LOS ANGELES -- Great player? Definitely. Great team? Not so sure.
In another era, winning back-to-back NBA titles would be enough to assure a place among the great champions of all time. But in the 1990s, winning consecutive championships is merely a prerequisite to get you on the list of teams to be considered.
By disposing of the Portland Trail Blazers in six games in the just-completed NBA Finals, the Chicago Bulls became the third straight team to win consecutive titles, following the lead of the Lakers (1987 and '88) and Detroit Pistons ('89 and '90).
"Some people might have thought [last year] was a fluke, so to come back and do it again stops that fluke attitude," Michael Jordan said Sunday after Chicago clinched the title with a 97-93 comeback victory.
No, nobody will ever consider the Jordan-led Bulls a fluke team. But are they a great team? Should they be mentioned in the same breath as the Boston Celtics of the '60s, the '67 Philadelphia 76ers, the '72 Lakers, the '77 Portland Trail Blazers, the Lakers of the '80s or even the Pistons of three years ago?
The Bulls' 67-15 regular-season record this year confirmed their status as overwhelming favorites before the playoffs began, and as the 1988 Lakers proved when they were extended to a seventh game in each of their last three series, it's considerably more difficult to repeat with everyone in the league gunning for you. So the fact that the Bulls were extended to seven by the New York Knicks and six each by the Cleveland Cavaliers and Trail Blazers does not necessarily dampen their achievement.
But something about this Chicago team just doesn't add up. It's just a gut feeling, wholly subjective and perhaps unsupported by reason. Yet it is a feeling that may not go away until the Bulls break with tradition and win a third straight title -- a goal that is entirely reachable considering their average age is 27, and Jordan will only be 29 next season.
Clearly, Jordan is among the best ever. He can control a game from start to finish, and no one has ever been a better player in the clutch. Power forward Horace Grant, Mr. Unsung Hero, is as fine a complementary player as you would ever want.
Then there is Scottie Pippen. The 6-foot-7 small forward is a legitimate All-Star and had a terrific championship series for the second straight year. Jordan said Pippen's big-time performance in Game 6 should erase, once and for all, the criticism often lobbed his way that he disappears in critical situations. Yet what bothers me is the truism that if Pippen has a bad game the Bulls usually are in trouble. Something just doesn't add up, and I'm getting a migraine trying to figure out.
