Jaundice i guess. Alcohol and smoking? Im pretty sure theres a safe surgery to peal back the yellow layer and reveal very white eyeballs iirc. Always wondered why such a rich man like him who seems to care for his appearance never bothered with something like that. His eyes have been yellowing since his Wizards days.
I remember in the Finals against the Knicks, the Rockets guards (Smith, Maxwell, and Cassell) would slap the Knicks hands off of them when being hand checked. Like super obviously.
Just saw John Salley on the ocho talkin Rodman, and the last time I saw him we were with "I dream of Jeannie" at the Beverly Hills Hotel. Steven Tyler was there. So imagine that Trio. And you just have to laugh.
everything clicked so well to start that season. all of the big 3 just immediately fell into perfect synch. the role players fit. and eldridge recasner had a crazy beginning of the year and then (i wanna say) tore his acl and the team never seemed quite the same. also, that jazz team we lost to might be underrated. they finished the season 36-5, which at the time was an nba record. people like to say barkley made us lose to them (which would have never happened if we didn't beat seattle first), but they were also pretty good.
so i made it like 3 hours before i cracked and watched the episodes. enjoyable so far. if there's one thing i hope this does (which i know it won't), is it gets people to go back and watch old 80's and early 90's games and realize just how little contact there was. people think today is all ticky-tack calls, but it is amazing some of the different types of calls that got made back then that you would just never see now (without the defender screaming at the ref). there were so many more calls back then. and yes, 0.1% of the time someone committed a flagrant that would get you suspended 10 games today and barely got you ejected back then, but you can watch whole strings of games in a row and never see that. you can watch lots of playoff games and hardly see anything resembling a "playoff foul." and again, posting up was so much less physical. now a lot of that started to change in the mid-90's around the time pat riley got to new york. i think knicks/bulls kind of popularized physical play and then knicks/heat was near the peak of it. people who played in the late 90's, early 2000's i think do have a legitimate argument that it was more physical. but these 80's guys? GTFOH. also, when they were showing jordan's 63 point game (which arguably was less impressive than the 49 the game before since he only had 37 at the end of regulation i believe), he got a steal on a play where the celtics actually had 5 white guys on the court and i don't even think ainge or walton were on the court. boston was utah before utah. 2 of them made kyle korver look like a greek olympian. jordan was just so far ahead of the average athleticism of his era.
Jordan bent the rules to his advantage? Shocking. What would The Ringer's Paulo Uggetti have to say about this? Let me guess: "[Jordan's] commitment to being the villain is impressive." "On the one hand, I can’t help but appreciate [his] willingness to sacrifice [his] approval rating for any kind of edge. On the other, [he's] basically laying out a welcome mat for the haters." "When you become known for always trying to exploit an inefficiency, you run the danger of becoming known for those things as opposed to, you know, being good at basketball."
I predict that the play of Toni kukoc will be marginalized throughout the production. Jordan and pippen was jealous of kukoc for sure. Don't forget how Jordan in 98 missed the game 6 game winner against pacers. Kukoc hit like five three's to carry the bulls in the series clincher. I wonder how the film will show bulls versus pacers in 98!
Recasner was the year before, IIRC. They signed Brent Price to be the starting PG, but one leg injury led to a delay in his start (giving Maloney the job), and then just when Price was back and hitting his stride... he tore his other ACL. He would have been a better option than Maloney vs. Stockton. That Jazz team was great... but they had similar issues with veterans/age/depth that the Rockets also had. I also think Rudy ultimately underutilized Kevin Willis throughout the playoffs... not sure if he just was a defensive matchup issue out there, but a hobbled Barkley still playing 40+ minutes wasn't necessarily the best option (in hindsight).
looked it up. indeed, you are correct. i got my emanual davis's mixed up with my eldridge recasner's. he played 13 games and we were 12-1.
thing that stood out to me was watching total stiffs like Rick Carlisle and Danny Ainge guarding Jordan, compared to physical specimens of today like Kawai/Giannis/LBJ
Yeah it was remarkable how unathletic and just plain slow a lot of the Celtics players looked in those 1986 highlights.
The Bulls would've lost to the Knicks if Jordan never left on hiatus. Forget about facing the Rockets in 94, lol.
