Get Up Eight Times

We’re going into the vault for some old school basketball. Jordan v. Bad Boys, 1989.

Brent Musburger (Musburger looks happy that Jordan here) and Bill Raftery commentate. This is going to be awesome. Lesley Visser looks like a darling here.

Starting lineups:
Pippen, Grant, Cartwright, Jordan, Hodges (HODGES?)
Aguirre, Laimbeer, Mahorn, Thomas, Dumars

Mahorn on an offensive rebound, 2-0.

MJ takes a long jumper, then forces a pass on a turnover. Not a promising start.

Bill Davidson looks older here than he did when he won the ‘04 title.

Pippen clanks an open jumper. Highly unScottie like.

Lot of gambling by Cartwright on Mahorn, which makes little sense since you want Mahorn in front of you.

Hodges throws into traffic in the fullcourt. Not a terribly focused effort so far for Chicago, but then again, Hodges is the point guard…

One thing to note is that this is nto the dynasty Bulls team we remember. Pippen and Grant are in their sophomore campaigns, Cartwright’s a rookie, Paxson only recently emerging into his own (killing the Knicks in the earlier series). Oh, and Doug Mullet Collins is coaching.

Bulls are roaring on a 14-0 run, executing pick and rolls, hustling to the loose balls. Pippen taking it baseline, and MJ & Hodges nailing 3s. Young gunners are playing well so far.

Laimbeer going nutty and picking up a technical for good measure. I’m not too sad that I missed the Bill Lambieer era.

Dave Corzine’s in? This lead’s going to shrink in a hurry. (Sure enough, they double team MJ and force Corzine to clank a jumper). Excellent analysis of the pick and roll by good ol’ Raftery.

MJ knocking down another 3 to make it 24-10. Detroit looking really rusty so far.

Jordan starts knocking shots, double team follows, pick and roll follows, offensive rebound and layup happens. Consider this a blueprint for what would happen the rest of the decade.

The reason Detroit would be so effective against Chicago was their ability to defend Michael and not have ot worry about others stepping up. Right now Corzine is doing a fine job following up on MJ’s double-teams, but there would come a time later in the series where this would not happen.

Detroit doesn’t look sharp at all. Settling for jumpers, lots of dribbling, not much cutting, etc. You’re in bad shape when your leading scorer is Rick Mahorn.

End of 1, 33-17 Chicago. Oh Lord, is this a blowout? Pistons were notoriously terrible at coming from behind, and they look really flat today. 2nd quarter coming tomorrow.