I brought up all those things Michael said to Reggie as soon as we got to the Eastern Conference Finals. If someone said something about McHale, I always brought that up to him, as a teammate. I wanted it to motivate him. I know it would have motivated me.
Before we got a chance to play Chicago in the playoffs, we had to get through Cleveland. The Cavaliers made me nervous. They were well coached, and they gave us problems. I never knew what a guy like Shawn Kemp would do, which made it hard to prepare. When he was on, he was a scary player. I was worried enough about that series, but then Rik Smits came up to me on the Friday before regular season ended and said, “Coach, my uncle just died. I need to go home.” I said, “Okay, we have our last regular-season game tomorrow night on the road, you can miss that, go home, and be back by Sunday night.” But Rik says, “Coach, I’m from Holland, remember? It will take me a full day to get over there.” I’m thinking, “Oh my God, we’ve got a playoff game Thursday.” I said to Rik, “How close an uncle is this?” He said, “Coach, he was just like a father.” So I told him, “Then you go. If anyone on this team has someone that is close to them that dies, I expect them to go. Don’t worry about the team. I’ll handle it.” The timing was horrible, because Rik was coming off an injury, he wasn’t in great shape, and he needed the work, but it was out of my hands. I brought everyone in and sat them down and told them the situation. It got even more complicated, because Rik’s uncle died on an oil rig, way out in the ocean somewhere. His body was out there two or three days, and Rik didn’t know when they were bringing him in. Finally I said, “Rik, you’ve got to pay your respects to your family and get back here.” He missed three days, flying back and forth to Europe, so that left us Tuesday and Wednesday to get ready for Cleveland. During our shootaround the day of the game, we had to go like crazy. But the guys were together on this. They understood. We won that first game 106–77 and I started breathing a lot easier.
We eliminated Cleveland in four games. We had New York next, and the big story there was Patrick Ewing was coming back from his broken wrist. I knew how determined Patrick was to win a championship, so he was the one that caused me worry against the Knicks. But our guys were focused on one thing—beating the Bulls—and they took care of New York more quickly than I ever would have guessed.
After we knocked off the Knicks, Mark Jackson got all fired up and started shouting, “Bring on Chicago.” I felt the same way. I really liked our chances. Of course, right before our series Michael started laying the groundwork for his mind games. He told Rick Carlisle what a great coach he was. He told Rik Smits how much he enjoyed playing with him during the All-Star game. I jumped right on it. I wanted our guys to know he was fattening the calf.
The Bulls won Game 1 by putting Pippen on Mark Jackson, and just suffocating him. It took away Mark’s ability to post up, and it hurt us because he had to eat up more of the shot clock to get rid of the ball. Pippen has such long, gangly arms, and he’s a superb defender. Mark had seven turnovers in that game. The other change Phil Jackson made was that he put Ron Harper on Reggie, and Jordan on Chris Mullin. It definitely disrupted us, no question about it. But I still believe that if Reggie had been able to come out and score 30 or 35 points, they would have changed things around real fast.
Unfortunately for us, that didn’t happen. Even so, we played pretty well in the first half. But then we started breaking down, and Michael took over. That was the one thing I was concerned about. I felt if we hung in until the fourth quarter, then anything could happen. Even Jordan doesn’t hit every shot. But if you give him an opening early on, he’s going to go for the kill.
In Game 2 Michael dropped 41 on us, and we lost again. At that point everyone was writing us off. They were saying we were being outplayed, outcoached, and we were overmatched. I’m sure it looked that way, but I knew it wasn’t over. I also felt that the officials needed to recognize what was going on out there. I said I would have liked to see how Michael Jordan would make out if Pip-pen was guarding him the way he was guarding Mark Jackson. I said it because the Bulls were getting away with too much. I know the Chicago Bulls get their share of calls, especially Michael, but Pippen was just manhandling Mark Jackson. It was over the line. I didn’t say a whole lot, but then Sam Smith from the
Chicago Tribune
came up to me and said he was writing an article about how much Pippen was getting away with. He said he wanted to talk about it. I said, “I don’t really want to say much. How about you say it for me? Then you can save me some fine money.” Well that got Phil Jackson going. So now everyone is talking about the officials, and I just put my two cents in here and there. I put out just a little bit—just enough.
There’s no question the referees have changed since when I was playing. I’ve always felt the referees have tough jobs. Just let them do their jobs, and if you really do get upset about something, then realize you can get away with more by just talking to them. Cursing and swearing at them doesn’t work. The problem now is that the referees let their egos get into it a lot more than before. They carry themselves differently. They want to be part of the show. Earl Strom, one of my favorite officials, was part of the show, but he never lost control of the game. And when it came right down to it, he was going to make the call because it was a real foul, not because Michael Jordan is a superstar and nobody should touch him. Earl was fair that way. If you were the twelfth man, and you got clobbered, you got the same respect as the star.
Who knows if it made any difference, but we did get our share of calls in Games 3 and 4. Just before we tapped off for Game 3, I told my guys I still thought we were a better team than Chicago. I reminded them we hadn’t lost home court yet, and if we won the next two games at our place, we were right where we needed to be. We won both of those games, mostly because our guys finally started playing physical, and because they played like they finally believed they belonged. Reggie, meanwhile, was heating up. He was playing on a sprained ankle, but there was never any question whether he’d go or not. This was the playoffs.
Reggie probably hit the biggest shot of his career in Game 4. We were down to the final seconds, and he pushed off Jordan, spun, and nailed the jumper. The game was in Market Square Arena, and the place just exploded. It was pandemonium. But I just stood there. The reason I didn’t show any emotion was because I had seen the six-tenths of a second go up on the clock when Reggie shot it, so I was waiting to see what they put on the clock. I’ve seen Chicago win too many games on last shots with six-tenths of a second. I felt at that point we were going to win, but I can’t show emotions out there. It’s like another game we had in April that season. We were down eight against Atlanta, and made a great comeback, and Reggie hit this unbelievable shot. It was one of those amazing, lunging, turning, falling-out-of-bounds-and-I’ll-toss-it-up jobs. That put us into overtime. When the ball went through the net, Dick Harter was standing next to me, and I turned to him and said, “Can you believe that?” He said, “I don’t believe it either.” That’s all he said. So the guys come running back, jumping all around, and I said, “Okay, sit down. We’ve got a lot more minutes to go.” Because that’s my job, to make sure they stay focused on the game. As a coach, I know guys are looking at me to see how I react a lot of the time, so they don’t need me jumping around. Somebody’s got to be calm. People kept talking about my lack of reaction to Reggie’s shot, but that was the kind of response my team needed from me.
As it turned out, Jordan got a shot off at the buzzer that missed. The series was suddenly tied, 2–2. What Reggie had done was huge, because he had deflated the whole Michael mystique. Just the idea that Reggie would go after the ball that hard, like he really wanted it, and didn’t think twice about going through Michael Jordan to get it, was just huge. I really believed we had the upper hand. Meanwhile, it was Bulls coach Phil Jackson’s turn to get on the officials. He said his team was robbed, and compared it to the Olympics in Munich in 1972. I thought that was ridiculous. I warned our guys not to get too happy with themselves. I warned them that Jordan would be out for blood. And we had another problem on our hands too. Jalen Rose, who had been playing really well for us in the postseason, was suspended for Game 5 by the league because they said he left the bench when a little shoving match broke out on the floor. I know it may have looked that way to people watching the game, but that wasn’t what happened. On tape, Jalen jumps up from the bench and looks like he’s running toward the court, but what really happened was I told him I wanted him to check into the game, and fast. I thought the way NBC covered it was bad. They’re supposed to report the game, but they made it sound like we committed murder. It was a big blow for us, to lose Jalen. I don’t blame it on him. It was my fault he wasn’t already in the game. I told him to go in right as all that stuff was happening. The way he took off, running down the court, it looked like he was going in to get involved, but the reason he went tearing off like that was because I was screaming at him to get into the game.
Coming into Game 5, I was thinking, especially with Jalen out, that this was the sort of game where you find out what your team is made of. I couldn’t wait to see who would step up and get the job done in Jalen’s absence. Who would emerge as the guy on our team who had what it takes? I couldn’t wait for that game to start. So what happens? We go out and we get killed in Game 5, by 19 points. I was so disappointed. I thought my team had understood the urgency of that game. I sat them down the next day and made them watch the first half of that game all over again. It looked like we were playing in slow motion.
I don’t know if they could tell, but their performance in that game broke my heart. Here was a team I knew we could beat, and we let them walk all over us. At that point I began wondering again whether our guys were slipping back into that mentality of “Nobody beats Michael.” That was really going to make me angry. We had nothing left to do but to go back home to Indianapolis for Game 6 and force a seventh game. Having Jalen back helped. So did the crowd. I’ve never heard Market Square Arena that loud. I liked what I saw in the first few minutes of the game, but I’ve found that’s not really a true indicator with our team. What does tell me something is when Rik Smits has a really good game, we almost always win. And Rik came ready to play for Game 6. He scored 25 points in 32 minutes, and he was 11-of-12 from the floor. But, when the game was over, the guy everyone was talking about was Travis Best.
I had been playing Travis Best in the fourth quarter, because he was having success breaking down Chicago’s defense with his quickness. On another team, it could have been a problem, because there’s Mark Jackson, who had been our leader all season, sitting on the bench for crunch time. But Mark was great. I didn’t have to say anything to him. He handled it so well, so professionally, and I know it wasn’t easy for him. But he knew it was all about winning. In Game 6 I went with Best for the entire fourth quarter. With the score tied 87–87, he beat Steve Kerr with a one-on-one driving one-handed runner. Then, in the final seconds, with our first option, Reggie, sealed off, Best took on Jordan, got a step on him as he drove toward the basket, and drew the foul. Travis is a really excellent foul shooter, and he hit them both. That put us up two, and Jordan had one last crack at it, but he slipped trying to take it to the lane. The Bulls were crying foul, but we didn’t hang around. I got our guys off the court and in the locker room before the officials changed their minds.
Before Game 7, I wanted these guys to understand what it would be like to be a champion. I talked about the respect they would get if they accomplished that. Hell, all they had to do was look across the court at Michael Jordan to understand that. I told them, “Even though we would have to play Utah in the Finals, if we win today, I’m convinced this is our championship, because I know we can beat Utah.” Maybe that wasn’t the politically correct thing to say, but I wasn’t going to lie to those guys. I told them a little story about what I felt the first time we won a title in Boston, and how all the fans came to City Hall to cheer us on, and how the whole city had this new respect for us. It was my second year with the Celtics, and we had a great team, but in the Conference Finals all of a sudden we were down 3–1 to Philadelphia. But we never thought about quitting. We still believed we were the better team, and we proved it when we came back to win that series. Well, I knew we were going to win the Finals after coming back down 3–1 to Philadelphia. I knew we were invincible then. I told my guys I wanted them to feel the same way. I told them winning a title would change their lives. After I won one, all of a sudden I’d be walking down the street and people would say, “Wow, he’s Larry Bird. He won the NBA championship.” I said to my players, “Look at Reggie. Now he’s a great, great player, but if he ever won a championship, the way people would look at him and perceive him and feel about him would be completely different than how they felt before, no matter how many game-winning shots he has hit. Once you’re labeled a champion, you are in a whole new category.” I was getting kind of emotional about it, and I looked over, and two of the guys were crying. I walked over to Dick and said, “Geez, there’s no way we’re gonna win this game.” Dick said, “Why?” I said, “Dick, our guys are crying before we go out there.” He said, “Larry, it shows they really want to win.”
I was really wound up before Game 7. I was trying to hide out in the locker room, away from everyone. That’s when I realized Jim Gray, the NBC reporter, was even more pushy than I thought. Before Game 7, we had to turn our play board toward the wall so no one would be able to see it. Sure enough, there’s Jim Gray in our locker room, trying to turn the board back around so he could see our plays. Then, during the game, we’re in a time-out and our public relations guy, David Benner, is standing there, and Gray is trying to listen in on our huddle. After the players went back on the court, I quietly told Benner, “David, you tell Mr. Gray if he sticks his nose in my huddle again I’m going to pull him over those seats and kick his butt in front of twenty thousand people.”