Don’t Forget the Bulls
The Lakers the best ever? Here’s a two-word answer: Da Bulls.

Mr. Moore is president of the Club for Growth
June 6, 2001 9:25 a.m.

hen you're from Chicago, as I am, and you're maniacal about sports (pardon me, for the redundancy), you learn to develop at a very young age a high threshold for pain and suffering. The agony of defeat becomes a fact of life. Life's first heartbreak for me was in the summer of '69 when the Cubs somehow famously blew a 10-game lead in August and allowed the reviled Mets to overpass them. The Cubs, of course, have experienced some 80 to 90 years of futility but we shrug it off and figure that every franchise can have a bad century.

But we Chicagoans also develop life-long love affairs with our champions. We don't win championships often, but when we do, Chicago teams win in devastating fashion — in "team-of-the-century" proportions. I'm speaking, for example, of a certain team that played in Soldiers Field in 1986, went 17-1 and became affectionately known as "da Bears." And then, of course, there was another franchise in Chicago that won 6 NBA championships in the 1990s — a team we all know as "da Bulls."

Now this past year a lot of folks are questioning the supremacy of these two dominating squads so I feel morally bound to defend their honor and the honor of my hometown against all takers.

As you may have guessed by now, this column is prompted by the recent suggestion by the eggheads at NBC, Sports Illustrated, and other alleged hubs of sports journalism, that this year's Los Angeles Lakers are the greatest playoff team ever. Oh puh-lease! To be sure, these Shaq and Kobe Bryant-led Lakers are mighty strong. They have already swept through the first three rounds of the NBA playoffs without a loss, and may very well complete the swing of perfection by disposing of their final pseudo-obstacle, the Philadelphia 76ers, with four straight Ws. No other team has gone undefeated through four rounds of playoffs--not even da Bulls.

But Lakers fans in Tinseltown: You're as clueless as a valley girl wondering why she doesn't have enough electric power to blow-dry her hair. Come back when you've won four more championships and we'll talk about supremacy and dynasties.

Sports reporters are now asking the tantalizing hypothetical: Who would win between this year's Lakers with Shaq and Kobe Bryant and da Bulls of yesteryear with Jordan, Pippen, Rodman, et al. There are all sorts of fun match-ups to conjure up: Kobe Bryant guarded by Pippen, Rodman on the Shaq, Horace Grant guarding himself, and Phil Jackson pacing both sidelines at once.

There are two reasons to believe the Bulls were a lot better. First, would you really want to bet against MJ in any big game? And for that matter, who on these Lakers could guard Jordan? You see my point. (Once Jordan was the guest host of Saturday Night Live and in one skit they asked him about the upcoming Olympics USA Dream Team for which he was playing. "Michael, why don't you just play these foreign teams all by yourself?" I think they were kidding.)

The other reason to be reasonably confident that the Bulls would have prevailed with relative ease is that the Bulls played a ferocious, even smothering, defense for four quarters. No one else has come close to that stifling defensive effort since.

Now, to put to rest the even bigger absurdity: the talk back in January that the Baltimore Ravens were the "greatest defensive team in NFL history." No, no, no, no.

In '86 the Bears were virtually impossible to score against. They would put eight and even sometimes nine men on the line of scrimmage and terrorize opposing quarterbacks. In the playoffs that year the Bears beat the New York Giants something like 10-0 (okay, okay, we were no offensive juggernaut) and the press kept asking then-Giants head coach Bill Parcels whether, if this or that had gone differently, the Giants might have won. "No way," said Parcels. "We were never going to score against them. You have no idea how hard they hit us." En route to their '86 Super Bowl Shuffle, the Bears hurt a lot of people. One highlight of the year was whupping the Redskins something like 34-zip.

Whenever I'm feeling depressed about things, I just slip into the VCR my tape of the '86 Bears season and all in the world is put right again. Those tapes are better for my psyche than a whole gallon-jar of valium.

If you had to take one defense, for one game, you would want the Bears', not the Ravens'. You would want Richard Dent, Mike Singletary, Gary Fencik, etc., etc. Come on, admit it, you just would.

Oh, and if there are any obnoxious Mets fans (I'm being redundant again) out there in cyberspace reading this: Heads up! Look who's in first place in the NL central division. Da Cubs. Ever since Hillary started wearing the Mets and Yankees hats, we can't do anything wrong!