Bulls Ready To Play For Immortality

What are bridesmaids wearing this year? Green, it would seem, and a lovely shade it is, too, on the Seattle SuperSonics, the way-out-West donation to the Bulls’ season of splendor.

This will take, oh, five games, no more, giving the Sonics one win out of courtesy, kind of like a door prize for being a good sport.

The Sonics could have lost to Utah, should have if they had any sense of drama and had been true to their own essence. They could have made the Jazz take on the Bulls, which seemed to be what they wasted a whole week trying to do.

Had the Sonics been in any hurry to get to Chicago, the Bulls would already have been up two games instead of starting from scratch on Wednesday.

After the Sonics finally finished on Sunday, I half expected them to ask the Jazz to make it five out of nine.

But in the end, Seattle just couldn’t make enough bad plays to fail, no matter how experienced the Sonics have been at losing three games in a row to leave the playoffs. My guess is they got confused and missed their exit.

Seattle has been the most reliable team in the NBA for facing a crisis with both hands around its own throat.

Just when the Sonics needed nothing more than a routine choke, there was Gary Payton driving the lane, Shawn Kemp on the muscle and Detlef Schrempf lofting three-point baskets over imaginary blimps.

Seattle’s only identity has been its ability to snatch despair from the jaws of joy. Now it is just another achiever playing up to its record.

It will not matter to the Bulls much who was finally coughed up by the series that wouldn’t cease, though I was a little partial to Utah, the team, not the wilderness.

This is a team that seemed to care about winning, a limited, immobile bunch, who succeed on grit and, of course, altitude.

Neither Karl Malone nor John Stockton will get any closer to the NBA Finals for the Jazz than this, with that one last pick and roll, imperfect, inadequate and incomplete.

Unable to delay any longer, Seattle was forced to accept victory and an engagement with the Bulls. Instead of asking for a cigarette and a blindfold, they laughed and hugged, obviously delirious.

Seattle is the greater challenge, a shorter and more dysfunctional version of the Orlando Magic, with players who can have moments, like Payton and Kemp, a team considered better than its finish.

A better defensive team, maybe, a double-team nuisance, but not much off the boards, not much off the bench and with no center the Bulls would hire.

After Alonzo Mourning, Patrick Ewing and Shaquille O’Neal, Luc Longley may break into giggles the first time he sees Ervin Johnson.

Overconfidence would seem to be a bigger concern than Seattle, especially since the Bulls don’t have the obvious grudge factor they had going for them in the other three playoff series, whether it was Mourning’s mouth or the history of the Knicks or the revenge of Orlando.

It is at last time for the closing authentication of the Bulls as the best team in history, and if Seattle is not the most formidable final test, if beating the Sonics does not end all arguments about the old Lakers and old Celtics and old 76ers, you can only squash the hand you’re dealt.

What happens next will be a coronation for the Bulls with the Sonics playing usher.

Make reservations in Grant Park for, oh, the third Monday of the month. That’s where the Bulls will be, showing Chicago that the fourth championship trophy looks like pretty much like the other three.