Strike Up the Accordion! It's Party Time in Chicago!

18 June, 1996

1. Experience. The Bulls were not only the oldest team in the league, but also the most experienced, averaging over nine years per player. Being in the league that long means you're either a great all-around player or you have a unique talent that is NBA quality. The Bulls had some of both. Jordan, Pippen, and Kukoc can all do a lot of things. Rodman and Kerr are two of the greatest role-players in the NBA. Longley, Wennington, and the rest of the goon crew provide strength and size to body up to the centers of the league, which doesn't take a lot of talent, but is a unique characteristic. Ron Harper survived in the league through erratically good offense, but added solid defense this season.
2. Big and Tall. The Bulls were also the heaviest team in the league and the second tallest. Basically, facing the Bulls meant facing Superman in looser shorts. It did surprise me that the media didn't play up the Bulls' height advantage more in the Finals. The Bulls were taller than the league average at every starting position except for power forward, where Dennis Rodman's height certainly did not limit him. When the Lakers were winning in the '80's, a lot of credit was given to their height and to their ability to match up with anyone. The Bulls could easily do the same.
3. An offense of multiple threats and one Michael Jordan. I once did a study of the best offenses and there was very little similarity between them other than the fact that they had numerous players that could score. It didn't seem to matter if they were centers, forwards, or guards, just that they could all be threats. Since then, I've found mathematical reasons for this, something I plan to write up this summer. What it boils down to is this: each individual offensive threat helps every other player on the floor score by weakening the defense on the others and the more individual threats there are, the more straight man defense (no help) has to be played, which is what each individual is so good at beating. For the Bulls, they had tremendous individual offensive threats in Jordan, Kukoc, Kerr, and, well, Pippen. (Pippen really is and always has been just better than average offensively.) No one could confidently leave these guys open for very long. No one could even cover Jordan with one man or, sometimes, two men. With Jordan always drawing a crowd, the rest of the Bulls knew how to finish. One of my big projects this summer is to show how strong this Jordan effect is.
4. Being great offensively and having a good bench can make a great defense... or is it the other way around? There is too much interest in cause and effect in life. The Bulls are a prime example of how being good at a number of things just magnifies how good they are. Regardless of whether the driving force was the offense or the defense, by having a good offense/defense, it made the other better. The Bulls had to face themselves in practice. They had to learn how to stop themselves or score against themselves. By being that good, it made them better. A critical aspect of this was that they had a deep bench that integrated with the first team to a large degree. Without that, the practice first team would be facing an inferior second team and not improving. But the fact that the Bulls second team could score made the first team work harder. It also earned that second team time in the games, which meant they got time on the first team in practice, which meant they had to play like first team players. That is a complicated way of saying that the Bulls were more than the sum of their individuals. They built upon the presence of one another to be an awesome team, something that should not be lost on the young coaches and players of the world.
5. Dennis Rodman and the Technicolor Dream 'Do. After just having said how Chicago was more than the sum of its individuals, I have to say that Dennis Rodman is one of the most unique talents this league has ever seen. It is very difficult to estimate his value due to his unique style, but one thing is for certain: he is extreme. By being that extreme, he helped stall the San Antonio push for a title, but by being that extreme, it also helped turn a great Bulls team into an unforgettable one.