By Ted Cox
The Knicks and Bulls had met in five of the previous seven years in the playoffs, including each of the Bulls’ three championship runs, and while the Knicks had won the last meeting, two years ago, that was the one time in the last 11 years that the Bulls didn’t have Michael Jordan at their disposal. The Bulls seemed to recognize a whipped-dog carriage to the Knicks and at first were diplomatic, not wanting to rile an opponent ready and willing to be beaten. Yet as the first two games did find the Knicks fading down the stretch–ever so slightly in the first game, with Ewing missing a couple of key free throws, and then abundantly in the second game, whose entire fourth quarter proved to be a New York fiasco–the Bulls couldn’t rein in their confidence. They may have been diplomatic, for the most part, off the court, but they were saying things on the court that got the Knicks angry.
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The second game saw a decided increase in the tension between the two teams. In the third quarter, Ewing slipped and fell down just as the ball was being passed to him on the wing. He snagged it with one hand and called a time-out as Scottie Pippen clawed at the ball. For a moment Pippen straddled the prone Ewing. Then, as Ewing was trying to stand up, Pippen walked forward over him, spreading his legs to narrowly clear Ewing’s head. Ewing was irate, but the incident ended there. His temper worsened as the Bulls pulled away in the fourth quarter, and eventually he almost attacked Bulls assistant coach Jim Cleamons. When Cleamons complained to both Chicago center Luc Longley and the referees that Ewing shouldn’t be allowed to get away with his rough play in the post, Ewing had to be restrained.
Yet the Bulls’ apparent dominance was deceptive. The Knicks might not have been playing as dirty as before, but their defense was almost at peak level. In the second game, aside from Jordan, Ron Harper (remember that name, Bulls fans), who finished with 15, and, in the fourth quarter, Pippen, who started slowly but finished with 19, the Knicks kept the Bulls in check and controlled the tempo. “Ugly games, ugly basketball,” Jordan said after the second win. The Bulls, in fact, looked mired in the mud for most of the second game, before Jackson opened the fourth quarter with a lineup that teamed starters Jordan, Pippen, and Dennis Rodman (clearly in his milieu with this style of play), with bench role players Steve Kerr and Bill Wennington. For three quarters the Bulls had been standing around, knocked off their blocks by the Knicks’ defense. Kerr, however, began moving without the ball, creating spaces for Jordan and Pippen to operate in, and suddenly everything functioned smoothly.
Harper hit a three, was fouled, and added the free throw for a four-point play that put the Bulls up 70-68 in the third quarter. When an inadvertent (no, really) Jordan elbow sent Anderson sprawling, giving Jordan a rare uncontested shot, he hit a three to give the Bulls a 77-68 lead going into the fourth quarter. Kerr added a three early in the final frame to give the Bulls a double-digit lead, 80-69. Then the Knicks rallied. When Ewing hit a long, running one-handed jumper from beyond the free-throw line over Pippen, New York was back in front, 87-86, with two and a half minutes to play. And when Pippen badly missed a three-pointer, Ewing converted at the other end with another running jump shot, this one over Rodman.
