Time For Reinsdorf To Pre-Endorse The Check

The Jordan bone’s connected to the Pippen bone’s connected to the Jackson bone’s connected to …

And, by the way, the whole tricky chassis managed to gut the Utah Jazz without mercy Wednesday night.

This Bulls’ babble is beginning to resemble one of those dreaded pop-quiz math questions.

If Scottie Pippen is traveling to Philadelphia at 87 mph, and Michael Jordan starts walking to North Carolina beginning June 15 while Phil Jackson circles both Vancouver and Golden State in the wheelbarrow he borrowed to carry his money home, how long will it take Jerry Reinsdorf to admit he is an idiot?

We shall see how important it is to have Michael Jordan for a friend, something both Pippen and Jackson have to recognize is their primary advantage. Singly, or together, both of them will never get Reinsdorf to do the right thing.

“I think people should get to see Michael Jordan playing basketball, that’s the important thing,” Jackson said.

Jordan does not have to play basketball in Chicago, of course. People saw him play baseball in Birmingham and other sites as remote and unworthy as, say, Salt Lake City. So, just Jordan playing before an audience is not the issue.

What Jordan is trying here is simply the most audacious power play this side of KoufaxDrysdale, and that one was when players had absolutely no clout.

Jordan has his global popularity, his immense if inevitably diminishing talent, most of corporate America, every stranger on the street and the prayers of orphans and widows everywhere all bearing down on Reinsdorf.

Transcendent games like the one Jordan had Wednesday are a bonus, the least and most reliable thing he does.

Even the present opposing coach wants Jordan to get everything he can.

“Everyone has reaped the rewards of what he has done for the game,” Jerry Sloan said.

And none more than those other Jerries, Reinsdorf and Krause, who, without Jordan, would have no phone calls not to return.

Jordan has thoughtfully provided the order of settling things. Jackson first, then him. And Pippen stays.

To paraphrase that old revolutionary point guard, Benjamin Franklin, they shall hang together or surely they shall trade Christmas cards separately.

Unless Jordan is lying (“Do you think I’m lying?” he asked. “I’m not.”), the Bulls must return intact or in tatters.

And which it is may depend entirely on how egregiously the Bulls dismiss the current falaffel from out west. Who were they again? The Jazz?

If Game 2 is any hint, Reinsdorf might as well just pass a pre-endorsed checkbook around.

Strange strategy to sustain a dynasty, threaten to break it up in the heat of the championship run. Stranger response too to so thoroughly humiliate the best of the West that it makes the owner look like a motivational genius.

Hanging out there in partial delusion is Pippen, who is Jordan’s conviction away from becoming Dominique Wilkins.

“I’m considered one of the 50 greatest players to ever play the game,” Pippen said. “That’s how I look at it. My day will come.”

Pippen did not say where he finished on that list, but I’m sure it was behind Wilkins, whose later career has been as a hired name.

The Bulls once tried to trade Pippen to the Clippers. He could get there on his own.

Maybe Pippen could just play for Utah the rest of these Finals, even the sides up, give Karl Malone an actual teammate.

Style points count here in championship No. 5. Tough judges, the joint Jerries.

Jordan has not received his annual review from Krause yet, he said. Ooooo. How did he do? How did he do?

The idea of Krause grading Jordan is as ridiculous as a rented mule critiquing Silver Charm.

Diagram this sentence …