Time Near for Klingons, Mr. T and the Mailman

CHICAGO —  Like the cast of “Rocky” and the crew of the starship Enterprise, there’s no getting rid of these Bulls, even as the sequels mount and you start thinking how neat it would be if Mr. T knocked Rock’s socks off, the Klingons atomized Capt. Kirk or the Mailman vanquished Mike.

A year ago, the Chicago Bulls’ press corps began trying out the notion this was the real “America’s Team,” a claim that seemed to have some basis. This time, as awe-struck as everyone was by Michael Jordan, most people seemed to be rooting

for the Utah Jazz. Outside Chicago, Attila’s Huns might have been sentimental favorites against the Bulls.

Of course, it was a different deal here.

In a nice Orwellian touch, Oprah Winfrey, the Chicago-based erstwhile champion of minorities’ rights, booted a woman out of her audience Thursday for Insufficient Faith in Mike. The woman acknowledged her suspicion Jordan faked his illness in Game 5, and Oprah had the ushers escort her out. This is thought to be the first time anyone was kicked out of a talk show for thought crime.

In the sure knowledge that this bit of censorship had ingratiated herself with her audience, Oprah replayed the incident the next day.

Actual slights to minorities, such as Dennis Rodman’s obscene characterization of Mormons, were actually defended in Chicago as exercises of his First Amendment rights. As if, what’s a little casual bigotry, especially if Rodman was joking? We know he’s an idiot, you know he’s an idiot, can’t we just get back to the series? Even noted humanist Phil Jackson said Rodman probably didn’t know Mormonism is “a religious cult or sect or whatever it is.”

Rodman even cried in front of NBC cameras before Game 6, lamenting everyone was--yes! once again!--out to get him. In Rodman’s troubled mind, it has not occurred that when you poke a stick into a hornets’ nest, hornets fly out.

The good news is, although his relentless look-at-me act is sure to continue, it’s likelier to be in Toronto, Vancouver or Belgium than in the NBA finals.

Dueling provincialism, of course, has become as much part of an NBA postseason as Commissioner David Stern’s 650-million-people-are-watching- around-the-world-ask-Russ-Granik-about-the- latest-player-outrage speech. In the New York-Miami series, the newspapers even got into it, the New York Daily News entering into an agreement to run the columns of the Miami Herald’s Dan Le Batard, then dropping him before Game 1 when he seemed to compare Patrick Ewing, who has a prominent jaw, to a “caveman.”

In the finals, Utah reacted to the Game 3 and 4 victories as if it had been granted statehood anew. Presumably, a win in Game 5 would have made Salt Lake City the equal of New York and an actual title would have made it Paris.

Chicago, of course, was Chicago.

Here’s the bad news on that: It’s not just them. It’s all of us.

Although it has been fun to laugh at the spectacle of a city prostrating itself at the Bulls’ feet, it might not have been much different anywhere, even blase Los Angeles. Imagine the Lakers, with Jordan, winning five titles in seven years (in the glorious ‘80s, the Lakers won five in nine and repeated once; the Bulls have never failed to repeat with Jordan.) Think we wouldn’t be a little insufferable by now?

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As finals go, this was the best one in the ‘90s, more like the good ones in the ‘80s, with thrilling moments and appealing people.

Karl Malone, whose rugged individualism has made him one of the least-known and most-resented players by his peers, emerged as a giant of a man, if no match for Jordan on the floor. Mailman was funny. He was gracious. He took the heat when he did badly and let praise roll off his back when he did well. Aside from Jordan, who knows how to work a room, an arena, a nation, whatever, no NBA star had been as droll and sensible since the days of Magic Johnson, Larry Bird and Kevin McHale.

A year ago, Malone and John Stockton were buried after being outplayed by the younger Shawn Kemp-Gary Payton tandem in the Western finals, making Mailman one happy elder statesman this postseason.

“Even though we’re considered old in basketball terms, we have game left, but other people wrote us off,” he said at one light-hearted press session.

“And, like I said, lot of them new ones are at home now, watching a lot of us old ones. And the reason I’m saying that, you tell a Michael or a Scottie [Pippen, who have] been playing for 10 years, you tell them they’re too old and all of a sudden now--I’ve had young guys tell me at the scorer’s table, ‘Hey old man,’ or ‘Grampa, leave this game for us young guys.’

“I don’t know, some of those young guys, would you guys like to be talking to ‘em right now? Probably half of ‘em would be late. You guys don’t have enough chairs up here for all the entourages.”

The games were taut, if plodding and defense-dominated, which is the current low state of the art. Even a “great” one like Game 4, was really an intense slow dance for three quarters, followed by an exciting fourth period.

The game needs fixing, but boffo TV ratings make commissioners think something must be going right. Before Stern and his entourage get into self-congratulations, they should take into account the perspective of the Boston Globe’s Bob Ryan, former Celtic beat reporter known for his passion for the game, recently inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame.

“Only people who don’t know what basketball is think it’s a great league,” Ryan says. “You can’t score if you don’t shoot.

“The No. 1 stat to understand what’s happened in the league is shots attempted per game. Everything begins with that. In 1990, the Jazz under Jerry Sloan became the first team in the post-24-second era to fall under 80 shots a game. Now the league average is 78 a game. Fifteen or more teams are shooting in the mid-70s. Imagine what the scores would be like without the three-point shot.

“The numbers aren’t what’s important, it’s the flow of the game. There are no more fastbreaks.”

In the heart-pounding Game 4, the Bulls took 76 shots. The Jazz took 64.

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Then there was Jordan.

It’s not as though he needed a defining moment, having taken care of that as a North Carolina freshman, but his performance in Game 5, when he was so sick, teammates wondered if he could play and Pippen had to help him off the floor afterward, was a signature moment that may go up there with the best of all: Babe Ruth “calling his shot,” Willie Mays’ catch on Vic Wertz; Joe Montana avoiding the Dallas Cowboy rush until he could find Dwight Clark in the back of the end zone.

A year ago, the Bulls, looking as if they were splitting into their constituent parts, were patched together with one-year contracts, suggesting the good times were over.

Who would have believed they could go 69-13? Not even Jackson, who would have settled for anything in the 60-victory range.

Who would have thought they would go 15-4 in the playoffs, with Toni Kukoc tiptoeing around on a sore foot, Rodman reduced to a shadow of what he was by a sore knee and Steve Kerr shooting six for 20 for the first five games of the finals?

The Bulls look like they’ll patch it together again with a new round of one-year contracts, meaning they’ll be favored to win No. 6, or one for their big toe.

This time, I’m sure they’ll have stayed too long at the ball. Jordan will be 35. The pack isn’t back, but the gap is closing. I don’t know who it will be but someone will take them down, Mike and Oprah, notwithstanding.

Otherwise, I’ll just write this same column again next June.