# By Sam Smith
The National Basketball Association finals opened in Chi- cago Saturday night, and the Bulls lost to the Portland Trail Blazers 109-101.
The Bulls were led by Mi- chael Jordan with 35 points and…
Hey, wait a minute. This doesn’t feel like June even on a Bulls’ calendar. But inside the Stadium, it was a playoff atmosphere, with the hottest team in the NBA, the Trail Blazers of the Western Conference, meeting the hottest team in the Eastern Conference, the rampaging Bulls. But like too many previous playoffs, it was an unhappy Stadium crowd that headed home as the Bulls fell to 12-7 and Portland rose to 18-1, the second-best start in NBA history. The Blazers claimed their 13th straight victory on the road, eighth this season and fourth in the last five days.
“It was a learning experience for us,” said Jordan, who helped lead the Bulls back from a 17-point third-quarter deficit to a chance for a tie with about 4½ minutes left. “And it’s better to learn now rather than later.
But we made too many mistakes.” Uncharacteristically, Jordan participated in two of the worst after lugging the Bulls back into the game with a big assist off the bench from Clifl Levingston. The Bulls, whose seven-game winning streak ended, went flat in the second quarter after a first-period duel that saw Jordan get 15 points and Port- land’s Clyde Drexler 10 of his 29, including three three-point field goals. “He doesn’t usually shoot that well,” said Jordan. But this Portland team, defeated in last season’s finals by the Pistons, has numerous weapons. “We’re just a balanced team,” said Danny Ainge. The Blazers, who led 33-30 after one quarter, took advantage of five straight misses and five turnovers by the Bulls’ second unit to start the second quarter and grabbed a 44-32 lead midway through the period. “We got in a hole, and it was a dogfight from then on,”
[Bulls center Bill Cartwright gets tangled up with Clyde Drexler in Portland’s 109-101 victory](http://[Screenshot-20231208-214004-Google.jpg](https://postimg.cc/TLVVsQLq))with Clyde Drexler in Portland’s 109-101 victory
See Bulls, pg. 9
by Lincoln4933
1 Comment
You meet a man on the Oregon Trail. He tells you his name is Terry. “Terry?!” you say laughing, “Terry’s a girls name!” Without any hesitation, Terry pulls out a gun and shoots you dead. You have died of dissin’ Terry 🙁