On the other side of Los Angeles, at the hotel where the Houston Rockets were staying, the atmosphere was completely different.
No champagne, no cigars, no shouting.
The three veterans, whose combined age exceeded one hundred, sat in a corner of the hotel restaurant with a simple dinner before them—grilled chicken breast, vegetable salad, and mineral water.
Barkley stuffed the last piece of chicken breast into his mouth, chewed a few times, and swallowed. His knees had soaked in ice buckets for twenty minutes and were now wrapped in thick bandages. Oakley had slammed into his shoulder several times, leaving a bruise, but the swelling should go down by tomorrow.
"Thirty-four points." He leaned back in his chair and licked his lips. "Fourteen rebounds. Horry looked like a high schooler in front of me. Grant coming over to help didn't matter. When O'Neal rotated over, I passed it to Hakeem, and he got an open shot. Perfect."
Olajuwon poked at the vegetables in his salad with his fork without saying anything. His knees hurt too—not sharply, but with a constant, dull ache. He knew they would hurt worse tomorrow, and worse still the day after. But that was not what he should have been thinking about. He should have been thinking about the next game, the next defensive possession, and how to use his footwork to shake off the giant nine years younger than him the next time he faced O'Neal in the post.
"Next game," Pippen said, his voice low and steady, "Kobe will be harder to guard."
Barkley looked at him. "Didn't you handle him pretty well today? Eighteen points, six turnovers, forty-one percent shooting."
"That was today." Pippen shook his head. "Tomorrow, he'll adjust. He's too smart, too young, and he learns too fast. Today, I disrupted