Take one or the other, but not both. Either the Cubs were right to keep an aging team around for a creaky curtain call of a season after making the playoffs the year before, or the Bulls were right to crash the franchise and rebuild from scratch after their sixth NBA championship in 1998. Consistency says you can’t have it both ways. Me, I happen to think the Cubs were right to bring back their team intact–relying on Kevin Tapani and Rod Beck and Lance Johnson and, yes, even Gary Gaetti to do the same as they had the year before–and I think the Cubs’ record attendance this year bears me out. People didn’t expect this bunch of geezers to achieve the same results–not after Kerry Wood went down with a splintered elbow in spring training anyway–but they were happy to come out and see them again, especially with Sammy Sosa repeating his 60-homer season. The Cubs’ 1998 playoff appearance was a gasping miracle anyway–there was (and is) precious little to rebuild on, even with Sosa and Wood. Why not just enjoy the afterglow?
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So here’s a bold notion. Let me suggest that different circumstances surrounded the Bulls and the Cubs, and each team did what was best for itself and its fans–the Cubs by lingering over a small moral victory, and the Bulls by moving on to other (if not better) things. If that’s not the sort of controversial stance that sells newspapers, consider me grateful that this newspaper is free.
What makes the Bulls interesting now is that the rebuilding could go either way. The Bulls are a team of pieces, with little heed being paid to the overall look or to continuity. Krause is building them bit by bit, and the longer he leaves gaping holes the better (up to a point), because failure makes it easier to fill those holes in the college draft, in which the worst pick first. The Bulls have two very promising rookies in first-round draft picks Elton Brand, the first player chosen out of college this summer (remember Krause and his gleeful little dance when it was announced the Bulls had won the lottery?), and Ron Artest, a project who just turned 20, but there’s precious little left from the glory days beyond Kukoc. Unfortunately, all three of those players are natural forwards. Barring some inventive coaching by Tim Floyd, only two can play together at a time. The trade of Kukoc is already a hot rumor.
The Knicks won the game comfortably, 89-74, but Artest and Brand scored 14 apiece and impressed. Keep in mind, each is only 20 after leaving college early. They seemed as uncertain in the locker room surrounded by reporters as they had on the floor surrounded by Knicks. But Artest offered up the remarkably mature thought that perhaps it is better to lose, because the natural human impulse is to forget mistakes when one wins.
