“I thought it was a below-mediocre performance,” snarled Bulls coach Scott Skiles, “and frankly I’m embarrassed by it.”
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At the UC, the Bulls came from nine points down in the fourth quarter to nip the Knicks. Ballyhooed rookie Ben Gordon was key, as he had been throughout the Bulls’ resurgence. Though he’d initially seemed tentative, literally out of his league, he was soon pouring in points with his erect, proud, stiff-necked style of play. He scored 14 in the fourth quarter to rally the Bulls, so it was ironic he was the only player who didn’t take part in the game-winning basket. With the score tied at 84 in the final seconds, scruffy Argentine rookie Andres Nocioni blocked a shot by Trevor Ariza. Long, lean Tyson Chandler raced over and saved the ball from going out of bounds by flipping it to Kirk Hinrich, who passed ahead to Nocioni, who threw it into the middle to none other than slimmed-down center Eddy Curry, who was running the floor like a point guard. Curry scooped the desperation pass off his shoe tops and in one fluid motion rolled the ball up and off his fingertips like someone serving canapes to a king. The ball went in to give the Bulls the lead. When Chandler blocked a final New York shot, the sold-out crowd of 22,358–all of them Bulls loyalists, as the city’s more disinterested basketball purists no doubt had their eyes on the Illinois-Northwestern game taking place simultaneously in Evanston–went crazy, as if the Bulls had just won the championship. Courtside fans embraced the players–and vice versa.
Two days later, in a holiday matinee at Madison Square Garden, the Bulls again came from behind in the last quarter, again rallied by Gordon. He scored 13 in the frame, and this time he finished off the game himself. After missing a running jumper in the lane that would have put the Bulls ahead, he got another chance on the Bulls’ last possession, the score tied at 86. In a designed play, he brushed off his defender, the discarded Bulls phenom Jamal Crawford, on Chandler’s screen. Hulking New York forward Mike Sweetney picked him up going down the side of the lane, but Gordon leaped, hovered, and lofted a one-handed rainmaker over Sweetney’s outstretched arm–a high, arcing shot that dropped through the hoop and into the net with a tenth of a second on the clock. None other than Scottie Pippen, sitting in the front row, exulted.
The playoffs beckoned.
