I first started following sports during the Michael Jordan dynasty years. Ironically enough, it was right after he temporarily retired from basketball in 1993 to pursue his baseball dream that I knew who he was, and of what significance he was. I guess I'd somehow known that the Chicago Bulls were good, since they had just won a few championships, but I had no direct recollection from the first set of titles.
I still remember leaving the TV room in 1998 during the last minute of Game 6 of the NBA Finals. John Stockton had just hit a three-pointer to give the Utah Jazz their biggest lead of the night, and having been so distraught over the Bulls losing the previous game just a few days earlier, I couldn't bear to watch it again. What drew me back to the living room was the sound of my dad yelling, "Huh! Huh! Huh!" For some reason I was still thinking they'd lost, so it was surprising for me to find out that my dad's yells corresponded with Jordan's yells. And most surprisingly of all, they had done it. They'd won the game, and the championship. Oh, what could have been. After all, I only missed Jordan's most famous shot of his career.
Months later, after the following NBA season had begun, I was with my dad at a shoe store getting new sneakers when I looked up at the TV. The Bulls were playing the Atlanta Hawks, I recalled, but something was wrong. The Bulls were down by 20-some points midway through the game! This isn't normal! This isn't right! They're supposed to be up by 20-some points midway through the game!
Alas, it was the new normal. Jordan had retired for what we'd assumed would be the final time, sidekick Scottie Pippen was in Houston, and Head Coach Phil Jackson was in the midst of his one-year siesta before resuming duties with the Los Angeles Lakers. And the Bulls, once the most well-known team on the entire planet... the entire planet! ... was a bunch of absolutely nothing. (OK, they did still have Toni Kukoc...) But the point is, since 1998, people have described every ebb and flow of the franchise as stuck under MJ's shadow. In 2005 they made the playoffs, but they were still under MJ's shadow. In 2006, they signed Ben Wallace to a contract, but they were still under MJ's shadow, for the sole reason that they hadn't had an All-Star on the team. In 2008, they drafted Derrick Rose, but still the shadow was there.
Here's a popular question: when will they return to championship form? Here's another: will they ever return to championship form? Here's my question: when will Jerry Reinsdorf sell the team? Thing is, having grown up in Chicago and followed their sports teams' mostly lackadaisical histories has made me realize how much this is a city of shadows. I mean, aside from the Bulls being stuck under Jordan's shadow, the Bears have been stuck under the shadow of their famous 1985 champion "shuffle" team, the White Sox are stuck under the Cubs' shadow, and the Blackhawks have been under the shadow of former owner Bill Wirtz, who let his team dissolve into hockey's laughingstock. And then there are the Cubs.
I really shouldn't try and predict what I will muse in this space in the coming weeks and months, but I imagine it will include a mix of current events stories (sports-related, of course), suggestions for how to fix teams, and perhaps a few more anecdotes. But above all I hope there will be discussion on here, either in trading stories about how we came to love our franchises, or advice for said teams, and the like.
I still kill myself for leaving the room and missing Michael Jordan's last shot as a Bull. That's why I have a pic of it as the background on my computer's desktop(due to copyright concerns, I cannot post it here).
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