I loved watching Pippen and Jordan just coming down the court and slamming the ball on people's heads as hard as they ran fast. Oh man, just disre-SPECT-ful slam jams on people's heads. In ways that made them mope away. Grown men. They wouldn't even talk smack after Pip said BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM. But the rest of the Bulls back then, outside of Pax and like...Jud Buechler...were busters. Maybe the way to hate them was to grow and experience life. When my man Dennis Rodman got signed by the Bulls, I felt like the one guy in this world who would challenge Michael Jordan had conceded. Danny Ainge after all was the other one, and he had just retired. But as far as Michael, Pip and Phil Jackson just to name the ones who could even identify the ball, you get sick of all of those kinds of people -- Michael Jordan I've written alot on, but how about Scottie Pippen and the way he let those people mistreat and underscore him? And Phil Jackson just sat there and heaved insults at people to look like he was Jordan's coach for a reason? I suppose? That guy never had different assistants and won't even be on a losing team. I know competitors like that. I wished Pip and Rodman would just go to my Pistons or my Knicks and play Jordan, Purdue, Kerr, Longley, Armstrong, all those fools. I've never seen so many shots missed then when Steve Kerr was called upon in Game 7 of the 1994 Eastern Semis against the Knicks at Madison Square Garden. He was Pippen's second option and he choked. And we were subjected to his buffonery for the next FOUR YEARS. Anyway, after the Bulls won 6 titles and everything was stupid in Chicago as far as sports went. But I got to see Vince Carter's Raptors, Allen Iverson's 76ers, Carmelo's Nuggets (that sounded pretty profane), and even Walker and Pierce in Boston. Stockton and Malone I saw too, Webber and Jason Williams, and since they were playing the Bulls without anybody you know of, a decent pair of tickets were 27 dollars each!!!!

One team however would cost 60. And considering they used to be 210, this was an intriguing prospect. That team was the Los Angeles Lakers of Shaq, Kobe and Phil. Would you go and see Shaq and Kobe play for 60 dollars? Me too.

Five years later, after going to the Laker game all five times, once for five straight seasons, I had still not seen Shaq and Kobe play together.

You ever see Family Matters, the show with Urkel? Well there was another character on that show who was funny named Waldo. That's what Shaq was when it came to Chicago's Urkel. He was only slightly more professional and coordinated then the Terri-Bulls.

First off, you think you're slick when you go to the United Center and someone in your crew has an Orlando Shaq jersey and you're just like -- maaaan, we're about to see Shaq tear up five busters for 20% of the price if Michael Jordan was still playing. And with good seats too. None of this behind the backboard crap finally after twenty years on this Earth. We are eight rows up mid-to-center court. Very nice.

Well Shaq wouldn't play your buster-ass team if he didn't feel they've performed thus far in the season up to his standards. He was like oh what, Chicago has 16 wins? Forget it. I'm not going out there, I'm not suiting up for that, they're not worth my time. Shaq would know about performance and character. He never gives up after his team loses the first game of a playoff series, which is why they never got swept by the Bulls, Rockets, Jazz and Spurs. Swept. Shaq has no right to criticize jack.

Or Shaq does play and he'll give you one dunk. One. If you missed it, sorry.

Or he'll get in a fight with the white hack artists who don't stop beating him up to send him to the line. And when he does, he'll wait until their back is turned, and then launch a freaking Kermit Washington hit that would have knocked said player dead...would have...because Shaq has even less coordination with his punches. I won't make fun of his free throws. His hands are far too big to get that right, that's not his fault, that's how he was built. You gotta use both hands to shoot a free throw. You try shooting a grapefruit with two hands, it's not easy.

Kobe meanwhile is a god damn professional. Oh WOW is Kobe amazing. I love Kobe and Iverson so much. And Pippen. But Kobe man...dude...this guy is practicing set shots before the game, okay, and he's double-taking the rim, he notices something strange. I'm fixating on the rim I can't tell what the heck he could be finding wrong. He grabs an official and I hear them talking, and then the official gets out a walkie-talkie, and within moments a maintenance guy arrives with a ladder. The maintenance guy goes up on the ladder with some pliers, examines it, makes this indication that "Kobe was right" and adjusts the rim ever ever EVER so slightly. Apparently Kobe was able to tell just by shooting at it that the rim was not even a millimeter off from being regulation height. I'm telling you this is one of the special ones. And when Shaq would pull his nonsense, Kobe would come in and do just enough funky stuff to send the whole Chicago crowd HAPPY. Not trying to get to their cars in annoyance like it's a Dodger game but HAPPY. Maaaan we were like little kids walking out of a horror movie. You remember when Kobe did this, you remember when he did that, he saved our money. Yet Kobe would get into legal problems because he did something pretty selfish, and we can discuss that in another blog absolutely because it is on my mind, but I really really like the way Kobe Bryant plays basketball and am so so proud of how he won the title without Horry and Shaq.

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