By Ted Cox
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The most curious thing about Sacred Hoops was the difficulty a reader had in recognizing any of the Bulls’ three championship teams in its pages. “Compassion is where Zen and Christianity intersect,” Jackson wrote, then quoted B.J. Armstrong’s line that the untold story of those teams was “the respect each individual has for everybody else.” He also discussed how the team had to learn to control its anger and its hatred of the Detroit Pistons before it could defeat them. Yet the Bulls’ first three championship teams were hardly collections of pacifists brandishing love as their mighty sword. It’s true, the team in general and Michael Jordan in particular had to learn trust, and this trust made everything possible. But what the Bulls learned best from the Pistons was a ruthless attitude that set out to destroy an opponent not only physically but mentally. There was not much compassion to Jackson and the Bulls before the 1992 NBA finals, when they leaked their scouting report saying the Portland Trail Blazers would choke, just as there was little respect granted the New York Knicks in any of their playoff meetings with the Bulls. Those three championship teams were mentally cruel to the verge of sadism; they recalled the Bobby Fischer line, “I like to see ’em squirm.” What was most amazing about the 1995-’96 Bulls was the way they really did come to embody Jackson’s avowed philosophy of love and compassion.
These are flowery concepts for sports to project, so perhaps it’s best to fall back on the words of one Leopold Bloom: “Force, hatred, history, all that. That’s not life for men and women, insult and hatred. And everybody knows that it’s the very opposite of that that is really life. Love. I mean the opposite of hatred.”
“He won two games,” Seattle coach George Karl said when the series was over, referring to the second and sixth, both of which saw Rodman tie the finals record for offensive rebounds in a single game with 11. He won considerably more games than that during the season, and he was also the one who off the court embodied the full range of what the Bulls were trying to accomplish. Looking back at our copy of Sacred Hoops, we noticed that on first reading it last fall we’d underlined that Armstrong line about respect and had then written at the bottom of the page, “Dennis Rodman?” The Bulls and their fans proved themselves ready to grant Rodman respect as a rebounder and defender, a heady player and a specialist willing to accept his role (in that, he was emblematic of the entire team). What caught everyone by surprise was what Jackson called the “heart space” Rodman was granted, by both his teammates and the fans.
Shawn Kemp was noble in defeat, in the angular grace he projected and that distinctive backpedaling swagger he had following a basket. Sitting in the media interview room after the sixth game, he spoke as Jordan entered to low-grade hysteria behind the curtain set up as a background for the podium. “At this point,” Kemp said, “you realize it doesn’t come from your physical ability on the court. A lot of it’s mental, and as a young player I think that I’m going to take that home with me.” Then he went behind the curtain and gave Jordan a long hug before Jordan came out.
