Scratch Theory That Bulls Are One-Man Team

In the rush to reaffirm the Seattle SuperSonics as the one team which couldn’t win the NBA Finals, our expert panel neglected to tell you who else could.

David Stern’s Bureau of Over-Officiating, that’s who.

In fact, for you inveterate gamblers out there, the Vegas odds on Most Valuable Player of the series have shifted dramatically and now read: Shawn Kemp 10-1, Michael Jordan 2-1 and Joe Crawford even.

Somewhere down the list of sucker bets are Toni Kukoc, Luc Longley and Ron Harper. You know them better, if you know them at all, as the lunks - OK, millionaire lunks the Chicago Bulls have perpetually assigned to shoulder Michael Jordan’s sedan chair. On Wednesday night, however, they flexed muscles they may not have known they had.

As expected, the Bulls have broken on top in the first-to-four Finals, though hardly in the expected way. They subdued the Sonics 107-90 at the United Center in a game that was one quarter grisly tug of war, two quarters whistle cantata and one quarter Seattle seizure, and afterward a blind man would have presumed he’d stumbled into the wrong locker room.

“We got some confidence from this game,” insisted Kemp. “We played one of the worst games we’ve played in a couple of weeks and still had a chance to win.”

Good to see Shawn has already banished that 35-point loss at Utah from memory. And perhaps some day the NBA will award the O’Brien Trophy to the team that gathers the most confidence out of 17-point losses, but perhaps he should be reminded that the target is still Chicago and the Sonics have just six bullets left in the clip.

They may yet wing the Bulls, but first they must understand that the business end of the gun is the one you hold away from you.

In front of 24,544 blase fans masquerading as hostile witnesses, the Sonics looked opportunity squarely in the eye and blinked - though, to be fair, this wasn’t Sacramento or even Utah staring back.

Trailing by just two points entering the fourth quarter, the Sonics went strangely static - watching Kukoc come out of his playoff hibernation to personally stretch the lead into double digits, and then looking off into the ether as Harper picked the carcass clean.

Mr. Michael Jordan, meanwhile, was conspicuously inconspicuous, and you trend trackers know that can’t last no matter how many bodies George Karl runs at him.

“I anticipated them throwing a lot of people at me,” said Jordan, who finished with 28 points (did we say inconspicuous?). “I think that’s their way of making other players step up and hurt them, and I think we proved that other players can step up.”

Proved it? They may patent it.

Let’s look at some numbers: Longley, the 7-foot-2 Aussie who usually has to play jungle gym with the Ewings and Shaqs and other Tyrannosaurs who roam the Eastern Conference, bulls around for 14 points and four blocked shots. Harper, the de facto point guard, gets 15, seven assists and renders Gary Payton irrelevant. Kukoc, who hasn’t hit a jumper since March to hear the locals tell it, tosses in 18 points, including a four-point play.

The Sonics? They had Kemp and his 32 splendid points. They also had 17 turnovers - seven of them Shawn’s - and their vaunted defense forced just seven in return.

“Our philosophy was to come in and take care of the ancillary ballplayers,” said Bulls coach Phil Jackson, setting a Finals record for First Coach to Use the Word “Ancillary.”

“The supplementary scorers - (Detlef) Schrempf and (Hersey) Hawkins and hopefully (Sam) Perkins - we did a good job on those players.”

Crawford, meanwhile, did a job on Frank Brickowski, assessing two quick technicals that got him tossed late in the first half. Nate McMillan’s back did a job on him, limiting him to just 6 minutes.

“Not having Nate puts a lot of pressure on Gary,” admitted Karl, “and it takes away from what we can do on defense.”

And, finally, Kemp took himself out with a silly fifth foul on Kukoc’s four-pointer and a sixth later against Dennis Rodman that Brickowski - watching on NBC from the locker room - called “a push on the wrist.”

“I don’t think we can beat this team without winning the hustle game and the transition game,” said Karl.

In the end, the Sonics didn’t win any part of the game and yet came away feeling that “we can play with this team and we can beat this team,” as Payton put it.

Jordan put it quite differently.

“To win it and know you didn’t play great offense but played great defensively is a plus,” he said. “We can build on this.”

Doesn’t seem fair, winning the game and the confidence game, too.

, DataTimes The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = John Blanchette The Spokesman-Review