Scottie Pippen thinks his record-holding 95/96 Bulls would sweep this year’s record-chasing Warriors. Of course he does.
His Bulls had Michael Jordan, the greatest ever. We remember them, inspired by Jordan, as maniacally competitive.
“I don’t think we’d take a night off,” Pippen said, implying, perhaps, Stephen Curry’s Golden State would.
Maybe it was a little prescient. In the days after his comments, the Warriors lost at home for the first time this season, to the Boston Celtics. More inexplicably, they lost again at home a couple nights later to one of the NBA’s worst teams, the Minnesota Timberwolves.
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Those 72-10, greatest-of-all-time 95/96 Chicago Bulls, would never have capitulated like that. They are remembered as basically perfect. Never would have took a night off.
Except, of course, it is not quite that cut-and-dry.
The 95/96 Chicago Bulls did suffer some bad losses. They lost to the at-the-time 21-24 Phoenix Suns by nine. They were beaten by the 25-29 Miami Heat by ten.
Worst of all, they lost to the Toronto Raptors, an expansion team that year in their first season of existence, on a night when diminutive point guard Damon Stoudamire scored 30 points. (Pippen said he would hold Curry to less than 20 if they had had a chance to meet.)
If those Bulls did not take nights off, they still had some bad nights. Just like the 2015/16 Warriors.
Only those Bulls never had to face the strange backlash that seems to accompany any loss by these Warriors. A backlash that seems to be at the heart of Pippen’s comments.
Those Bulls, and Jordan in particular, were nearly universally beloved. And by and large, so are these Warriors, and Curry. But there does exist an undercurrent of rejection, of defiance. Contrarians gravitate toward those Bulls like a moth to flame, but so do a lot of other dissenters, who use the Jordan Bulls as a means to diminish the Curry Warriors.
That team was fearless, ruthless, relentless. They never took a night off. This team can be loafing, lackadaisical, self-admiring. The Warriors are soft, the comparison implies.
And yes, the Warriors’ beautiful game is prone to occasionally gumming up, their buzzing ball-movement and their cascade of three-pointers crumbling into an inexplicable comedy of turnovers and bricks.
But ultimately the criticism rings empty. They are not soft – Andrew Bogut and Draymond Green are two of the most tough-nosed players in basketball. Even Curry, belying his slight appearance, does not shy from contact.
Their style is not fraudulent, nor are they less competitive than those Bulls of 20 years ago.
But, no, they are not perfect. And neither were those Bulls.
“The same thing happened 20 years ago,” said a man who would know, Warriors coach Steve Kerr, who played for that 72-win Chicago team. “We didn’t play well down the stretch. This doesn’t surprise me.
“It’s easy to get lost in all this stuff.”
And maybe more than anything else, what some people – Scottie Pippen among them – are getting lost in is that, if all you have to point to in order to diminish these Warriors are those Bulls, it is not really clear what point is there to begin with.
It is never going to be possible to really prove whether Golden State are the very greatest team of all-time, or if Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen’s Bulls would make child’s play of them.
But the Warriors just may still get the record, despite those frustrating losses. They needed to win their four remaining games after falling to Minnesota.
They started on Thursday night by beating the San Antonio Spurs, by 11. The same Spurs who will supposedly expose them come crunch time in the play-offs.
Or, maybe, there is nothing to expose. Whatever Scottie Pippen may think.
jraymond@thenational.ae
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