Bulls Can Absorb Rodman’s Ego Without Problem

Anyone who believes Dennis Rodman will turn out to be a fatal distraction hasn’t spent enough time around the Chicago Bulls.

Rodman won’t be easy on the eyes, given the painted hair and nails, pierced body parts and the mosaic of tattoos. Nor will he be easy all the time on team morale, considering his recent history of skipped practices, suspensions and stockinged-feet strikes.

But beyond hauling down the rebounds Chicago needs to rise to one more NBA championship, Rodman will prove a perfect fit in one other regard. “Chaos,” Dennis’ favorite word, also just happens to be the Bulls’ mantra.

On Thursday, a day before his players head south to open the exhibition season in Peoria, Ill., coach Phil Jackson was on his way to New York for appearances on both early-morning and late-night talk shows. And what was he going to talk about? His second book, the soon-to-be-released “Sacred Hoops: Spiritual Lessons of a Hardwood Warrior.”

Packed with equal parts Zen Buddhism and coaching tips - such as how the Lakota Sioux warrior technique can be used to defy pressure and steal the other team’s energy.

Now if Rodman can’t get behind a coach like that, he might actually be beyond salvation.

Ever since Chuck Daly left him behind with the Pistons in 1992, Dennis has been looking - without success - for a working environment in which to apply the full measure of his talents. Ron Rothstein, who followed Daly in Detroit, didn’t have a clue how to provide it. Neither did Rodman’s two coaches in San Antonio, John Lucas and Bob Hill, who played the alternate ends of the good cop-bad cop spectrum with the same result. Now it’s Jackson’s turn.

In an answer almost Zen-like in its simplicity, he predicted Chicago would succeed where the other clubs failed by not changing a thing. His reasoning? This team absorbed Michael Jordan and his 800-pound ego dropping out of the sky with two weeks left to play last season. And it absorbed Scottie Pippen’s 400-pound ego and fit of pique with 1.8 seconds left in a crucial game the season before that. Finding a quiet corner where Rodman can salve his own paint-by-the-numbers ego for the one season he’s under contract should prove easy by comparison.

“I played in New York with a bunch of players who were extremely gifted individuals who all went their own directions - and won a championship,” said Jackson, the sixth man on the Knicks’ 1973 title team. “The chemistry on the court, how they play together, willingness to cooperate, professionalism, that’s what matters.”

For all the buzzwords - chemistry, cooperation, professionalism - what really matters is that Rodman rebounds like a demon and doesn’t care if he touches the basketball on the offensive end. Last season, he took only five shots a game on average and grabbed 17 boards; those numbers practically ensure he will become Jordan’s new best friend. And that’s what really, really, really matters.

Rodman complained early on that Jordan and Pippen shot too much and too fast - “I’m trying to get set up, and it’s, like, they’re shooting already.” - and that nobody went out of their way to make him feel welcome. That hardly put him in select company.

Another book about the Bulls is out this week, titled “Second Coming: The Strange Odyssey of Michael Jordan - From Courtside to Home Plate and Back Again.” Written by Sam Smith of the Chicago Tribune, who also wrote “The Jordan Rules,” the new book shows Michael still bullying teammates and freezing bad shooters out of the offense, still meddling in the coaching and front-office business, still doing anything and everything to win.

No wonder then, when training camp opened last week with Rodman present and someone asked veteran center Bill Wennington if things seemed bizarre, he rolled his eyes.

“As if,” Wennington said, laughing, “it hasn’t been bizarre around here before.”