What if … Michael Jordan missed?由JabariIverson 发表在翻译团招工部 https://bbs.hupu.com/fyt-store
Editor’s note: We are exploring seven “What if?” scenarios this week in Cleveland and Columbus sports history. From the rain delay of the 2016 World Series to Ohio State’s Tattoogate. Today: The Shot. You can find other stories in the series here.
The question hangs in the air longer than Michael Jordan at the free-throw line. Cavs up one, three seconds left in Game 5 as the Richfield Coliseum roared in delight. Brad Sellers inbounds to Jordan, who catches it outside the 3-point line and dribbles twice before rising.
We all know what happens next.
Jordan went on to win six titles with the Bulls. The Cavs went home stunned. The Shot in 1989 was a devastating blow to a franchise that seemed well positioned to make a deep postseason run. The Cavs swept the Bulls, 6-0, during the regular season, and their first-round matchup seemed heavily lopsided in Cleveland’s favor.
So it makes you wonder …
What if Jordan missed?
The question isn’t really that outrageous. It actually happened quite often. Jordan missed 14,654 shots over his career (regular season and postseason combined). He missed the winner at the end of Game 1 of the 1991 Finals. He missed at the buzzer of Game 2 during the 1992 Finals, and the game against the Trail Blazers went into overtime. His off-balance 3-pointer at the end of Game 5 in 1998 missed everything, sending the Finals back to Utah.
So it was possible for Jordan to miss a big shot, particularly back then. At the time, he was still establishing himself as a rising star in the NBA. He wasn’t yet the killer who evolved into perhaps the greatest of all time.
So what if Jordan missed? What would’ve changed?
Maybe nothing. Maybe everything.
“If he misses … I thoroughly believe there would’ve been at least one championship out of that,” said Craig Ehlo, who has been on the wrong end of that shot for the last 30 years and still hasn’t grown tired of talking about it. “But that did something to us. We still were a good team. We played them again in the (playoffs). It didn’t take our confidence away, but it was like, ‘Can we ever get by this guy?’”
A miss by Jordan at the buzzer of Game 5 could’ve been the difference between a first-round exit for the Cavs and a trip to the NBA Finals — maybe even a championship. The Cavs split their season series with the Knicks (2-2) and the Pistons (3-3), the next two teams they would’ve faced in the East. In other words, they were better positioned to take on the Pistons than were the Bulls, who lost all six of their meetings with Detroit during the regular season and lost the conference finals to the Pistons in six games as well.
In fact, the Cavs entered a home game against Detroit in late February with the league’s best record, 41-12. They were the only team with a winning percentage above .700, and they were on pace to win 63 games. Then Rick Mahorn crushed Mark Price with an elbow to the head away from the ball for no apparent reason, flattening the Cavs’ All-Star point guard and altering the rhythm of their entire season.
General manager Wayne Embry was enraged. He’s 6-foot-8 and a five-time NBA All-Star himself. Embry and Gordon Gund, who owned the Cavs at the time, took pride in the construction of the roster. They wanted a team of character, not a team of characters.
Embry stormed onto the court and challenged Mahorn and Bill Laimbeer, two of Detroit’s most notorious “Bad Boys,” to a fight.
“It wasn’t one of my proudest moments,” Embry said, laughing. “The referee (Billy Oakes) said, ‘What the heck are you doing here?’ It shocked him. He didn’t know what to think.”
“Wayne was always our protector,” Ehlo said.
Embry’s act, while honorable, didn’t make Price’s head feel any better. He was enjoying the best shooting season of his career when he was clobbered. Price missed two games as a result, and when he returned, his shooting numbers dipped. More importantly, the Cavs stumbled into the playoffs essentially a .500 team (15-13) the rest of the way.
“Mark was having an incredible year,” Ehlo said. “If he doesn’t go down, we could’ve easily won 60 games, probably.
”Our guards were even with Detroit. I felt like we were bigger. We didn’t have that nastiness they had. That’s why Wayne charged onto the floor.”
None of that matters now because of Jordan and The Shot, leading to perhaps the biggest unknown that has hung over the Cavs for 30 years: If Jordan misses, does Ron Harper still get traded to the Clippers?
Jordan made The Shot in May. Six months later, Harper was off to Los Angeles in one of the more controversial trades in franchise history. Injuries wrecked the start of the 1989-90 season, but if the Cavs were coming off an NBA Finals appearance — or, really, anything other than a first-round playoff exit — would Harper have remained in Cleveland?
“That’s a good question,” Embry said last week before pausing. “It’s a hard one to answer. I can’t say that he would not have been traded, but it may have changed some thinking. That’s just speculation. It’s all speculation.
“I’ll let it go at that.”
Multiple sources told The Athletic that the root of the issue was between Harper and ownership — the whole principle of being a team of character, not a team of characters. Embry and Harper were Miami University products, but Embry won’t relitigate the details surrounding the trade today.
“It was a team decision,” Embry said. “From the coaching staff right on through ownership. It was a team decision.”
Harper was traded for Danny Ferry, the college player of the year in 1989 who was drafted second by the Clippers but refused to play for one of the worst-run franchises in professional sports. Ferry remains among the Cavs’ leaders in games and minutes played, but he struggled to live up to the massive expectations of the trade. He retired with career averages of seven points and 2.8 rebounds.
“They really built Danny up,” Ehlo said. “I became very good friends with Danny. He was a good person. Everybody gets hit hard when you say you don’t want to play for the Clippers, which at that time, nobody did. You can’t fault him for it. But he was kind of like the first to do that. He didn’t gain anything from it. And then it just put more pressure on him to be somebody.”
Without Harper, one of their most dynamic scorers, the Cavs never figured out how to beat Jordan. He ended their playoff runs five times in seven years from 1988 to 1994, including once in the conference finals. None of those other losses was as crushing as 1989, which altered the course of two franchises for the next decade.
“I thought our team was the best team during that period,” Embry said. “If that shot hadn’t gone in, it may have changed the fortunes of the Cavs in the ensuing years. We’ll never know.”
Editor’s note: We are exploring seven “What if?” scenarios this week in Cleveland and Columbus sports history. From the rain delay of the 2016 World Series to Ohio State’s Tattoogate. Today: The Shot. You can find other stories in the series here.
The question hangs in the air longer than Michael Jordan at the free-throw line. Cavs up one, three seconds left in Game 5 as the Richfield Coliseum roared in delight. Brad Sellers inbounds to Jordan, who catches it outside the 3-point line and dribbles twice before rising.
We all know what happens next.
Jordan went on to win six titles with the Bulls. The Cavs went home stunned. The Shot in 1989 was a devastating blow to a franchise that seemed well positioned to make a deep postseason run. The Cavs swept the Bulls, 6-0, during the regular season, and their first-round matchup seemed heavily lopsided in Cleveland’s favor.
So it makes you wonder …
What if Jordan missed?
The question isn’t really that outrageous. It actually happened quite often. Jordan missed 14,654 shots over his career (regular season and postseason combined). He missed the winner at the end of Game 1 of the 1991 Finals. He missed at the buzzer of Game 2 during the 1992 Finals, and the game against the Trail Blazers went into overtime. His off-balance 3-pointer at the end of Game 5 in 1998 missed everything, sending the Finals back to Utah.
So it was possible for Jordan to miss a big shot, particularly back then. At the time, he was still establishing himself as a rising star in the NBA. He wasn’t yet the killer who evolved into perhaps the greatest of all time.
So what if Jordan missed? What would’ve changed?
Maybe nothing. Maybe everything.
“If he misses … I thoroughly believe there would’ve been at least one championship out of that,” said Craig Ehlo, who has been on the wrong end of that shot for the last 30 years and still hasn’t grown tired of talking about it. “But that did something to us. We still were a good team. We played them again in the (playoffs). It didn’t take our confidence away, but it was like, ‘Can we ever get by this guy?’”
A miss by Jordan at the buzzer of Game 5 could’ve been the difference between a first-round exit for the Cavs and a trip to the NBA Finals — maybe even a championship. The Cavs split their season series with the Knicks (2-2) and the Pistons (3-3), the next two teams they would’ve faced in the East. In other words, they were better positioned to take on the Pistons than were the Bulls, who lost all six of their meetings with Detroit during the regular season and lost the conference finals to the Pistons in six games as well.
In fact, the Cavs entered a home game against Detroit in late February with the league’s best record, 41-12. They were the only team with a winning percentage above .700, and they were on pace to win 63 games. Then Rick Mahorn crushed Mark Price with an elbow to the head away from the ball for no apparent reason, flattening the Cavs’ All-Star point guard and altering the rhythm of their entire season.
General manager Wayne Embry was enraged. He’s 6-foot-8 and a five-time NBA All-Star himself. Embry and Gordon Gund, who owned the Cavs at the time, took pride in the construction of the roster. They wanted a team of character, not a team of characters.
Embry stormed onto the court and challenged Mahorn and Bill Laimbeer, two of Detroit’s most notorious “Bad Boys,” to a fight.
“It wasn’t one of my proudest moments,” Embry said, laughing. “The referee (Billy Oakes) said, ‘What the heck are you doing here?’ It shocked him. He didn’t know what to think.”
“Wayne was always our protector,” Ehlo said.
Embry’s act, while honorable, didn’t make Price’s head feel any better. He was enjoying the best shooting season of his career when he was clobbered. Price missed two games as a result, and when he returned, his shooting numbers dipped. More importantly, the Cavs stumbled into the playoffs essentially a .500 team (15-13) the rest of the way.
“Mark was having an incredible year,” Ehlo said. “If he doesn’t go down, we could’ve easily won 60 games, probably.
”Our guards were even with Detroit. I felt like we were bigger. We didn’t have that nastiness they had. That’s why Wayne charged onto the floor.”
None of that matters now because of Jordan and The Shot, leading to perhaps the biggest unknown that has hung over the Cavs for 30 years: If Jordan misses, does Ron Harper still get traded to the Clippers?
Jordan made The Shot in May. Six months later, Harper was off to Los Angeles in one of the more controversial trades in franchise history. Injuries wrecked the start of the 1989-90 season, but if the Cavs were coming off an NBA Finals appearance — or, really, anything other than a first-round playoff exit — would Harper have remained in Cleveland?
“That’s a good question,” Embry said last week before pausing. “It’s a hard one to answer. I can’t say that he would not have been traded, but it may have changed some thinking. That’s just speculation. It’s all speculation.
“I’ll let it go at that.”
Multiple sources told The Athletic that the root of the issue was between Harper and ownership — the whole principle of being a team of character, not a team of characters. Embry and Harper were Miami University products, but Embry won’t relitigate the details surrounding the trade today.
“It was a team decision,” Embry said. “From the coaching staff right on through ownership. It was a team decision.”
Harper was traded for Danny Ferry, the college player of the year in 1989 who was drafted second by the Clippers but refused to play for one of the worst-run franchises in professional sports. Ferry remains among the Cavs’ leaders in games and minutes played, but he struggled to live up to the massive expectations of the trade. He retired with career averages of seven points and 2.8 rebounds.
“They really built Danny up,” Ehlo said. “I became very good friends with Danny. He was a good person. Everybody gets hit hard when you say you don’t want to play for the Clippers, which at that time, nobody did. You can’t fault him for it. But he was kind of like the first to do that. He didn’t gain anything from it. And then it just put more pressure on him to be somebody.”
Without Harper, one of their most dynamic scorers, the Cavs never figured out how to beat Jordan. He ended their playoff runs five times in seven years from 1988 to 1994, including once in the conference finals. None of those other losses was as crushing as 1989, which altered the course of two franchises for the next decade.
“I thought our team was the best team during that period,” Embry said. “If that shot hadn’t gone in, it may have changed the fortunes of the Cavs in the ensuing years. We’ll never know.”
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