Looking back, we see the Cleveland Cavaliers as a mere footnote in the Chicago Bulls' dominance in the early 1990s. That tends to happen when the same team eliminates you in five out of seven years. It looked like the same thing would happen in the 1993 playoffs, especially after the Bulls dominated in the first round and Cleveland struggled with a New Jersey team playing without Kenny Anderson.
1993 Playoffs Retrospective Part V: Michael Jordan Shuts Up Gerald Wilkins, Shuts Down Cavaliers
In our next edition of this series, we look at when Michael Jordan shut up an outspoken challenger and ripped the hearts out of the Cleveland Cavaliers again.
But at the time, there were some interesting mitigating factors. One is the fact that the Cavaliers defeated the Bulls in three out of five games in the regular season. Another was the presence of Gerald Wilkins, a constant pest of Michael Jordan that had occasionally thrown Jordan off his game. Finally, and most importantly, the scenario presented before Game 1 was exactly the same one presented to the Knicks a season ago. In 1992, the Knicks, who had been eliminated by the Bulls in two of the previous three years, went through a five-game war in the first round against Detroit, whereas the Bulls swept right by Miami. In Game 1, the Bulls were rusty and the Knicks stole it, setting up a physical and close seven-game series. In 1993, the Bulls swept right by the Hawks, while the Cavaliers engaged in a war of a series against the Nets. The circumstances were very similar.
Game 1 was Cleveland's chance to rewrite history, and the Cavs played a pretty good game. They looked in-rhythm offensively, whereas the Bulls were stumbling. Horace Grant turned an ankle, and Scottie Pippen looked disengaged while fighting a wrist injury. But that was before Wilkins awoke the beast and doomed his team in the process.
This was one of Michael Jordan’s signature playoff performances, and it’s largely forgotten historically. Let’s remember it now.
Pregame
We’re live from Chicago Stadium, also known as the Madhouse on Madison. Bob Neal and Jack Givens are on the call for TNT, with the latter providing fairly straightforward analysis. The two run through a pretty mundane pregame, going over the key issues in the series without giving me one opening to mock them.
The Bulls start their usual five: Jordan, Pippen, Grant, B.J. Armstrong and Bill Cartwright. Cleveland counters with Mark Price, Craig Ehlo, Mike Sanders (the '90s Keith Bogans), Larry Nance and Brad Daugherty. Price is going through an interesting crisis, having played horrendously against the Nets while losing crunch-time minutes to rising youngster Terrell Brandon. This theme will crop up at some point during this game and series. I've always felt that point guards in the NBA are like quarterbacks -- you need to pick your guy and stick with him. With Brandon breathing down his neck, Price's game began to suffer.
Price was also playing with a sprained thumb, but the Cavaliers’ response to that was to take off his splint and try to get him to toughen up. As a silver lining of sorts, they paid to have his father come in and hang out with Price. Maybe it’s not such a mystery why Price never regained his confidence that season.
First quarter
10:40: Pretty sharp start for the Bulls: a jump hook by Cartwright, a 19-foot jumper by Jordan on offense, and three stops on defense. The last one illustrates the Bulls’ speed. Price gets by Armstrong and kicks it out, but as Cleveland rotates the ball, the Bulls are always there for textbook close-outs. Cleveland eventually gets called for three seconds.
10:15: Daugherty flails his arms and misses a lean-in turnaround by three feet. It’s the beginning of a dreadful series for him.
9:58: Sanders switches onto Jordan for a second time and gets beat baseline for a layup. Sanders started 164 regular-season games for Cleveland in two different stints (1987-1989 and 1992-1993), and I don’t think he had one above-average NBA skill.
9:15: Price throws it right to Jordan and Armstrong hits a jumper on the ensuing fast break. Bulls lead, 8-0. Timeout Cleveland. During the timeout, Givens forgets the year the Knicks beat the Bulls in Game 1, then tries to save face by saying he was thinking of the 1991 Finals instead. His producer is probably going crazy.
8:45 When Neal says the Cavaliers “get better when they go to their bench,” he’s really saying they “get better when Mike Sanders goes to their bench.”
7:28: Grant goes down as his ankle gets turned over sideways on Sanders. Guess Sanders is good for something after all. Neal notes that ankles are “tricky” because “it can be really painful and not be hurt or it could be not too painful and hurt a lot.” Yogi Berra would be proud of this logic.
6:19: We’re almost halfway through the first quarter, and Cleveland just made its second field goal.
5:48: There’s the third.
5:10: And there’s the fourth. Tie game. The Bulls keep trying to run the offense through people other than Jordan, and nobody is stepping up to do anything.
4:03: Grant is back in and has two tip-ins, but he’s walking slowly. Pippen, meanwhile, fumbled a pass on the break that would have been a dunk.
2:27: A beautiful pass from Daugherty to a cutting Wilkins somehow prompts a discussion on whether Daugherty is soft. Because centers are supposed to beat each other up and not be skilled, you know? Right as this is happening, Cartwright clears Daugherty out with an elbow and gets called for an offensive foul. “Speaking of soft,” Neal quips.
1:30: Wilkins, who unsurprisingly felt the need to boast that he guarded Jordan better than anyone in the league, forced a tough fadeaway that missed and Price gets a layup on the other end. Cavaliers by three. We’ve almost reached Jordan Takeover Time
1:06: Bravo, TNT, for this promo.
51.5: Heeeerrree comes Jordan.
15.5: Something tells me Wilkins shouldn’t be this far out on Jordan.
0.04: And ... yeah, he shouldn’t. Jordan comes around two defenders, then splits two for a layup, and Cleveland’s lead is down to one at the end of one.
Second quarter
9:39: There's nothing noteworthy to report, except for Trent Tucker displaying horrendous enough decision-making for Phil Jackson to call timeout before he completed the triple play of bad decisions (look off his star player, miss a jumper badly, commit a turnover).
8:48: Pippen can’t decide if he wants to push the ball and swoop in for a layup or not, eventually giving a half-hearted effort on a running one-hander that falls off the rim. He looks really, really out of it.
8:27: Jack Givens: “I’ve seen both of these teams look a whole lot better than what we’ve seen so far in this game.” Really not much more to say. Oh, look, Jordan’s back in.
7:03: Hold on a second, did Wilkins really call himself the “self-appointed defensive specialist?” Neal notes that he certainly hasn’t backed down from “the challenge” of going up against Jordan, but as we’ll soon find out, that’s kind of what Jordan wants anyway. Wilkins is sprinting as Jordan is running a marathon.
6:08: Danny Ferry, who is somehow still on the Cavaliers despite being a massive disappointment, tries a spin move that causes him to fall onto Scott Williams. As he’s falling, he kicks out to Wilkins for a three. “Ferry played the part of a pulling guard in football,” Neal says. Cavaliers now lead by eight.
5:17: Jordan with the double-clutch fadeaway 16-foot bank shot over two defenders. No big deal.
4:16: Jordan, lean-in, off-balanced 12-footer to his right with the shot clock winding down, and the foul. No big deal.
3:08: Jordan, drives to the middle, switches from left-to-right for the lay-in as he squeezes by three defenders. No big deal.
1:50: It’s amazing the kind of star treatment Jordan sometimes got on broadcasts. Earlier, Neal suggested that it’s hard for Grant to deal with his turned ankle because he has to see Jordan play so well whenever he turns his ankle. Now, here’s Neal’s response to a reasonable complaint Ehlo makes to a foul call on Jordan: “hey, it’s Michael!”
50.6: Jordan hits two free throws and the Bulls regain the lead. He has the last 532 (or so) Bulls points. The second-best Bulls player in this game is Stacey King, of all people, and they’re still winning.
0:00: Price completes his best half in a while with two free throws. He has 14 and the Bulls lead by one. Without Jordan, they’d be down by 20.
Third quarter
11:34: Jordan starts to go right, abruptly changes direction and zooms by Ehlo and Daugherty for a layup. No big deal.
10:56: Having been blown by earlier in the game, Sanders simply backs up and given Jordan a wide-open 18-footer. Good strategy.
9:02: In addition to having no discernible skills and being particularly inept at finding someone other than Jordan to guard in transition, Sanders now has four fouls.
8:34: Pippen finally turns on the jets ... and misses the dunk. Nightmare game for him.
7:45: Can’t even begin to tell you how much I miss these old NBA commercials.
6:08: Even when Pippen does something well, it looks awkward. He drives in on the break, but instead of going for the thunderous dunk, he finds himself trapped in midair and forced to kick it back to Armstrong for the jumper. Two points is two points, though, so the Bulls lead by nine.
4:58: Pippen misses another dunk, then gets T’d up to boot. This has to be one of his 10 worst games as a pro, right? OK, that’s a stretch, but this has been a nightmare.
4:04: Wilkins keeps going at Jordan defensively, and it’s only a matter of time until he gets fatigued. Jordan steps right around him this time for a bank shot. There are so many boxer analogies I’d love to make if they weren’t totally stupid.
2:01: Price shoots a ridiculous PUJIT (pull-up jumper in transition) three-pointer with his team down one and misses badly. Guess his confidence is back, but soon, his playing time will be the casualty.
44.3: Price finds John Williams for a jumper, and Cleveland leads. It’s Jordan time ... soon.
Fourth quarter
11:53: Jordan, 15-foot jumper, bang.
10:25: Jordan dribbles right on Wilkins, slips as he tries to switch directions, recovers, gets by Wilkins anyway, then swoops in for a right-handed layup. “He dropped that one in like pebbles into a well,” Neal says, apparently satisfied with his obscure analogy. After the timeout, Givens begins to chastise Cleveland’s pick and roll defense before finally concluding, “There’s nothing you can do about that.”
9:13: Finally, Pippen does something good, catching a lob dunk from Jordan to put Chicago up seven. Cleveland’s balance hurts them here because they have no go-to guy like the Bulls.
7:20: Jordan, 19-foot jumper, bang. And now, the talking back at Wilkins begins.
6:37: Jordan to Wilkins: “He can’t guard me.” Get your popcorn ready. Meanwhile, Brandon checks in for Price during crunch time, which will dash whatever confidence Price has left.
5:50: Jordan embarrasses Wilkins on a turnaround jumper, and the woofing continues. “He’s having fun,” Givens says, which is really code for “I’m having fun.” Jordan is not having fun as much as he is trying to win a basketball game and make Gerald Wilkins look bad.
4:59: Neal and Givens finish a dialogue on how Wilkins was wrong to challenge Jordan publicly like he did, which should cement his status as 1993's DeShawn Stevenson. The thing that amused me more is the difference in how Jordan and LeBron James responded to their pest. Jordan said he looked forward to the challenge, while LeBron recorded a rap diss track with Jay-Z. Times have clearly changed.
4:33: Jordan with another free-throw line jumper. I’d hate to be Wilkins right now. Givens suggests he apologize to Jordan for his comments. Pretty sure that’s the most humiliating suggestion a professional athlete will ever hear. Anyway, Wilkins has been switched off Jordan after his fifth foul.
2:32: Neal and Givens are now running through a list of (fake) things Jordan has done in this game. In 2011, this would be done by bloggers on Twitter.
2:00: Wilkins drives in for a one-handed dunk, then runs right to Jordan. Something tells me he wasn’t running to Jordan to apologize to him.
1:39: Down seven, the Cavaliers turn it over when Brandon travels. Price hasn’t been back in the game since coming out at the 6:37 mark.
18.8: Down five with 35 seconds left, the Cavaliers don’t foul because Wilkins doesn’t want to pick up his sixth, since his presence in this game is so essential. That’ll do it. Bulls win, 91-84. Jordan finishes with 43 in a low-scoring, low-possession game. He had a lot of missed shots, but with nobody else into the game, he needed to take those shots for his team to win.
Jordan is asked about Wilkins after the game. “The Jordan stopper had a tough time tonight,” he says at one point while smiling. He’s enjoying this.
The Cavaliers end up getting swept and their run of success pretty much ends afterwards. Lenny Wilkins was fired after the year ended, Larry Nance retired the next year and Brad Daugherty’s back forced him to do the same far too early. You can’t help but wonder what might have happened in this series if Wilkins shut his mouth and Jordan didn’t go off to steal away Cleveland’s best chance of winning a game in this series.
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