The Bulls’ media guide this season is bound with a trompe l’oeil cover that gives it the frayed appearance of an aged tome, in keeping with the team’s new slogan, “History in the making.” After all, this was to be the year when phenoms Eddy Curry and Tyson Chandler matured and carried the franchise back to the playoffs for the first time since the Michael Jordan era. It was a concept emphasized in a TV ad campaign set to the hip-hop refrain, “Everything can change in the blink of an eye.”
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Though the Bulls’ often listless play was a cause for concern, Cartwright hardly deserved to be the scapegoat. Injuries cost him two of his top players. Chandler, the splinter-thin seven-footer who’d established himself as the team’s most gifted and versatile performer by the end of last season, was limited early on by a balky back. Scottie Pippen, a prodigal son who’d returneth to provide much-needed court smarts and veteran composure, saw one of his 38-year-old knees go out and talked of retiring as he recovered from arthroscopic surgery. Nor was general manager John Paxson to blame; he was simply building on the foundation constructed by Jerry Krause, who likewise was history after stepping down last season. If anyone deserved blame for the Bulls’ sorry straits, it was Krause–if not for drafting Curry, Chandler, and guard Jamal Crawford, all of them promises largely unfulfilled going into this season, then for calling the gods and fates down upon the franchise by the hubris of stating, in the waning days of the Jordan dynasty, that it was organizations and not players that made great teams. Paxson and Skiles had to pull together a team from young talent that under both Cartwright and his predecessor, Tim Floyd, had proved resistant to coaching.
Skiles started a backcourt of Crawford and Kirk Hinrich, who’s the team’s top rookie and was a four-year player at the University of Kansas. In his first season, jug-eared and sporting a straight-bangs haircut a seventh-grade dweeb might reject as too nerdy, he was nevertheless older than both Curry and Chandler and only a year younger than Crawford. Though prone to rookie miscues, he’d made a fairly smooth transition to the pro game. Crawford and Hinrich, who was drafted last summer after Jay Williams’s career ended in a motorcycle crash, both consider themselves point guards, and it’s been a challenge to get them on the court together. But Skiles appeared to have hit on a potential solution. Crawford typically positioned himself with the ball at the top of the circle, with Hinrich running screens along the baseline to pop open on the wings in the new “motion” offense Skiles has instituted. (Tex Winter’s triangle is history in Chicago.) Hinrich hit a three-pointer on a pass from Crawford for the first points of the game, and then the Bulls played good team defense against the Blazers, a miserable road team coming off a loss the previous night, to take a 20-18 first-quarter lead.
“Everything can change in the blink of an eye–and it did,” replied another.
Then this young team, which still hasn’t learned how to win, began to self-destruct. When the Bulls turned the ball over on a 24-second violation Skiles looked worried, even though his team led 79-62. When Curry went weakly to the hoop finishing a fast break and his shot was blocked, resulting in a fast break the other way, the Hornets closed to 79-67. Curry finally halted the Hornets’ streak with a basket that made it 81-72, but New Orleans’s Baron Davis started hitting everything, even with Hinrich in his face, and the lead continued to dwindle. At one point Skiles called a time-out and set up an alley-oop play for Curry, but Crawford threw the pass wildly off the backboard. Hornets veteran Stacey Augmon had a chance to tie the game at the line in the final minute, but he missed the second shot. At the other end, Crawford went one-on-one with his defender and hit a difficult fadeaway jumper from just left of the free throw line to put the Bulls up 87-84. It wasn’t good team basketball, but it preserved the Bulls’ win. On the Hornets’ next possession, Hinrich got clobbered on a screen, but Curry switched off to cover Davis and forced a high trajectory on the three-pointer that would have tied the game. The ball caromed off the backboard and Crawford got it. Fouled, he made two free throws for the 89-84 final. The Bulls were now 12-25–8-13 under Skiles–a long way from the playoffs. But the victory was an encouraging sign and an important one.
