Jordan and Pippen return, but the 2011 Bulls steal the show

 

The United Center was thick with the air of nostalgia on Saturday night, and that's a haze that usually tends to blur vision. But on a night where Chicago celebrated the 20th anniversary of its city's first NBA championship, the parallels between the 1991 Chicago Bulls, and their 2011 counterparts were striking.
First, you had to remind the fans of what was. The Utah Jazz, that noted Western combatant of Chicago's during the 1990s, was in town to play on a nationally televised, WGN-TV game. And the old voice of WGN, current ESPN radio broadcaster Jim Durham, was in town to lead a halftime celebration of the 20th anniversary of Chicago's first NBA championship.
This wasn't your typical Jumbotron-led affair. Each player on that year's playoff roster -- save for Bill Cartwright (now coaching in Phoenix) and B.J. Armstrong (his player representative duties gone into hyperdrive with this week's NCAA action) -- was led out to center court individually to raucous cheers. Scottie Pippen and Michael Jordan both addressed the crowd, after the players were handed a commemorative plaque.
Phil Jackson, stuck with coaching duties in with his Lakers in Dallas on Saturday night, was the lone speaker who couldn't have been influenced by first half play of these current Bulls, and it showed as he sent a video-taped message in which he referred to "all of us [1991] Bulls." And though the scoreboard featured reel after reel of 1991-era highlights for the fans (which stood throughout) to bask in, it was Jordan himself (speaking to the sold-out crowd) that brought things all the way up to 2011.