<div class="quote_poster">Quote:</div><div class="quote_post">[IMGR]http://www.nba.com/media/bulls/sloan_060828.jpg[/IMGR] You read that right. The most memorable game of my career wasn’t a championship or an uncanny shooting night. It wasn’t even a victory. It actually was the most heartbreaking loss I’ve ever known. I’m told it’s unusual to choose a loss as the most memorable game of my playing career. But I can’t help that. It is what it is. I’ve never made it a secret how special Chicago is to me. The Bulls are the team that gave me my opportunity in the NBA. I was in a Bulls uniform—in the starting lineup—in the team’s very first game in 1966. I was the first Bulls player to have his number retired. They even gave me my first head coaching job. More important than all that was the winning tradition we established in the early days of the franchise. For four straight seasons (1970-71 to 1973-74), we won at least 50 games, but wouldn’t you just know that, each year, we finished second behind the Milwaukee Bucks. It figures that the year that broke our streak of 50-plus wins, 1974-75, was the first year we won our division—with a 47-35 record. The NBA was strong, top to bottom, back then. We had a good team year after year, but there was always a better one out there standing in our way. If it wasn’t the Los Angeles Lakers—we were in the Western Conference then—it was the Bucks. And there were teams right behind us, nipping at our heels, the Detroit Pistons and Kansas City-Omaha Kings mostly, so even second place was never secure. If I had to choose one word for the Bulls of my time, it would be “tough.” There simply wasn’t a tougher team in the league. Tom Boerwinkle was our longtime center, an underrated guy who was one of the best team players I’ve ever known. He always managed to give taller, more talented opposing centers a tough night. Our forwards, Bob Love and Chet Walker, were a handful. Both could score, sometimes at will. Bob was an underrated, active defender; Chet drove defenders crazy with his endless pump fakes. Alongside me in the backcourt was our point guard, Norm Van Lier. What can I say about Norm? There wasn’t anything he wouldn’t do to get the Bulls a win. And there wasn’t much Norm couldn’t do out there on the floor—he was a terrific talent. We got into our share of scraps, but you couldn’t ask for a better teammate, someone who always had your back. The Bulls had been a very successful team in their brief history. We made the playoffs in our first season, and we’re still the only NBA team ever to do that. Not to say that we had success in the playoffs. We lost six straight series over seven seasons before finally winning one, a seven-game semifinal series versus Detroit in 1974. Still, in the next series that year—one step from the NBA Finals—Milwaukee swept us. The team had been retooled for 1974-75. Clifford Ray, our young, active center, was traded to the Golden State Warriors for future Hall-of-Famer Nate Thurmond. It was a sign that ownership wanted to push for a title right then and there. Little did we know that we hadn’t seen the last of Cliff. We started the season out slow. Love and Van Lier held out until November in contract disputes, and it was the end of January before we were five games better than .500 on a consistent basis. From there, however, we took off. We won a team-record 12 straight home games in January, and in February we shot to 12 games above .500, which is where we finished the season. When the dust settled, in spite of all our season struggles, we’d won our first Midwest Division title. Ironically enough, our two nemeses, the Bucks and Lakers, both finished in last place on the season. Maybe it was a sign that our time had come.</div> Source
