Bulls Take New York, Yet Again

CHICAGO —  The latest chapter and perhaps the last in the great New York Knick-Chicago Bulls rivalry ebbed away with the usual result. The Bulls were victorious. The Knicks were blue.

The Knicks were already old. Patrick Ewing is a season away from free agency and management is expected to break up that old gang of his, perhaps starting with him.

And the Bulls?

They won’t miss them.

“Not at all,” said Scottie Pippen Tuesday night after the Bulls beat the Knicks, 94-81, to end a 4-1 series that wasn’t as one-sided as the final score indicated and oust New York for the fourth time in five playoff series in the ‘90s.

“It’s a tough battle having Patrick and [Anthony] Mason and [John] Starks out on the court. We’ve seen those faces for too many years. It’d be great to break them up because they present a big challenge for us.”

Even in their present, aged, toothless, No. 5 in the East incarnation, the Knicks were a hard’s week’s work, putting Pippen into a slump, gumming up the Bulls’ offense and shooting holes in their aura of invincibility.

This was the Bulls’ lone win in the series in which they didn’t have to rally in the fourth quarter. They never scored 100 points in regulation, or even 95. In Game 5, they posted their best shooting mark--43.6%.

“We knew it would be this kind of series,” said Coach Phil Jackson in another of his terse postgame appearances. “We were going to have to get in a slugfest out there . . .

“Orlando [leading Atlanta in the other Eastern semifinal, 3-1] is a speed team and a quickness team. They’re not going to be as physical, obviously, as the Knicks. The Knicks carry that with them.”

Orlando is also a young and respectful team, compared with the bare-knuckle Knicks who fought every inch of the way and seemed to complain every minute in between.

A day after Game 4, Coach Jeff Van Gundy decided the Knicks had been victimized, not by one bad call, or two, but five, all in the last 2:16 of the game.

Van Gundy said he wouldn’t be whining except that Jackson had started it.

“I hate to think that whining wins out,” Van Gundy said, “but they have been calling for traveling on Ewing the whole series. You’ve got to give him [Jackson] credit. He got the traveling call when he needed it to get his team over the hump.”

Tuesday nigh both teams looked like they were out on their feet. Michael Jordan, coming off a seven for 23 Game 4, missed five of his first six shots but finished with 35 points.

The Knicks have slipped recently and so has the quality of basketball in this rivalry. The ’96 installment often looked like Jordan and nine mud wrestlers.

Nonetheless, the Knicks were gallant and none more than Ewing, who went down firing, scoring 22 points, and insisting the Knicks were the better team.

“Yeah, I feel for him,” Jordan said of Ewing. “He’s a competitor. He’s a fierce competitor. He comes from a background, Georgetown, where he had success and he’s got a great work ethic but he’s always been on the short end of the stick . . .

“That team’s getting old. I’m pretty sure they feel they have to make some changes. [Grinning] Hopefully, it won’t be too good. We want to continue to dominate them, at least while I’m still playing.

“He had his chance while I was gone.”

Bulls Notes

The Bulls’ Toni Kukoc, getting 45 of a possible 113 votes, won the NBA’s Sixth Man award in a vote of a panel of sports writers and broadcasters. Portland’s Arvydas Sabonis (24) was second.