The Bulls right now play a form of basketball that reminds one of Sisyphus, the mythological Greek king assigned to roll a boulder, again and again, to the top of a hill for eternity. Though the Bulls continue to have the worst record in the National Basketball Association, entering this workweek at 6-30, it’s simply not true that they show no signs of progress. The Bulls show signs of progress in almost every game. They may be prone to stupid mistakes that are a product of youth, their average age being the youngest in the league, but they have reached a point where their young players make more good plays than bad. Moment by moment, overcoming slips and slides, they roll their boulder up the side of the hill. Yet when things go bad for the Bulls–and they go bad at some point in almost every game–and the boulder starts to roll back, they seem powerless to stop it. The one boulder seems to turn into many, and the Bulls run down the hillside trying to dodge them like Buster Keaton at the end of Seven Chances.
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Brand has established himself as the Bulls’ leader and go-to guy, but while it’s good to see a 21-year-old player with the maturity to become the team’s main media presence–he stays long after games, win or lose, to answer reporters’ questions, while other players scoot out the locker-room door–I’m not sure it will be to his long-term advantage to be the team’s offensive crutch. That’s the role Jordan was given at a similar stage in his career–first by coach Kevin Loughery, then by Doug Collins–and it helped him develop his unbounded potential. Jordan, quite simply, was a work in progress, and giving him the ball night after night and telling him to win the game just built the unbridled confidence he displayed in later years. Brand strikes me as a very capable player, but no Jordan. He is now what Bulls fans hope he will be one day on a championship team: a role player, a meat grinder, a power forward who goes out night after night and puts up 20 points and 10 rebounds–and a pretty rare player in that regard, something not to be squandered.
Anxieties like mine betray the Bulls fans’ dilemma, because right now Brand should be the least of their worries. I went to the Mavs game looking for signs of progress and saw some. Doubters might say the Bulls put together their three-of-five streak against weak competition–Jordan’s Wizards, for instance, are next worst to the Bulls, with a mere seven wins entering this week, and the other, better teams were probably distracted by the holidays. Yet the Bulls do have a nucleus of young talent, and they demonstrated it against the Mavs just as they have in spurts all season. They’d had several days to prepare for Dallas, and right away they showed they had a game plan to deal with the Mavs’ penchant for crosscourt passes. Ron Mercer stepped in front of one and keyed a fast break that ended with Ron Artest rattling in a jumper from outside as the Bulls drew first blood. Artest played his usual active defense, and though he couldn’t stay with the Mavs’ Dirk Nowitzki–a 6-11 forward who poses matchup problems for every team in the league, as he looks to be the product of German genetic engineers who somehow got hold of Bill Walton’s DNA and enhanced it with blond hair and a three-point shot–he helped the Bulls take the lead briefly in the second quarter. But Brand was the key player, taking it right at Bradley with his quickness and even running the fast break after reaching out and stabbing an errant Dallas pass. With the awkward concentration of a determined dad trying to win a picnic sack race, Brand dribbled down in the middle of a 3-on-1 and dished to Artest for a reaching, long-armed jam.
The Mavs pushed their lead to 80-72 after three quarters. Mercer didn’t help things when he tomahawked a jam and the ball bounced off the back rim. The Bulls’ sole noteworthy free agent signed this summer–in an act of desperation by general manager Jerry Krause after he was rejected by better players, even as he was waving piles of money at them–Mercer was having an atrocious night. He was outclassed at both ends by Proviso East alumnus Michael Finley, who scored 30 points while helping to hold Mercer to four on 2-of-12 shooting. Even so, the Bulls crawled back, and Fred Hoiberg’s three pulled them within a basket at 83-81. Then things went bad for the final time that night. The Mavs’ Steve Nash hit a three to make it 86-81. Ruffin somehow lost track of Bradley, who scored an easy hoop to make it 88-81, and then fouled Nowitzki to present him with a three-point play that put the Mavs up 91-81 with just over five minutes to play. Dallas coasted home, while Brand humped it up and down the floor to get his usual ten rebounds and a few extra points, finishing with 23 in a 104-91 loss.
