It’s a long way to April 1, so don’t mistake the headline above as a joke.
It’s true: The Denver Nuggets really did beat the Chicago Bulls last night at McNichols Sports Arena 105-99.
You might want to repeat that score a few times to make sure it sinks in, because it’s as unlikely an outcome as has occurred this season in the NBA.
Let’s see … one of the two teams came into the game with a record of 41-3 and an 18-game winning streak. Another had won 18 games all season, and had just lost to the woeful Milwaukee Bucks to drop eight games under .500. One of the two teams was being measured for a mantle of greatness, their most enthusiastic backers calling them the greatest team of all-time. The other was being written off as an underachieving loser headed back to the draft lottery.
The Bulls, of course, were the team of superlatives. But the Nuggets found a way to beat them in the most emotional game at McNichols Sports Arena since Game 6 of the 1993 Western Conference semifinal series against Utah, when the Nuggets pushed that series to a seventh game.
Beat them? Hell, for one half they humiliated them, toyed with them, made them look like an expansion team. Why, the Nuggets never led the Toronto Raptors or the Vancouver Grizzlies by 31 points when they beat them this season. But they enjoyed such an advantage on the Bulls after only 21 minutes.
Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf, not Michael Jordan, looked like the unstoppable guard. Abdul-Rauf scored 23 in the first half and made 9 of 15 shots, three of them from long range.
Jordan? He was 3 for 11 in the half.
Scottie Pippen, the other half of Chicago’s dynamic scoring duo?
One for 6.
Nuggets captain Bryant Stith had predicted it would take a perfect game for Denver to have a chance against the Bulls, and he was right. The Nuggets were nearly flawless in the first half, during which they made 65 percent of their shots and scored a season-high 68 points.
Oh, sure. The Bulls staged a great comeback. Even regained the lead in the fourth quarter. With Jordan around, everyone inside Big Mac was just waiting for the explosion, including the Nuggets. And Jordan didn’t disappoint, scoring 22 in the third period, when the Bulls made the Nuggets pay for their first-half arrogance.
Chicago trimmed Denver’s 25-point halftime lead to two in the quarter, but that served only to make Denver’s unlikely win that much sweeter.
“It really does,” said Stith, totally spent after a night spent chasing down Jordan and “holding” him to 39 points. “This is the best team in basketball, and when they made their third-quarter run, everybody thought we were doomed. You could hear the air going out of the balloon.”
Somehow, the Nuggets found a way to pump back up.
Their comeback really was Jordan’s comeback. Chicago’s nonpareil scorer made 8 of 10 shots in the third quarter, scoring 22 and returning to infallibility.
Between the third and fourth periods, Nuggets coach Bernie Bickerstaff offered some words of advice.
“We kind of panicked in the third, but Bernie told us that we knew they were going to make a run,” Denver center Dikembe Mutombo said. “So just go out and just play. So that is what we did in the fourth quarter.”
Despite sound advice, the Nuggets found themselves behind, for the first time since the first minute of the game, after Pippen converted a three-point play just 33 seconds into the final period. Then James Edwards tipped in his own miss 30 seconds later, giving the Bulls a three-point lead.
Denver got back in the lead, though, with a seven-point run punctuated by Antonio McDyess’ 12-foot jumper with 9:20 left in the game. Amazingly, the Nuggets never trailed thereafter, regaining their composure on offense and their defensive presence.
Jordan, nearly perfect in the third period, was little factor down the stretch. In fact, two of his shots were blocked in crunch time, once by Stith, once by Ellis. Jordan made only 2 of 8 shots in the final period.
But Jordan made two free throws with 1:49 left to get the Bulls within two points of the Nuggets. Then he stripped the ball from Stith a few seconds later, setting up what could have been a tying possession for Chicago.
But it was also Jordan who missed an 18-foot jumper with 1:15 left, giving the Nuggets another chance to ease some of the end-game pressure.
The Nuggets got the ball to Abdul-Rauf for the key shot, but his jumper from the top of the key bounced long off the back rim. When the Denver guard saw Mutombo flying to the ball as it took its long bounce, he cut to his left and screamed, “Dikembe.”
Mutombo snared the rebound and made a quick pass back to Abdul-Rauf. Without ha second’s hesitation, the Denver gunner launched another 20-footer, and this time it was perfect, giving Denver a 103-99 lead with 52.6 seconds left.
Then Ellis swatted a Jordan jumper into the stands and Bill Wennington missed both a 15-foot jumper and a follow dunk shot.
“We’ll see if this is the kick we needed,” Bickerstaff said of his inexplicable team. “If it is, it should be one heck of a kick.”
