| Tuesday, November 16
By Jeffrey Denberg
Special to ESPN.com |
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DENVER -- For the first time since Game 6 of the 1997 NBA Finals, Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls were in the same locker room. Who knows? It might never happen again.
|  | | The Bulls hope rookie Elton Brand can get them going. |
Jordan, in town for a two-day celebrity golf tournament, showed up at Atlanta's new Philips Arena Saturday night to watch his old team take on the Hawks. He watched them take an early lead, fall behind by 27 and lose by 16.
He went down to see them in the locker room afterward and had a message for the fans back home. It wasn't pleasant.
"They are obviously young and going through a transition period," Jordan observed. "Patience is going to be a key word for the city of Chicago."
The last time Jordan and the Bulls were in Atlanta together there were 62,000 people at the Georgia Dome, a record crowd for an NBA game.
This encounter drew little more than 13,000, partly because playing two-guard for the Bulls this season is not Jordan, but old hand Hersey Hawkins. That was difference enough.
In a word, the Bulls are terrible.
An NBA scout at the game said, "The triangle offense is a joke if you don't have the guys who can handle the ball, and they don't have any handlers to make that offense work. It's one thing to be bad, but to have bad players in a structured system that can't work is a disaster."
This brings us to the furor stirred up by Toni Kukoc. The Croatian sensation said, "I think we can win 25 to 30 games if everything goes well. But the start might be a little rough. It's going to be hard if we lose a few games early, to see how the guys are going to react."
Will Perdue expressed surprise, Randy Brown chagrin. Tim Floyd wasn't happy, either.
Truth -- like love -- hurts.
Around the league
Funny, Stephon Marbury doesn't look like a pig. Young Steph only plays like one.
Four games into the season, Marbury is 36-for-102 with 19 assists, eight of them in Sunday's victory over woeful Washington when beleaguered Don Casey did the only thing he could -- he took the ball out of Marbury's hands.
After the Nets lost their first three, Marbury said he couldn't identify the problem. "I have nothing to say. I don't know what to say and I don't want to say something and have it come off wrong. When you don't know what to say, you shouldn't say anything. I've never felt like this. I can't tell you what's wrong, because I don't know."
Somebody bring Marbury a mirror. And a leash.
Gar Heard is furious over the lack of effort he's gotten from his Washington Wizards, who shot 8-for-40 in the last quarter and a half against the Nets.
"I can't be yelling and screaming the whole game, begging guys to play," Heard said. "That's not my job, to beg them to play. If they don't want to play, they have to sit down. That goes for guys one through 12. We're not going to get into this mode. We got our butts kicked and we had no energy. There was no expression on their faces about trying to dig in and do something. We're not going to have any quitting mentality on this team."
Oh, yeah? "We're going to be the laughingstock of the season," Wizards center Isaac Austin said.
There are no legitimate problems with the Wizards. Rod Strickland is woefully out of shape after skipping most of the exhibition season. And Mitch Richmond is playing hurt on a sore right knee.
To get back into shape after hamstring problems, Richmond worked out twice a day, but he's hurting so much he told a Washington columnist he should sit out. Why doesn't he? "You'd rip me," Richmond said.
In a bad loss to the Clippers on Saturday, the 76ers finished the evening with seven -- count 'em -- seven assists.. "We had three at halftime, so we did a lot better in the second half," a forlorn Larry Brown said. ... Allen Iverson confounded Brown by claiming "the game hasn't been fun since training camp. It's basketball in general." One day later, he was happy again.
Knicks' Marcus Camby requested a meeting with coach Jeff Van Gundy. "I told him I want him to coach me more. I want to have a nice working relationship so we can erase all the doubts about last year and move on."
They better muzzle Jerry Stackhouse in Detroit. After Dee Kantner chased him with 4:06 left against Milwaukee, Stack said, "That whole situation was just weak. If it was any other official, that wouldn't have happened. Before she could catch the ball, she was giving me two T's to get me out of the game." ... Remember when Bison Dele went after female referees in general?
And now we have an unofficial record for most TV commercials in an NBA regular season game. The Pistons' television affiliate was able to cram in 104 commercials for opening night's double-overtime loss to the Heat. A typical Pistons broadcast features 58 to 60 spots. At one point perplexed Pistons point guard Lindsey Hunter asked referee Bill Kennedy, "Just tell me what to do. What am I doing? Tell me what I can do. I don't understand this."
Lenny Wilkens is giving rookie Jason Terry careful handling. "I won't yell at him and I won't pull him after a couple of mistakes. I hear the fans yelling, 'Get him out!' but I know what I've got here. He's going to be very good." Terry made two quick turnovers off the bench against the Bulls, then scored 12 points with five assists and four steals.
And what are they going to do in Cleveland without Zydrunas Ilgauskas, who may very well miss his third full season in four with the club, but has a $71 million contract in his pocket?
Remember, the Cavs dealt Vitaly Potapenko to Boston because they refused to commit huge money to a pair of centers. Now, they don't have either of the pair.
It is likely Ilgauskas will have a screw inserted to repair a stress fracture of the left foot that won't heal. He's seen at least three specialists.
"What we hope to have is some sort of game plan in a couple weeks," GM John Paxson said. "We're trying to be cautious. We're going to wait and see if it heals on its own. If it doesn't ..."
Some in the Cavaliers' organization fear the injury is degenerative, which will qualify Ilgauskas as America's single-greatest foreign aid recipient in Lithuania.
"He had three operations on the other foot," agent Herb Rudoy said. "He has weak feet."
Jeffrey Denberg, who covers the NBA for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, is a regular contributor to ESPN.com. |  |
