Aggressive Sonics Start The Fight, But Bulls Finish It

The last time a team had its way with Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls was the late 1980s, when the Detroit Pistons mistook the Bulls for both the heavy bag and the speed bag.

The Bad Boys could have won those matches on cuts alone, but instead they went after, and earned, knockouts.

Not surprisingly, the Sonics deduced that that style was the way to go. Not only did it work the last time the franchise was in the NBA Finals in 1979, the New York Knicks showed overhand rights and head butts still had some currency. Though the Bulls beat the Knicks in the Eastern Conference semifinal series 4-1, the average margin of victory was only 8.5 points, which is known as a moral victory against a team with a record number of regular-season wins.

The Sonics went so far as to hire as a scout Brendan Malone, the recently fired coach of the Toronto Raptors who was an assistant coach and cut man in the Detroit corner during the Pistons’ heyday.

Malone helped develop “The Jordan Rules,” a strategy for containing the uncontainable Michael Jordan, which included the laying on of so much bone that the game began to resemble a coroner’s morgue.

Jordan is persuaded that that was the reason Malone was hired by Seattle. A wary Jordan spotted Malone scouting the Bulls series with Orlando.

“He said, ‘I see you,”’ Malone said before Wednesday night’s game, and it was apparently not in a tone of brotherly affection. Indeed, Malone went on to sum his strategy against Jordan and the Bulls.

“Attack him for 48 minutes,” he said. “It’s a fist fight.”

Lo and behold, up on the Sonic blackboard before the game was an echo, in coach George Karl’s felt-tipped handwriting: “Be aggressive. Start the fight.” When Dennis Rodman drew his third, fourth and fifth fouls within 4 minutes of the third quarter, and the Sonics ended the period trailing only 79-77, the strategy seemed be working.

Unfortunately, the Sonics made the puncher’s mistake.

“You have to do it,” said Vince Askew, “with a brain.”

Argh. A damnable oversight.

So the Bulls won going away, 107-90, to take not only a 1-0 lead, but punch out the Sonics strategy.

The Sonics seemed drained by all the pushing as well as the Bulls’ relentless defensive pressure.

The Sonics made four killer turnovers early in the fourth quarter, forcing passes because they seemed to be too tired to run back-door plays or other cuts that might have burned the overplaying defenders.

Gary Payton played 47 minutes, made particularly difficult by the absence of his partner in crime, Nate McMillan. Shawn Kemp, who powered up and over the Bulls for 32 points, went 41. Even reserve Sam Perkins was pushed to 37 minutes.

“They have a knack to get more aggressive as the game goes on,” Sonics coach George Karl said. “We got more tentative. They won that battle of aggressiveness big time.

“I think we ran out of gas a little. I don’t think we can beat this team without winning the hustle game.”

Fortunately for the Sonics, that is a correctable flaw, as they demonstrated between Games 6 and 7 of the Western Conference finals against Utah. Unfortunately for them, this is the Bulls, who may well have played their most disjointed game of the series after a nine-day layoff and still were in control most of the way.

The Sonics may not have delivered their best punch. But as did Muhammad Ali, the Bulls went 15 rounds and came out looking pretty.