Down by six points going into the fourth quarter, his team has not scored the last three times down the court. The clock is quickly running down. Someone decides to take over and nobody can stop this guy when he is determined to score. That someone is Michael Jordan.
Jordan is not your everyday NBA star. He is much more. Once again he has carried the Chicago Bulls into another great season and probably what is going to be another World Championship.
Right about now some of you are shaking your heads and saying to yourself that Chicago is going to choke and some other team is going to win. Well the fact is that the Chicago Bulls is a team that does not choke and rarely loses.
Unfortunately basketball fans have to face the facts, and the facts are Chicago is the No. 1 team in the NBA and they are going to win another championship. I am not very happy with it either. I would love to see another team win it for once, like the Houston Rockets. Now there is a team that deserves a championship. But with a team like the Bulls, a player like Jordan, and a coach like Phil Jackson my dreams of the Houston Rockets winning, are just dreams.
On SportsCenter on ESPN, the broadcasters felt Jordan and the Bulls might not win this year. They said he is too old to carry the Bulls to another championship and that he is going through a slump because his career is ending.
First of all, Jordan is only 34 years old, and still in his prime. Just in this last month alone he has scored 33 points against the New York Knicks. Notched his 28th career triple-double which was the first this season in the league. He posted 37 points one night, surpassing Oscar Robertson as the fifth leading scorer in NBA history; scored 38 points and tied his career-high with 18 rebounds in overtime against the Seattle SuperSonics; notched the first triple-double in All-Star Game history, with 14 points, 11 rebounds and 11 assists, and scored a season high of 51 points in a one point win, which was surpassed Sunday night in the second game of play-offs against the Washington Bullets. That is another thing I would like to mention. Jordan had 55 points last Sunday in the second game of the first series for play-offs, which helped the Bulls win the game by four points.
That is the eighth time in his career when he has scored 50 or more points in the playoffs. That alone is amazing and untouchable. Some players in the NBA do not even score that many points in four games combined. But not Jordan, he rises up to the competition and flies over everyone and is the best at what he does.
Jordan was averaging 31 points the first half of the 96-97 season. Then after the All-Star Game he sort of went in to a slump (if that is what you want to call it). His average went down to 28 points. My guess is that he got bored. Here he is winning almost every game that he plays in, ensuring the first place spot in the Eastern Division Conference. For once he passed the ball which allowed his teammates to score but brought his average a couple of notches down.
Jordan has accomplished so many things in his career that other players could not even imagine. He has been selected as one of the 50 Greatest Players in NBA history, named NBA Finals MVP four times, all-NBA First Team eight times and named the Bulls all-time leading scorer, and getting his 24,000th career point in March. These are not things that your average NBA player does.
So all of you who are hoping that the Bulls will not win are living in a dream world. They are going to win another title. I would really be surprised if any other team even wins one game against them, besides Houston.
Laura Czingula, a junior journalism major, is sports editor of the Campus Times. She can be reached by e-mail at czingula@ulvacs.ulaverne.edu.
