and the Bulls came together as all great teams do.
Every Bulls fan has a favorite game or moment, the one that stands out from all the others. Title clinching games, Pax’s three against Phoenix, Michael’s last shot against Utah, battling it out with the Knicks. These are all great. But for me, it doesn’t get any sweeter than Game 4 of the Eastern Conference Finals at the Palace of Auburn Hills, Memorial Day 1991. By the time that game rolled around, we knew it would be a sweep. It wasn’t just that we were going to finally beat Detroit, but we were going to break them down and beat them in a way they never imagined possible. At that point, letting them win even one game in the series would have been a disappointment. We knew we were going to the Finals...there wasn’t a question about that in anybody’s mind. But our goal was never to go to the Finals. Nobody talked at school about who we wanted to play in the Finals or how bad we wanted to get there. We talked about Detroit. That was it. We were just as single-minded and focused as the team was. Our goal was to beat the Pistons, and to make up for three years of pain and suffering at their hands. We had to show them how far we had come, so there was no doubt in their minds which team was better. We had to show them that we were not just the more talented team, but more importantly that we were the stronger team, mentally and physically. We had to show them that they could not push us around any more, that no matter what they did or what they tried, they were not going to beat us because we would not let them. By the end of Game 4, you could feel the burden being lifted off of the shoulders of both the players and the fans. The whole city had been carrying this weight around for nearly four years, a feeling of despair and emptiness, a feeling that no matter what we did we would never be better than the Pistons, and then we swept them and beat them and eliminated them in their own stadium, and it was one of the greatest feelings ever. I’ve never felt as connected to a community due to a sports team as I felt at the end of that game. I wasn’t just watching the game in front of my TV with my family and friends. I was watching it with every other Bulls fan alive. It was amazing. As I watched Isiah and his teammates walk off the court with time remaining on the clock, I knew that I was thinking and feeling exactly what every other Bulls fan was thinking and feeling: “WE did it. We finally did it.” When Detroit walked off the court early, it wasn’t simply a show of bad sportsmanship, nor was it—as they claim—a chance for them to go off as champions with their own fans applauding. It was simply the natural reaction of a team that was totally and utterly defeated. They couldn’t even bare to watch, because deep down they knew that it was over for them. They could feel it. They saw then that what had separated our two teams in years past was not skill, but rather the intangibles: toughness, intelligence, experience, and desire. Now that we could withstand and fight through whatever physical challenges they may have presented, we were on even ground, and once that happened they were no match for us. Four straight games, four straight Bulls wins. We accomplished our goal: after that series, there was no doubt which team was better. I remember looking over at Aaron—we always watched these games together—and the look on his face was the exact sentiment of the Pistons and all of their fans: we will never beat the Bulls again.
January 13, 2oo5
The following is a list of players who played on any of the Bulls’ six championship teams. If they came or left during the middle of a season, the full season is listed.[5] In bold are the players who were on the team for THREE YEARS OR LESS.
Came Left
The following is a list of players who came to the Bulls during the post-title years, starting from the 1998-99 season and ending at the 2003-04 season. If they came or left during the middle of a season, the full season is listed. Tyson Chandler, Eddy Curry, Antonio Davis, Kirk Hinrich, and Jannero Pargo began their Bulls tenure during these years but are all still on the team, so they are not listed here. In bold are the players who were on the team for THREE YEARS OR MORE. In italics are the players who NEVER STARTED A GAME.
Came Left
From 1991 through 1998, the Bulls won six championships, with Michael and Scottie playing on all six teams. During that time, they had two main cores of players who won at least two titles each. The first three-peat featured a core of Grant, Paxson, Cartwright, Armstrong, Scott Williams, Perdue, King, Hodges, and Levingston. The second three-peat featured a core of Rodman, Harper, Longley, Kukoc, Kerr, Wennington, Brown, Buechler, Caffey, and Simpkins. Watching the Bulls during the ’90s was a treat, and not just because they were a dominant title-winning team. As great as the championships were, and as much fun as it was to watch them play basketball, what really made the Bulls of the ’90s special was that we got to watch a group of players play together year after year. I remember that during the ’96 season, when we won a record 72 games, I loved watching them but I missed the guys from the first three-peat. That first team had grown up together, and I had grown up with them. The 1991 season may have been the first title year, but it was also the culmination of a half-decade of defeat and agony. Even after watching the ’96 team for a whole year, I didn’t really feel like I knew the team, certainly not in the same way that I knew the first three-peat. (It also didn’t help that we ran over the entire league that year and dominated the postseason. When your team has faced adversity, that’s when you really start to love them.) But the ’96 team stayed together for two more years, and I took to them just as I had to the first team.
Then the end came. Shortly after the Grant Park Rally in 1998, Phil left the team. The NBA owners locked out the players, canceling the beginning of the 1998-99 season. Michael retired in January of ’99, the Bulls negotiated sign and trade deals with Pippen, Kerr, and Longley, Rodman turned down offer after offer and disappeared for a few months, and when the season finally started the Bulls had a team that nobody recognized. I remember watching the first game during the lockout season—a loss to the Jazz—and it was like a strange dream, one in which you see a real-life friend of yours who looks nothing like he does in real-life, yet you just know it’s him. That was the ’99 Bulls for me. The jerseys were the same, the stadium was the same, the announcers were the same, but who were those guys?
That’s how it went for a while. Every year the Bulls made plans to rebuild the team into a championship mold (or at least a playoff contender), and every year they served as nothing more than a revolving door franchise. To quote Major League: “Ricky Vaughn? Willie Hayes? I never heard of most of ‘em. Mitchell Friedman?” You think the Indians fans in that movie were confused? You should’ve tried watching the 1999-2004 Bulls. Particularly those first three years. You want unknown? How ‘bout Kornel David, the league’s first and only Hungarian player. How ‘bout Chris Anstey, a tall skinny jump shooting Australian center. How ‘bout Dedric Willoughby, a spot scoring guard who played in 25 games in the ’99-’00 season, scored a career high 21 points in a loss to the Pacers, and soon after found himself cut from the team—his one and only stint in the L. That’s just a small sampling of the nobodies who littered the Bulls’ roster just a few years ago. Perhaps you’ve forgotten Charles Jones, the guy who led the nation in scoring as a senior at Long Island University, or Dragon Tarlac, a ’95 Bulls draftee who finally made it to America in 2000 for one season of play, or even John Starks, the hated Bulls rival of the early ’90s who played four games with the team in 2000 after being acquired in the Kukoc deal. There are a lot of them.
Yet through it all, I was watching.
That’s not to say that I was the only one, but there weren’t many of us. The Bulls don’t have a steady following in Chicago that’s as strong as the Bears, Cubs, or even the White Sox, and as soon as we got bad, the bottom fell out of our fan base. Let’s face it: there were a lot of people interested in the Bulls during the ’90s because they were Da Bulls. They liked watching the greatest player of all-time, and they liked watching him run and dunk and dominate with Scottie, Horace, Pax, B.J., Dennis, Harp, Toni, and the rest of the guys. And who can blame them? Everyone loved the Bulls, expect for the people who hated them, and I’d imagine that even those people could appreciate what was going on with this team. So when the winning left, the fans went with ‘em. But some of us stayed.
Why would we do that?, you might ask.
Well, it’s simple. We’re fans.
I loved the Bulls. I still love the Bulls. I love basketball, and the Bulls are my team, because they play for my city, and because I grew up with them. They gave me six championships and tons of great memories, so what kind of a fan would I be if I turned my back at the first taste of losing? All teams go through waves of success and failure. All teams go through their ups and downs. That’s sports. The Celtics, Yankees, Lakers, Canadiens, Red Wings—every franchise has down years, and every championship team has a fall from grace. The Bulls’ decline was different because it was so sudden and drastic. One day they’re hoisting their sixth championship trophy in eight years, and eight months later they’re the worst team in the NBA. Even so, a fall from grace is still just a fall from grace, and if you’re going to enjoy the championship years then you have to endure the cellar years. That’s the way I see it, anyways.
For six years I’ve watched this team struggle. For six years I’ve watched them lose. For six years I’ve watched as management has brought in new players and new coaches, only to see them produce the same sorry end result. But this year, it’s different.
The first important change was the naming of John Paxson as the new general manger after Jerry Krause left. I’ve never been a Krause-basher—how can you bash a guy who made all of the roster moves (except drafting MJ, which was big, obviously, but not the whole deal by any means) for a team that won six titles?—but it was clearly time for him to go. Pax then fired former teammate Bill Cartwright as coach and gave the job to old NBA point guard Scott Skiles, and together the two did a total revamping of both the roster and the team attitude. Of course, the two go hand in hand. Pax and Skiles got rid of all the talented guys who weren’t “team guys” and replaced them with talented guys who were. The Bulls went 19-47 under Skiles last season—not an exemplary mark by any means—but it seemed like Skiles and Pax had a definite plan of how they wanted to build their team. And of course, it’s difficult for a coach to come into a bad situation and turn it around right away. Skiles deserved a full offseason before we judged him. And even though this season began with an 0-9 start, I’d never found an 0-9 team to be more promising than this one. Ben and I kept saying how good they looked throughout those first nine games, even without a win. We felt something with these guys. I felt it during the first game of the season, a game against the Nets in which we found ourselves in a 27 point hole in the second quarter. And yet we fought all the way back, eventually taking a four point lead. We lost the game in double overtime, and proceeded to drop the next eight, but that is beside the point. Even with the 0-9 start, Ben and I both felt better about this team after nine games than we had about any other nine game-old post-Jordan Bulls team, because this one was a team made up of guys who all played hard no matter the situation. I’d rather lose with a young team that’s playing hard but just hasn’t put it all together yet than with a veteran team that loses because it is selfish and unmotivated.
So here we are, 33 games into the season, and the wins are piling up. Of course, they’re not piling up like they did in the glory days, but they are piling up nonetheless, with eleven wins in our last fourteen games, two five-game winning streaks including our current one, and a 15-9 mark since that 0-9 start. Needless to say, I’m pretty damn pumped about this Bulls team. We’ve been talking playoffs for six years in this town, as in, “When the hell are we going to get back into the playoff?” Well, I am proud to say that for the first time since 1998, the Chicago Bulls are the owners of a playoff spot in the Eastern Conference. It may only be the eighth seed, it may only be the weak Eastern Conference, and it may only be temporary as the season is far from over. But holy hell! When you’ve been watching Dedric Willoughby and Dragon Tarlac for six years, you’ll take any kind of legit improvement you can get, and when the Bulls dismantled the 76ers 110-78 at the UC last night, the improvement was obvious.
GODDAMN-is-this-exciting! This is a fun, fun, fun team to watch. They play defense, they rebound, they follow missed shots, they’ve got great bench production and a steady starting lineup. They’ve got four impact rookies, a second-year leader at point guard, two high schoolers who are starting to come around, and veteran leadership. I just love it. We looked so good last night, it was unbelievable. It was the kind of game that clogs up phone lines, because anybody who was watching and who has been following the team this year has to be getting that special feeling that sports fans get when a bad team—when their bad team—seems on the verge of a true ascension. And it’s not just the fact that we’re a better team, but it’s also the fact that we’re a team made up of guys who I could see myself watching for years to come. Kirk, Tyson, Luol, Duhon, Ben Gordon, Noce, and even Eddy Curry are all young guys who I’d love to see around for a while, and apart from Curry I can see them all staying with the team.[7] I like Skiles, I like Pax…I just can’t stop talking about this team, and I’m really excited to be finally watching a playoff squad.
Am I getting ahead of myself? Possibly. But there’s no good reason that this team should not make the playoffs this year. Man, who ever thought that 15-18 would sound so good?
[1] Sadly, this tradition has become difficult to continue, as more and more straw-wrappers are rolled extra tight.
[2] Man, am I dreading the day this guy retires and hooks onto CBS as a studio analyst. I love watching him play, but I really don’t like listening to him talk.
[3] And yes, I see the hypocrisy in my disliking the Ravens because they are a moved franchise and yet not mentioning anything about this in the paragraph above about the Titans, since they used to be the Houston Oilers. Well, there are a few reasons for this discrepancy. First of all, the Browns were a much more hard-core franchise than the Oilers, which is not to say that Oiler fans weren’t legit. They were. But you’re talking about two clubs that were in different worlds; the Browns, due to their history, were just a more important franchise than the Oilers and were more important to Cleveland than the Oilers were to Houston. And this is meant in no way to be a knock on the Oilers or their fans. It’s just the way I, (a young, out-of-town football fan), see it. Furthermore, towards the end of their tenures in their respective cities, Cleveland seemed to still be in full support of the Browns—their support of the New Browns and their insistence on keeping the rights to the team name and colors proves their loyalty—while the fans in Houston seemed to be getting bored of their team. So it was more shocking, and more hurtful, when Modell snatched the Browns away from Cleveland than when the Oilers moved to Tennessee, the conclusion of a long struggle between the owner and the city. To me, it’s different, and I’ll just leave it at that.
[4] Dennis won’t go to the Hall of Fame—mostly because of the tats, hair, piercings, dresses, and other items of the like—but as a key member of five championship teams, a two-time all-star, a six-time all-NBA defensive first-teamer, a two-time Defensive Player of the Year, and a seven-time league leader in rebounding, he is a no-brainer in my opinion.
[5] Notes about the lists: Pippen, Armstrong, and Perdue all returned to the team during the post-title years. For that reason, they are listed twice. Jordan had two stints with the team during the title years (obviously), but for the purposes of this list it is considered to be one stint. Harper, Kukoc, Brown, Wennington, Simpkins, LaRue, and Booth all stayed with the team during the post-title years, but they are only listed once. Simpkins and Brunson are also listed once, despite the fact that they both left and then returned during the same era. Another note: players are listed by the year they first played with the team, not the year they were drafted. I point these things out for two reasons. One, so that you, the reader, can best understand the lists. Two, so that you, the reader, don’t think there was something that I, the sports dork, did not know.
[6] Chuck Nevitt (4 games played), Mark Randall (15), Rory Sparrow (4), Ricky Blaton (2), Joe Courtney (5), and David Vaughn (3) played a combined 33 games during the title years with each player enjoying stints that lasted less than a year, but none of them made it onto a playoff roster or championship banner.
[7] I could see Curry staying as well, but he’ll probably demand a big contract, so we’ll see.