There were moments in the second quarter of the Bulls’ season opener at the United Center when I thought this might be the worst team in the history of the franchise. Considering where the Bulls have already gone since Michael Jordan, Scottie Pippen, and Phil Jackson went their separate ways in 1998, that’s saying something.
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Yet in keeping with last year’s motto, “Everything can change in the blink of an eye”–subtly if irritatingly echoed by Hilary Duff’s “Fly” in the pregame music blasted over the PA system–the Bulls suddenly began to show promise. Paxson had traded away last year’s top scorer, Jamal Crawford, for almost nothing to make it clear to all that Kirk Hinrich was in charge of the team–addition by subtraction–and the point guard, named captain in only his second season, went about proving himself worthy of the confidence. Hinrich didn’t work just on his game over the summer–he built up his body and even altered his hairstyle, going from nerdy farm boy with bangs plastered to his forehead to a flipped-up Hair Cuttery poster boy. If the change has him looking like Kyle Macy, in all other respects he made one forget that old clod of a point guard. Hinrich got back on a fast break to swat the ball away from Mercer–pleasing fans who remembered what a slug Mercer had been with the Bulls–and kept the Bulls within ten at the end of the first quarter with a buzzer-beating drive into the lane, faking Jacque Vaughn into the air and calmly hitting the shot. In the third quarter he threw the Bulls over his shoulders and lugged them back into the game, helped by teenage rookie Luol Deng.
Deng, a long-limbed leaper of a small forward out of Duke, was widely considered the best choice the Bulls could make with their third overall pick in the NBA draft last summer, but they passed on him to take “the best player available,” Connecticut’s Ben Gordon, even though they were well stocked at guard. To his credit, Paxson had apparently prepared in advance to pull off a steal that may rival Krause’s theft of Pippen in 1987. He swapped the Bulls’ first-round pick next summer to the Phoenix Suns for Deng, taken with the seventh choice. (And if the Bulls really tank and get one of the top three picks next summer, they’ll keep it.) Gordon struggled with his shooting touch during the preseason and looked no better in his formal debut, but Deng made an immediate impression. In the darkest moments of the second quarter, he teamed up a couple of times with Hinrich to provide rays of hope, first scrambling for a loose ball and passing out to Hinrich for an open three-pointer, then converting a Hinrich lost ball under the hoop into a basket. Inserted in the third quarter as part of a smaller, more mobile lineup, he got things started with a lovely little turnaround jumper down low, and after Hinrich hit a runner in the lane and a pull-up jumper on a fast break, Deng hit a longer turnaround–spinning, stopping, leaping, and rotating–to get the Bulls inside 20 at 65-46. He saved a long inbounds pass by heaving it back to fellow Duke rookie Chris Duhon, who hit a three-pointer, and when Hinrich banked in a three to make it 67-52, the crowd was caught up in the rally and chanting “Dee-fense!” Snuffed on a drive, Hinrich batted the ball back up and in like a volleyball setter to get the Bulls inside ten, and then Deng rose up and hit a long jumper–his arms held high, faintly reminiscent of Bob “Butterbean” Love. Hinrich ended the quarter with a three trailing a fast break, giving him a Jordan-esque 17 points in the frame and making it 73-66.
For seven years now, the experts have been saying the Bulls needed to learn how to win in the NBA–something that once seemed second nature to them–but that’s turned out to be a difficult thing to teach. Pippen’s retirement just before training camp offered a reminder of how the championship Bulls never beat themselves. They always rushed a shot up with 30 seconds left in a quarter to get the two-for-one, they knew when they had a foul to give in the waning seconds, and Pippen was forever reliable on the inbounds pass. (For all his athletic ability, he was, quite simply, the smartest player in terms of court sense that I’ve ever seen.) The current Bulls showed little sign of that acumen.
