Bulls Took Horace For Grant-Ed

Shoot, Horace, shoot.

As a strategy, this may go down with Custer inviting the Sioux to lunch or the skipper of the Titanic asking for more ice, but it is Phil Jackson’s own and he is sticking to it.

Should the Bulls lose to Orlando, it will be Horace Grant’s fault. How dare he stand out there in the open court and hit jumpers just because his old friends on the Bulls are more interested in mauling Shaquille O’Neal.

“I am very happy no one is guarding me,” Grant said. “I’m having a ball out there.”

This is not the way Jackson saw it at all, nor many Bulls fans for that matter. They all remember Grant as the underneath grunt, making life easier for Michael and for Scottie and whoever else Jackson would draw up plays for.

Grant always wanted Jackson to give him more shots, and now Jackson is. It’s just that Grant had to go to Orlando to get them.

“That’s Phil’s philosophy,” Grant said. “Let Horace Grant beat you.”

Revenge is not best served cold but at a boil in the loud heat of the playoffs.

“Someone is open when you double-team,” Jackson explained. “Grant is the open guy.”

Jackson was not quite so eager to take credit for Grant’s success after losing to the Magic Tuesday night. After Game 4, won by the Bulls, Jackson had said matter-of-factly that if Grant could beat the Bulls from outside, so be it.

“Horace is a problem we thought we could live with,” Pippen said. “But he’s been playing excellent basketball, making the right decisions, making the jump shots.”

Grant is carrying the Magic as Michael Jordan is supposed to be doing the Bulls. With O’Neal and Anfernee Hardaway unable to consistently justify their pedigree, not to mention their salaries, Grant has been the clear, shining beacon of competence.

Sometimes O’Neal’s hands so resemble hams that one should be named Smoked and the other one Glazed.

“Horace Grant is the world’s greatest role player,” O’Neal said.

Grant is like the heroine of one of those bad pulp stories where the homely clerk takes off her glasses, lets down her hair and has her boss stammering, “Why, Miss Jones, you’re lovely.”

“Horace is their MVP so far,” Jordan conceded.

This is clear: If Grant is on the Bulls, the Magic are couch potatoes. If Grant is on the Bulls, maybe Michael Jordan is not so necessary. If Grant is on the Bulls, maybe Jerry Krause and Jerry Reinsdorf do not look like such pinheads for letting him get away, not that either Jerry needs Grant to confirm the obvious.

In Game 5, Grant hit 10 of 13 shots, boarded 11, and erased Toni Kukoc from the evening. Except for one brief little flash from Kukoc, Grant has made him invisible since this started.

For the series, Grant is shooting 70 percent, and averaging 20 points a game, numbers his old pal and assigned defender, Pippen, could use.

“When I was with the Bulls,” Grant said, “and we had a team down 3-2, we would go for the kill. We’re going for the kill (today) at the United Center.”

Now the Bulls have to win two.

“That appears to be very hard to do,” Jordan said. “Neither team has done it. This is promising for Game 6, but we know if we want to win the series, we have to win two in a row.

“The door is not closed yet. I’m not focusing on the negative. We’re not one game away from summer, but one game away from tying it up and coming back here Sunday.”

A year later and a series sooner, the Bulls find themselves in familiar peril, one loss away from elimination. The difference is that Grant is gone and Jordan is back.

What happens next will show if it might not have been better the other way around.