A True Winner Is Denied Chance Again

Well, this Detroit-Portland NBA championship series--which should attract tens of television viewers throughout the country--should be a good one. Forgive me, though, if I don’t get too excited about it. It just won’t be any fun without Michael Jordan.

Did you ever pull for an athlete to do well in a big game? Sure you have.

But did you ever root for one particular athlete to succeed in a team sport, no matter how successful this athlete might already have been, how much money he might already make, how many cheers he might already have heard?

That’s the way I felt Sunday about Michael Jordan.

I did not want the Detroit Pistons to eliminate Jordan and the Chicago Bulls from the NBA playoffs.

Because I dislike Detroit?

Not in the least.

Hey, I have no problem with the Pistons. Matter of fact, I am sick to death of all the Detroit-bashing that is going on, about what a “cry baby� Bill Laimbeer is (as though Kareem Abdul-Jabbar wasn’t), or what a “hotdog� Dennis Rodman is (as though the Lakers never celebrated a big basket) or what “dirty� players the Pistons are (it’s always dirty if some other team is doing it).

Chuck Daly’s Pistons earned everything they have. Had Isiah Thomas not thrown that ball into Larry Bird’s hands in 1987, and if Laimbeer hadn’t fouled Abdul-Jabbar in 1988, the Pistons very well could have won four NBA championships in a row.

No, forget the Pistons. I hope they split Portland like a log.

I just can’t stop thinking about Michael Jordan for now.

If I have to hear one more time how the one thing that separates Magic Johnson from Michael Jordan is that Magic is a proven winner, I am going to throw a basketball through somebody’s window.

Magic is great, granted.

But do you think it just might have made a teensy-weensy difference to Johnson’s career that he won all those championships while a teammate of the greatest scorer in NBA history? That he fed the ball night after night to one of the five greatest players in the history of the sport?

While Magic was out there playing with Abdul-Jabbar, Michael has been out there playing with Dave Corzine, Bill Cartwright and Will Perdue.

Give me a break with this “winner� business, will you?

Hey, Magic has always been a champion, you argue. He even won a college national championship with Michigan State.

Fine. And what was that thing Jordan won with North Carolina--the national spelling bee?

Michael Jordan cannot help it that the organization that drafted him did not happen to have Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Jamaal Wilkes, James Worthy, Byron Scott and A.C. Green on the premises.

Magic Johnson has been surrounded by All-Stars his whole life. Even his collegiate lineup had guys like Greg Kelser and Jay Vincent, a couple of All-Americans in their own right.

The next-best player in Jordan’s camp since coming to Chicago was some nobody from nowhere named Scottie Pippen, who turned out to be a truly fine player.

I suppose that’s why I was rooting so hard for the Bulls in Sunday’s Game 7 of the Eastern Conference finals at Auburn Hills, Mich.

Oh, somebody is bound to come up with an ulterior motive for why I wanted the Bulls to win. Remember, if you write for a newspaper, you have to have an ulterior motive. That’s the law in this country.

Never mind that I simply wanted to see Air Jordan get his day in the sun, even if he got it indoors.

I am not surprised that Chicago lost, any more than I am surprised that Jordan had 31 of the team’s 74 points. This home-court thing, after all, means a lot.

Every so often, some pinhead comes up with a novel idea--like, that the NBA playoffs should be played on a neutral court. Oh, sure. Let’s play 82 regular-season games for nothing, why don’t we?

An NBA championship series between Portland and Chicago would have been entertaining. If you were one of the lucky 20,000 or so who jammed every inch of Chicago Stadium in 1977 for a playoff series between Bill Walton’s Trail Blazers and Jerry Sloan’s Bulls, you know the meaning of the word loud. Woodstock wasn’t that loud.

Oh, well.

We still have this year’s NBA Finals to look forward to, with those compelling battles between Kevin Duckworth and James Edwards. Ooooh. Makes your mouth water just thinking about it, doesn’t it?

And I know that Michael Jordan is going to have his day, one of these days. He just doesn’t have to prove that “winner� stuff to me. Jordan is a winner already.

Besides, it isn’t as though the Chicago Bulls are never going to win an NBA championship--like, oh, you know, the Phoenix Suns.