If you’ve been online at all today, or if you will be online after stopping off at this article first (in which case, thank you very much!), the following clip is inescapable. And for good reason! It’s probably the most-memorable non-Michael Jordan highlight from the Bulls teams that dominated the NBA for the majority of the decade.
#OTD in 1994: Scottie Pippen put Patrick Ewing on an all-time poster. 😯 pic.twitter.com/JeSC3Cf09H
— NBA TV (@NBATV) May 20, 2018
It’s Scottie Pippen dunking over Patrick Ewing in the Eastern Conference semifinals, then stepping over him while staring Ewing down. That Bulls team (the first of two without Michael Jordan, who was then in his mini-retirement/possible gambling suspension phase) went on to lose the series, which no one really cares about, and the Knicks went on to lose in the Finals to the Rockets. Then Jordan came back partway through next season.
It’s a definitive era for a lot of modern NBA fans and writers, who grew up on the Jordan Bulls (in my case it was the Jordan Bulls tormenting my Indiana Pacers, and it’s comforting to know that a whole new generation of Pacers fans will now have similar feelings about LeBron), and that means whenever there’s a chance for a retrospective, they take it. And that also means a slew of “24 years ago today!” headlines.
Why? Why does the Internet content machine only care about “on this date” for moments like this? It’s no more or less awesome to watch it today than it would be to watch it tomorrow, or to have watched it yesterday. But here’s the difference: this has been a slow news weekend! When sites need to write about stuff, they can’t just say “Here’s a fun old highlight for a post!” They need a hook to do it, and an anniversary is as good a hook as any.
The enlightened among you are probably thinking to yourselves (or even crafting a tweet): “But Jay! (The enlightened looked up my name, of course.) You’re doing the exact same thing that you’re mocking everyone else for doing! Isn’t that a bit hypocritical? Aren’t you trying to both eat and possess cake simultaneously?” (The enlightened can’t just use the cliche, they have to put their own spin on it.)
To that I say, well, sort of! But while this post features an image of Scottie Pippen dunking on Patrick Ewing, and the relevant video, I’d submit that’s not what this post has been about at all.
And, also, it really has been a slow news weekend.
