Oct
16
Michael and the Bulls Storm Paris
Five years after setting Barcelona on fire during the 1992 Summer Olympics, Michael Jordan took over Paris for a weekend. Coming off their second straight title and fifth title in seven years, Jordan, Phil Jackson and the Bulls would travel to France for the McDonald’s Championship.
This was not your daddy’s Bulls, however. Scottie Pippen and Dennis Rodman were both absent from participating in the tournament. Pippen was recovering from off-season surgery while Rodman had yet to resign with the Bulls.
Ultimately, it wouldn’t matter as Chicago still had number-23 on its side. Jordan would score a combined 55 points in two games, both victories over PSG Racing and Olympiakso Piraeus, which featured a Bulls selection from the 1995 NBA Draft by the name of Dragan Tarlac.
Tarlac would actually look decent in the championship game of the tournament; however, he would be a complete bust during his one and only season with the Bulls. Tarlac would appear in 43 games and average a meager 2.4 points per game during the 2000-2001 season with a brutal Bulls team featuring Elton Brand, Ron Artest, Brad Miller, Ron Mercer, Marcus Fizer and Jamal Crawford among others.
Going back to the McDonald’s Championship, it was amazing to see just how much of a global figure Jordan was, and how much of a global team his Bulls were. To this day, the image of Jordan, naturally wearing a beret, and his teammates taking a picture in front of the Eiffel Tower remains surreal. It was as if the Bulls were a traveling team of college All-Stars in that picture; in reality, Chicago was treated like rock stars during the trip.
While the games were hardly memorable (Chicago played a lot of Rusty Larue that weekend), the 1997 McDonald’s Championship was yet another reminder of how Jordan’s Bulls were one of those rare, trascendent teams in the pantheon of sports history and pop culture in general.
by Chris Maynard, chris@hoops4thesoul.com
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Five years after setting Barcelona on fire during the 1992 Summer Olympics, Michael Jordan took over Paris for a weekend. Coming off their second straight title and fifth title in seven years, Jordan, Phil Jackson and the Bulls would travel to France for the McDonald’s Championship.
