Long Shot by Hodges Craig; Fanning Rory; Zirin Dave

Author:Hodges, Craig; Fanning, Rory; Zirin, Dave
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Memoir, Sports, ebook
ISBN: 4783868
Publisher: Haymarket Books
Published: 2017-01-01T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 11

Coming Home

I had played in Chicago Stadium at 1800 West Madison before, but I was returning to that legendary court for the 1988–89 season as a six-year NBA veteran and a member of the Chicago Bulls. Built in 1929, the arena by today’s standards was a dump, yet the flaws felt sacred somehow. The floor was creaky and unusually cold because of the hockey ice below the boards. The locker rooms were musty, like a sweaty basement. I savored every inch of the place.

They called it the Madhouse on Madison because our fans were wild-eyed, barking animals. They frothed at the mouth equally out of a love for us and a loathing for whomever we played. With its ancient acoustics, Chicago Stadium did not absorb sound well. The concrete, steel, and smoke-stained plaster walls only amplified the maniacal screams of the crowd. The stadium’s Barton organ had a force equivalent to twenty-five hundred-piece brass bands. The stereo system was even louder.

I try to tell friends what it was like when the lights went dark and the spotlight circled to the slow-building electric sounds of “Sirius” by the Alan Parsons Project, and the eardrum-shattering roar of our fans as our starters emerged onto the hardwood, but I can never find the words. It was a transcendent experience for me, and the noise still echoes in my dreams. If we were tired after a long road trip our fans always managed to raise us up. I didn’t fully grasp it at the time, but this was the golden age of basketball, and I was playing on what would become the most golden of teams.

Success didn’t happen overnight for the Jordan-era Bulls. There were questions raised by the media about whether MJ could win it all and whether he could handle the pressure of the latter rounds of the playoffs. That was the problem. Of course he couldn’t. Not even Michael Jordan, the Zeus of basketball, could win a championship alone. Jerry Krause had been trying to find the right ensemble for him for years. Before Scottie Pippen, the multi-position player from the University of Central Arkansas, and Horace Grant, the power forward from Clemson, arrived in 1987, Brad Sellers and Charles Oakley were Michael’s main wingmen. It took time to get the cast right.

But even with Scottie and Horace the Bulls needed more depth. They wanted someone tall who could complement Jordan’s defensive aptitude. Krause found the perfect fit in Bill Cartwright, the seven-foot-one center from San Francisco, who was picked up from the Knicks in a trade for Charles Oakley the same year as me. Bill was the third overall pick in the 1979 draft, and he’d averaged seventeen points and almost eight rebounds a game with the Knicks two years before he was traded to the Bulls. Oakley and Jordan were close friends, and Jordan fought the trade. They found out about it on a trip to Las Vegas to see a Mike Tyson fight. Jordan wasn’t happy. Cartwright’s value would soon become apparent, though.

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