It was right around the time Stephen Curry drilled his sixth three-point shot of the first quarter Wednesday night that I thought of a dear old friend of mine.
Let’s call him Homer.
Homer lives in Portland, Ore., and is a Trail Blazers season-ticket owner, but his NBA heart belongs to the Bulls. He grew up on the North Side and was a Public League All-Star in the late 1980s. He ran the point for four years at a Division III college and has always followed the pro game with a keen eye and a bookish curiosity.
I was with Homer in Portland last weekend. Got treated to a Blazers game and everything. That’s where he declared that not only would the 1995-96 Bulls beat the 2015-16 Golden State Warriors, they’d “kill” them. “Dominate” them.
Sweep them? No, only Scottie Pippen seems to believe that.
But beat Curry’s 73-win Warriors, who swept the Bulls’ 20-year-old record of 72 under the rug with a 125-104 victory over the Grizzlies in the finale Wednesday? Dang straight. And do so handily.
Five games, maybe. Six games, max.
Which really makes me wonder: Why are so many Bulls fans so utterly brain-dead on this subject?
On a night when Magic Johnson called Kobe Bryant the greatest Los Angeles Laker ever, it didn’t seem so unreasonable for anyone to anoint the Warriors the greatest team ever. One of those superlatives is simply untrue. (Hello … Magic?) The other is, at the least, a plausible point of view.
And if you refuse to admit it’s a worthy topic for debate, you are — let’s just be really honest here — full of it.
Pippen, for example, reasons that he would be charged with defending Curry, as though the rest goes without saying. The only problem with that logic: Curry — the league’s scoring leader and a soon-to-be two-time MVP — is a better player than Pippen ever was.
Or maybe you’re simply not all that impressed with Curry’s 402 three-pointers this season, even though no other player ever has made 300.
Curry has fellow All-Stars in teammates Klay Thompson and Draymond Green. The Warriors have the reigning NBA Finals MVP in Andre Iguodola. They have the most talented bench in the league.
They play beautifully on offense — as beautifully as any team ever has — and with connectedness and determination on defense. I sometimes wonder if Phil Jackson would’ve enjoyed coaching them even more than he did the Bulls.
So let’s get to the crux of the biscuit: Would I take Curry’s Warriors over Michael Jordan’s Bulls in a seven-game series?
No, I wouldn’t. I’d take the Bulls in seven. With Game 7 going to overtime.
MJ would find a way.
But who even cares now? The Warriors have earned every bit of their glory. They are brilliant, not to mention as fun to watch as any Bulls team ever was. Even Homer would have to admit that.
Besides, who are we kidding? Records were made to be broken. And this record is far more impressive than most.
Follow me on Twitter @slgreenberg.
Email: sgreenberg@suntimes.com
