Written by Jesse Lamovsky

---

A lot of us who came of age as Cleveland sports fans in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s learned to love the game of basketball by watching the Cavaliers of that era. With their crisp, unselfish style, a lineup of solid citizens that played the game the right way and the shrewd, cerebral Lenny Wilkens calling the plays, those Cavaliers were easy to root for.

They never won a Championship, though, in large part because one towering figure stood directly astride their path. That figure was Michael Jordan. That in itself wasn’t a “Cleveland thing”- after all, the NBA graveyard is filled with the tombstones of great players and teams that never got a ring because of Jordan and his Bulls. But coming up at the same time and in the same division as the Bulls, Cleveland was at the business end of the Chicago dynasty more than any other team. They got it first, most and hardest.

In 1992 the Cavaliers went as far as they’d ever gotten in the Playoffs- all the way to the Eastern Conference Finals. There they met their nemesis from Chicago in a memorable six-game series that would prove to be the high-water mark of those Cleveland teams. This is the story of that series, and those two weeks in May.

 Two Teams, Two Destinies

In the late ‘80s, while the Lakers, Celtics and Pistons dominated the NBA of today, a pair of teams seemed destined to dominate the NBA of tomorrow. The Chicago Bulls were led by the transcendent Michael Jordan- already considered one of the all-time greats at the tender age of 25- and two youthful sidekicks in Scottie Pippen and Horace Grant. The Cleveland Cavaliers, with their young core of Mark Price, Ron Harper and Brad Daugherty and veteran leaper Larry Nance, were so promising on paper that no less an authority on dynasties than Magic Johnson christened them “the team of the ‘90s.”

Problem was both of these talented young teams were in the same division, the Central, a division already owned lock, stock and barrel by the physical, savvy Bad Boys of Detroit. Chicago and Cleveland had to go through one another before either could challenge the Pistons. Sure enough, the Bulls and Cavaliers met in the first round of the 1988 and ’89 playoffs. Both series went the full five games, and the results would set the tone for each team’s course in the coming decade.

The 1989 series would prove especially crucial. Cleveland had seemingly zipped by the Bulls during the regular season, winning 57 games to Chicago’s 47 and sweeping the six games between the teams. But the playoffs were a different story. Chicago took Game One at the Coliseum, putting the Cavaliers on their heels, and from there the series went tit-for-tat. The Bulls put the Cavaliers on the brink of elimination with a Game Three win at Chicago Stadium, only to see Cleveland steal an overtime decision in Game Four. Game Five was a thriller, with the lead changing hands eight times in the final two-and-a-half minutes. But the last lead change belonged to Chicago, as Michael Jordan hit the buzzer-beating jumper that would become known to history simply as “The Shot.”

That play triggered a divergence in the paths of the Bulls and Cavaliers. Chicago went on to the Eastern Conference Finals in 1989 and ’90, falling to Detroit both times. By 1991 the Bulls were finally ready to take command of the NBA. They won 61 games during the regular season, vanquished the Pistons in four straight in the East Finals and brushed aside the Lakers in the NBA Finals, hoisting the franchise’s first World Championship banner. By 1992 the Bulls were the undisputed titans of the league, winners of 67 games and possessors of the league’s most feared player in Michael Jordan. They were the team of teams.

The Cavaliers, meanwhile, went south. Hampered by injuries, poor drafts and ill-advised personnel moves- the most infamous being the trade of Ron Harper to the Clippers for Danny Ferry- Cleveland sagged back into the pack in the first two seasons of the ‘90s. The Cavaliers fell completely off the map in 1990-91, winning just 33 games as Mark Price spent most of the season on the shelf with a career-threatening knee injury. The “team of the ‘90s” tag was long forgotten, transferred to the nemesis by Lake Michigan and its tongue-wagging superstar.

Forgotten also was Cleveland’s domination of the Bulls in the 1988-89 regular season. Starting with “The Shot,” Chicago took thirteen straight from the Cavaliers, including Jordan’s 69-point explosion on March 28, 1990. No longer were Cleveland and Chicago arch-rivals dueling for future supremacy in the Central Division and the NBA. The Cavaliers had become a hapless punching bag, earth-bound foils for Michael and his airborne exploits.

 

Setting the Stage

By 1991-92, however, Cleveland was finally ready to climb off the mat and assume the role of NBA title contender that had once seemed to be its destiny. After a 1-4 start the Cavaliers took off, bolstered by the return of Mark Price to his familiar role as team quarterback. A streak in December and January, punctuated by an NBA-record 68-point rout of Miami, provided the fuel that pushed Cleveland into the league’s elite. With Price, Daugherty and Nance enjoying stellar seasons and Craig Ehlo and Hot Rod Williams providing solid support the Cavaliers finished 57-25, tied with Portland for the second-best record in the NBA.

But it wasn’t nearly enough to overtake Chicago in the Central Division. Cleveland finished a distant ten games in arrears of Phil Jackson’s Bulls, who went 67-15 behind Jordan, the league’s Most Valuable Player. With Michael being Michael, Scottie Pippen exploding into stardom and a deep, talented and physical supporting cast, Chicago looked even better than they had the previous season when they went 15-2 in the postseason and won the title in a romp. No one in the East looked ready to challenge the Bulls- least of all Cleveland, which hadn’t even made it out of the first round of the playoffs since the Miracle year of 1976.

After sweeping overmatched Miami in the first round the Bulls rolled into the East Semifinals against the New York Knicks, who had been rejuvenated by first-year coach Pat Riley. Aside from Cleveland no team had been tormented more by Michael Jordan than New York. The Knicks had lost fourteen straight to Chicago, including a 3-0 wipeout in the first round of the ’91 playoffs, and were expected to receive the same treatment at the hands of the Bulls in 1992.

But New York had a surprise in store for the Second City. Pounding away at MJ and Company with ferocious physical play, the Knicks stole Game One from the Bulls at Chicago Stadium, setting the stage for one of the most bruising, battering series in memory. For six straight games New York held Chicago under one hundred points, going right at the favored Bulls with flying elbows, forearm shivers and flapping jaws. Pat Riley’s team shattered Chicago’s myth of invincibility. Finally, in Game Seven, the Bulls asserted themselves. With Jordan scoring 42 points the Bulls put away the feisty Knicks with a 110-81 thrashing.

Over on the other side of the bracket the Cavaliers were exorcising demons. After six consecutive first-round losses Cleveland finally advanced, overcoming the talented New Jersey Nets in four games behind the sensational play of Brad Daugherty, who put together a line for the ages in Game One- 40 points, 16 rebounds and nine assists. The Cavaliers would face the Boston Celtics in the second round. Boston was an intriguing mix of young and old, with stalwarts Larry Bird, Kevin McHale and Robert Parish combining with youngsters Reggie Lewis, Kevin Gamble and Dee Brown to form an imposing foe.

It turned out to be a superb seven-game battle. Cleveland started fast with a 101-76 Game One blowout, Brad Daugherty scorching the Celts with 26 points and 17 rebounds. With Reggie Lewis bombing away Boston took the next two and seemed on the verge of taking command of the series. But Cleveland squared things in Game Four at the Garden, winning in overtime behind a 32-point effort from Larry Nance. The teams then traded blowouts, Cleveland winning Game Five by sixteen and the Celtics taking Game Six by 31, with Larry Bird racking up 16 points and 14 assists in his final game at Boston Garden.

It all came down to Game Seven- and on the gorgeous Sunday afternoon of May 17, 1992, in front of a deafening crowd at the Coliseum, the Cavaliers were absolutely sensational. They shot 59 percent, dished out an unbelievable 42 assists and put six players in double figures as they wiped out Boston, 122-104. It was perhaps the best single-game performance in franchise history- and it put Cleveland in the Eastern Conference Finals for the first time since 1976. The Cavaliers would face their old tormentors from Chicago with the right to go to the NBA Finals on the line.

 

Marshmallows No More

Chicago didn’t exactly quake with anxiety over the prospect. The big city’s sportswriters competed with one another for creative ways to describe the Cavaliers as “soft.” After the seven-game war with New York no one along the shores of Lake Michigan envisioned a similar challenge from Cleveland. Nor, for that matter, did anyone else. After all, these were the Bulls- the world’s most famous team with the world’s most iconic player, a squad with two members- Jordan and Pippen- that would lace them up for the Dream Team at the Olympics in Barcelona that summer. The Cavaliers hadn’t even made a national television appearance that season. This series would be a mere appetizer for Chicago’s eagerly anticipated Finals match-up with the Trail Blazers. Or, so went the conventional thinking.

And the conventional thinking ruled the day in Game One at Chicago Stadium. So did the Bulls. The defending Champions took the lead for good barely four minutes in and were never headed, coasting home with an easy 103-89 decision. Jordan had his usual output with 33 while Pippen was downright monstrous with 29 points, 12 rebounds, nine assists and three blocked shots. Chicago hit all 19 of its free throws and out-rebounded the Cavaliers, 45-38. Cleveland’s one edge was in the pivot where Brad Daugherty matched up with Bill Cartwright, yet the Cavaliers seemed content to launch jumpers as Chicago pulled away. It was a flat, feeble performance and it seemed to confirm every pejorative launched at the Cavaliers in the previous two days.

Accordingly the Second City writers were brutal in victory- none more so than Sun-Times columnist Jay Mariotti, who ripped into the visitors in a piece entitled, “Polite Cavaliers Too Nice to Stand Chance vs. Bulls.” To Mariotti the Cavaliers were “marshmallows,” “creampuffs” that “had a deep-rooted psychological hang-up about the Bulls” dating back to the Shot. They were “a friendly team with a friendly coach,” which wasn’t a compliment. “The air,” Mariotti yawned, “has been let out of a juicy postseason.” This series wasn’t just going to be easy- it was going to be too easy. The least the Cavaliers could do was make Chicago break a sweat before the Finals.

To be sure, the Cavaliers did have a reputation as a soft team- an image exemplified by the cherubic Mark Price, who sang in his church choir and could play forty minutes of NBA basketball without a single strand of his brown coif falling out of place. In reality Cleveland played more of a “Western Conference” style- free-flowing, finesse and ball-movement- than an “Eastern Conference” style, which was bruising, physical and defensive-oriented. The Cavaliers relied on the best passing lineup in the game for offense and the shot-blocking of Larry Nance and Hot Rod Williams for defense. They weren’t the Knicks, nor did they try to be. “You have to play the way you play,” Lenny Wilkens responded when asked why his team didn’t rip a page from Pat Riley’s book.

That way didn’t look like the right way to even test the World Champions. And on May 21, 1992, more than 18,000 fans filed confidently into aging Chicago Stadium to see their heroes take the inevitable 2-0 series lead. They would witness one of the most stunning turns of events in the history of either franchise.

Chicago came out and missed its first attempt from the field. And its second… and its third… and its fourth. In all the Bulls failed on their first thirteen shots, didn’t score a point in the first four minutes and didn’t hit a field goal in the first eight-plus minutes. By then it was 20-6. When Hot Rod Williams went baseline and crammed home a reverse jam in Scottie Pippen’s face it was 28-9 in favor of the Cavaliers- and the marshmallows were just starting to toast. When the lead grew to 21 early in the second period boos began to filter through Chicago Stadium. By halftime, with Cleveland leading 59-33, the booing had stopped. The crowd was too stunned to be angry.

The final score was Cleveland 107, Chicago 81. Daugherty, enjoying a brilliant postseason thus far, poured in 28 with nine rebounds and four assists, demolishing every big man Phil Jackson threw against him. Price hit 4-of-5 from three-point range and finished with 23 points and seven assists. Jordan and Pippen combined to shoot 11-of-36, with His Airness not hitting a field goal until early in the second quarter. In suffering the third-worst home playoff defeat of Phil Jackson’s illustrious career the Bulls shot 37 percent and committed 19 turnovers. Suddenly a series that was expected to be a walk for Chicago was tied at one apiece.

 

The Series Moves East

Cavalier fans were still savoring their team’s lopsided triumph when the series shifted to the Richfield Coliseum. Just prior to Game Three the big screen at the Coliseum displayed the scene in Ghostbusters in which the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man rampages through Manhattan, delighting the sellout crowd of 20,273. As it turned out, the scoreboard apparition got the biggest ovation of the night. The Cavaliers hadn’t just beaten the Bulls. They’d woken them up.

The reckoning began right at the opening tip of Game Three. Chicago came out with smothering defense- Jordan himself blanketing Mark Price- while savagely attacking the basket and mauling the Cavaliers on the boards. Cleveland missed nine of its first ten attempts from the field, turned it over twice and fell behind 19-2 at the midway point of the first period. Two minutes later it was 26-4, Bulls- and the game was, for all intents and purposes, over. The World Champions breezed the rest of the way to a 105-96 victory that wasn’t nearly as close as the final score indicated. Just like that the home-court advantage and a 2-1 series lead had gone right back to Chicago.

Much of that was thanks to the usual suspect. Jordan not only put the brakes on Cleveland’s offense with his ferocious defense on Price, he scored 17 points in the decisive first quarter, on the way to 36 for the game to go with nine assists and six rebounds. MJ punctuated his heroics with a steady stream of trash talk directed at Craig Ehlo, who was startled at the verbiage- Jordan usually ignored the blonde forward even as he repeatedly went over and around him for baskets.

“You never talked to me before,” Ehlo said to Jordan at one point. “Why are you doing it now?”

“Hey, it’s the playoffs,” was Jordan’s reply. “I was just trying to show leadership,” was his explanation afterward.

Three games, three blowouts; three results decided before halftime. No one seemed to know what to make of this series. Bored with razzing the Cavaliers, the Chicago media turned its attention to the hometown heroes, dubbing them the “Sy-Bulls” in a nod to the multiple personalities they had displayed thus far in the series. Jordan chalked up his team’s up-and-down performance to complacency. Brad Daugherty had no similar theory for his own team’s travails. “I can’t explain it,” the big man from Black Mountain drawled. “We’ve been adjusting in each game. And I guess we just out-adjusted each other.”

If fans were expecting Game Four to be notably different than the first three, they were disappointed. Led by a red-hot Larry Nance the Cavaliers immediately jumped out in front, taking control midway through the first quarter. Daugherty picked up his second foul late in the period on a three-point play by Pippen and was replaced by the little-used Danny Ferry, for whom Cleveland had so foolishly traded Ron Harper three years earlier. No one knew it at the time, but Ferry’s rare on-court presence was about to take this series to a new level of intensity.

Moments later, with the Bulls attempting an in-bounds pass under the Cleveland basket, Ferry and Michael Jordan got tangled up in the paint. When Jordan shoved Ferry the former Duke star responded with two punches at the face of the former North Carolina star. As the crowd screamed in delight Jordan cocked his arm to retaliate- only to be held back by Ehlo, who of all people should have been eager to see His Airness swing his way into an ejection. Ferry was tossed from the game, his most memorable moment as a Cavalier already behind him.

The brief lapse into Knick-style thug-ball seemed to energize the Cavaliers. They built their advantage to as many as sixteen in the third quarter, containing Jordan and keeping his supporting cast under wraps. Nance, Ehlo and Hot Rod all had big games, picking up the slack for the cold-shooting Daugherty and for Price, who was weakened by a stomach virus. When Chicago made its inevitable run, closing to within four late in the fourth, unheralded Mike Sanders shifted the momentum for good with a prayer of a three-pointer at the end of the shot clock. Cleveland finished the game on a 15-5 run and won going away, 99-85, to square the series at two games apiece.

For the Bulls the loss marked a distressing reversion to the “Michael and the Jordanairres” days of the ‘80s, when His Airness was a man alone on a roster of rejects. While Jordan fired up 33 shots for his 35 points, no other Bull had more than eleven attempts. Pippen went scoreless in the second half, taking only three shots, and afterward blamed Phil Jackson for his disappearance. “I guess there were other guys on the court that were more important,” Scottie sniffed. Cleveland’s attack was more balanced: five Cavaliers scored in double figures, led by Nance’s 22 points and Ehlo’s 21.

It had been a strange series so far. No one expected it to be tied 2-2 after four games anymore than anyone had expected Danny Ferry to take a swing at Michael Jordan. Stranger still was the fact that Cleveland’s two wins were by an average margin of twenty points. Then again, this was a series of blowouts- there hadn’t been a lead change in the last three quarters of any game. Something had to give when the series shifted back to Chicago for Game Five.

 

Running of the Bulls

As it turned out, it was the Cavaliers that gave. And the blowout trend would continue- although it would take three quarters, not one for the fifth game to get out of hand.

For most of the night it appeared that this would be the game that broke the mold. With Price- recovered from his stomach problems- and Jordan trading salvos the teams went back and forth, neither leading by more than nine in the first three periods. Cleveland suffered a serious blow late in the first quarter when Brad Daugherty jammed his right hand on the rim during a dunk attempt. The big man was completely ineffective after the injury, scoring five points on 1-of-10 shooting, and Larry Nance also struggled, scoring just nine while being dogged by foul problems. The frontcourt troika of Daugherty, Nance and Hot Rod Williams combined to shoot a woeful 6-of-28. Nevertheless it was a two-point game going into the fourth quarter, Chicago leading 73-71.     

Then the roof caved in. Cleveland didn’t score its first point of the final period until it was nearly half over and didn’t make its first field goal until there was three-and-a-half minutes left in the game. The Bulls, meanwhile, reeled off the first fifteen points of the fourth. Chicago’s defense was suffocating, stuffing shots at the rim and forcing turnovers in the backcourt, reducing the Cavaliers to a helpless, demoralized group that stood around and watched their own destruction. The Bulls didn’t just put away the Cavaliers in the final twelve minutes of Game Five: they smashed their will to compete. At one point the Bulls led by thirty, having outscored the Cavaliers 33-5 in the first nine-and-a-half minutes of the fourth. At the end it was 112-89, Chicago.

The Bulls also extracted their pound of flesh for the Ferry-Jordan rhubarb two nights earlier. With less than two minutes remaining and Chicago comfortably in front, Bulls reserve forward Stacey King took a forearm to Ferry’s head as he drove to the hoop on a breakaway. Cavalier benchwarmer Steve Kerr- undeterred by the fact that he was eight inches shorter than King- got in his face and both benches cleared (which wasn’t an automatic suspension in those days). When it was over Stacey King was ejected- but he’d accomplished what he set out to do. So too had the Bulls. They now led the series 3-2 and could finish the series with one more win.

Now the Cavaliers were in real trouble. Their two best players were hurting- Daugherty with his lamed-up shooting hand, Price with an ankle he tweaked during Game Five’s disastrous fourth quarter. They had been broken mentally and physically in the previous game. The complacent Bulls of the beginning, the team that looked at the series as a two-week vacation between the New York struggle and the Finals, were long gone. In their place were the fully-charged World Champions, a team that knew how to win and could smell the knockout punch- and oh, by the way, also possessed the greatest player in the world.

Under the circumstances a meek surrender would have been understandable. But these Cavaliers were made of sterner stuff than that. On a warm Friday night in front of 20,273 at the Coliseum they gathered their aching bodies in an attempt to force a seventh game- and produced the one outstanding contest in a series riddled with one-sided decisions. Game Six would be a microcosm of that era of Cavaliers basketball: a tired, beat-up Cleveland team making a valiant last stand against the human steamroller that was Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls.

Right from the start the Cavaliers performed with the finesse and flair that had brought them to this point. Price was off-target, missing shots he usually made and committing turnovers, but Nance, Hot Rod and the wounded Daugherty picked up the slack with stellar efforts. Jordan also struggled with his shot, but Pippen and Horace Grant were on their games and the Bulls, as they had done the entire series, used their size and strength to dominate the offensive glass. The sellout crowd was involved throughout, roaring with every Cavalier basket, booing Jordan lustily every time he touched the ball. At halftime the score was 45-45; at the end of three quarters it was 72-72. This would be a fight to the finish.

With 9:40 left Mike Sanders converted a driving layup to put the Cavaliers in front 79-72, their biggest lead of the night. At this point Jordan was 5-of-21 from the field, and the crowd at the Coliseum smelled victory. But His Airness wouldn’t stay cold forever.  

Sure enough, Chicago’s main man began to take over. Jordan began his fourth-quarter onslaught when he popped home a free throw-line jumper. Moments later he stripped Craig Ehlo, starting a fast break that ended in a Scottie Pippen layup, and followed that up by driving around Terrell Brandon and rolling in an acrobatic layup while being fouled. Now it was 83-81 Cleveland with six-and-a-half minutes still remaining. After Hot Rod Williams canned a jumper Jordan got into the lane and fed Horace Grant for a bucket to make it 85-83.

All Cleveland could do at this point was hold on for dear life. With four minutes left the Cavaliers still led by four. But Michael Jordan could now smell blood. He sliced through for a layup to cut the lead to two, grabbed an offensive rebound and found John Paxson for the jumper that tied the game at 87 apiece. Brad Daugherty put Cleveland back in front with a three-point play but Jordan fired right back, going baseline for a layup, stealing an errant Larry Nance pass and finding Pippen, who hit from the top of the key to give Chicago a 91-90 lead with two minutes to play. Two free throws by Jordan made it 93-90 with under a minute left.

Still, Cleveland refused to go without a fight. After Pippen missed Price came down the court and fired up a three-pointer. The little guy had suffered through a woeful night, but he found his touch at the right time. The ball ripped through the net, tying the score 93-93 with fifty seconds left. One stop, one score and the Cavaliers would stay alive.

But Jordan wouldn’t allow it. The great man drove into the paint, was hacked by Ehlo and tossed in a wild twelve-footer off the glass to put Chicago back into the lead. Jordan’s free throw made it 96-93 with 37.8 seconds left. When Price dribbled the ball off his foot and out of bounds the Cavaliers were finally done. Jordan put it away with two free throws and the Bulls were off to the Finals with a 99-94 win. In the last nine minutes Michael Jordan hit 5-of-6 from the field and 6-of-6 from the line with three assists, two steals and a rebound. Once again the combined effort of the Cavaliers was not enough to overcome the greatest player the game had ever seen.

 

Aftermath

Cleveland would not get that close again. In 1992-93 the Cavaliers had another fine season, going 54-28, but once again finished second in the Central to Chicago. After another first-round triumph over the Nets Cleveland met Chicago in the Eastern Conference Semifinals. This time the Bulls did what they’d been expected to do in 1992. They swept the Cavaliers in four straight, Jordan finishing the series with a buzzer-beating jumper at the end of Game Four. While the Bulls went on to be the real Team of the ‘90s, winning six Championships during the decade, the Cavaliers drifted into NBA oblivion- not to return to contention until the LeBron James era.

At the end the precision and skill of those Cavaliers simply wasn’t enough to overcome the brilliance of Michael Jordan, nor the experience and toughness of his team. Still, it’s hard to look back at 1992 and not feel pride as a Cleveland fan. The Cavaliers gave it everything they had. They lost, but they never quit- unlike some. They put forth a winning effort, if not in a winning cause. Against Michael Jordan that was the most we could ask for.