Chicago, Other Beasts Hail From East Getting Rodman Makes Bulls Team To Beat
One player, one trade and the whole picture changes. One broken thumb and it changes again.
When Dennis Rodman took his radical rebounding act from the San Antonio Spurs to the Chicago Bulls, he jolted the Eastern Conference back to life. Not even Michael Jordan’s return for a full season or Hakeem Olajuwon’s quest for a third straight title is generating such a buzz.
Now Chicago is the team to beat, the Western Conference isn’t quite as formidable and two-time champion Houston is searching for respect all over again as the NBA season opens Friday with two expansion teams in Canada.
“The Eastern Conference, all of a sudden, is going to be a tough battle,” new Boston coach M.L. Carr said.
The Orlando Magic will find out just how tough. The Eastern Conference champion, swept by the Rockets in the NBA Finals, will have to play the first two months of the season without Shaquille O’Neal, who broke his right thumb in an exhibition game.
Ready to take advantage of O’Neal’s early absence are the Indiana Pacers, the Charlotte Hornets and the New York Knicks as well as three up-and-coming young teams.
Washington added veteran point guard Mark Price in a trade with Cleveland, Detroit hired Doug Collins to energize the Pistons and Milwaukee is looking for even more from its frontcourt duo of Glenn Robinson and Vin Baker.
“I think overall the East, from top to bottom, is going to have more parity than a year ago,” Magic coach Brian Hill said.
Certainly, the Western Conference is still loaded, with San Antonio, Utah, Phoenix and Seattle all having won at least 57 games last season.
After another first-round flop, the Sonics are vowing to play with professionalism equal to their talent, the Los Angeles Lakers are young and hungry and the Suns’ Charles Barkley is back with new teammate John “Hot Rod” Williams to help in the middle.
But all that might not matter, because Houston has Clyde Drexler and Olajuwon, whose dazzling playoff performances recalled their Phi Slama Jama days at the University of Houston. Even though Olajuwon missed the preseason following elbow surgery, the Rockets are looking to become the fourth team in NBA history to win at least three consecutive titles.
But the West might no longer be best, and one big reason is Rodman.
Despite claiming his fourth consecutive rebounding title, Rodman wore out his welcome in San Antonio by missing team buses, arriving late to practices, taking his shoes off during games and refusing to join team huddles.
“It was a sad, sad scenario,” said Spurs coach Bob Hill, who welcomed the lopsided Rodman-for-Will Perdue trade.
In Chicago, Rodman, a six-time all-defensive team member, joins six-time member Jordan and four-time member Scottie Pippen, making an already good defensive team perhaps one of the best ever.
“Rodman gives them high energy, intensity and toughness,” said Collins, who coached the Bulls from 1986-89. “There’s no player with more intensity than Michael Jordan. You start combining these ingredients, and Chicago could have a devastating team.”
Challenging the Bulls became much tougher for Orlando on Thursday, when O’Neal, the league’s scoring leader last season with 29.3 points per game, underwent surgery to repair his fractured thumb. Filling in will be Jon Koncak, a free agent acquisition who has never averaged more than eight points per season.
“It will make it a lot tougher,” Drexler said. “He (O’Neal) commands so much attention on offense and defense. It’s going to be an interesting time for them.”
Behind O’Neal and the dazzling play of Anfernee Hardaway, Orlando advanced to the Finals having previously never won a playoff game but fizzled against the Rockets, falling in four games.
“Our returning players seem to have a little hunger left over from the Finals,” Hill, the Magic’s coach, said. “I don’t think we’ll let down. I think we’ll be a better team. Whether we get back to the Finals remains to be seen, but we’ll be an improved team.”
And not the only one. Miami, which entered the league a year earlier than Orlando but never had the Magic’s lottery luck, went out and got itself a marquee coach instead.
Leaving New York and an aging Knicks team for sunny Miami, Pat Riley signed a five-year contract that includes $15 million in salary, a 20 percent ownership stake in the Heat and other lucrative benefits, an unprecedented package for a coach in any professional sport. By taking over a team that has only one winning season in its seven-year history, he added another pinch of spice to the Eastern Conference stew.
“I feel very good about the challenge,” said Riley, who will be hard-pressed to extend his 13-season streak of 50-win seasons. “We have to develop the talent and develop the pride. It’s not going to be easy, I know that.”
One Heat player who took an immediate shine to Riley’s philosophy of physical defense was center Matt Geiger. It was his hard foul that broke O’Neal’s thumb.
Although Miami’s deal for Riley and Chicago’s deal for Rodman were big, the blockbuster deal of the offseason was the one reached between the league and the players’ association that assures six years of labor peace.
Whether this season would open at all was in doubt until mid-September, when the players gave their approval in a referendum to a new collective bargaining agreement. The 226-134 vote defeated an effort by some players and agents to decertify the players’ union, a fight that pitted player against agent and teammate against teammate.
A few days later, NBA owners ended a 79-day lockout, the first labor action in the league’s history.
The most immediate effect of the new deal was the end of the rookie holdout. Because its rookie salary scale sets a three-year term and the approximate contract amount, every first-round draft pick was signed and in uniform when training camps opened.