Two top Western Conference contenders for the National Basketball Association championship came to Chicago last week, and the Bulls–even without injured center Luc Longley–simply brushed them aside. They avenged an early season loss to the Utah Jazz in typical fashion on Monday with a punishing 102-89 victory that wasn’t even that close. Then they crushed the Houston Rockets, the team with the second-best record in the league, 110-86 Saturday night, winning in the same way they had the night before in Milwaukee against the Bucks: by turning it on in the final 15 minutes. The Bulls joined the Rockets and the Jazz in downplaying the importance of those games. Houston’s Clyde Drexler seemed to speak for all concerned when he said, before Saturday night’s contest, “There’s been a little to-do about this game, but I think it’s January, not April or May or June. So for the most part it’s just another game on the schedule.”
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All things being equal and everyone healthy, neither the Jazz nor the Rockets can compete with the Bulls. Michael Jordan, Scottie Pippen, and Dennis Rodman give the Bulls the star quality to match any other team in the league, but what really tilts the scales in Chicago’s favor is the bench of Toni Kukoc, Steve Kerr, and now Randy Brown and Jason Caffey, both of whom are enjoying breakthrough seasons–if a bench player can be said to enjoy a breakthrough season. The Jazz have their strengths, primarily the enduring twosome of power forward Karl Malone and point guard John Stockton, but otherwise Utah’s best player is shooting guard Jeff Hornacek, the sort of role player the Bulls have always been able to shut down when necessary (see Hersey Hawkins, Dan Majerle, Dennis Scott, etc). The Rockets have three of the best players in the game: Barkley, Clyde Drexler, and Hakeem Olajuwon. Yet the Bulls in general and Michael Jordan in particular have long been able to befuddle Barkley and Drexler, and beyond rebound specialist Kevin Willis the Rockets’ bench is threadbare, which leaves Olajuwon to try to beat the Bulls all by himself.
Yet the Bulls opened the second quarter with Rodman, Jordan, and Pippen all resting on the bench. With Caffey playing aggressively, the Bulls’ second team fought the Rockets to a draw for almost five minutes. While the first half ended with Houston retaining its ill-gotten three-point lead, 43-40, the Bulls would prove to be the fresher team down the stretch.
Yes, these were mere midseason games, but what was most impressive about the Bulls’ victories was the way they altered their tactics ever so slightly to suit the competition: putting Jordan in the triangle with Kukoc and Kerr to combat the Utah double-team, then spreading out the offense in the late moments against the Rockets to keep them from swarming. On defense, the Bulls changed their man-to-man matchups continually throughout both games. This confounded the Jazz and the Rockets in the instant, but more important, it gave the Bulls a wealth of data to work with in any meeting in the NBA finals. The Bulls coaches can look at the game tapes, see what worked best, and perhaps surprise those teams again with tactics seen only briefly last week (say, by putting Kukoc on Malone or Caffey on Olajuwon).
