Chicago Bulls Had Plane Troubles so Mark Cuban Lent Them the Mavericks' Plane

“Apparently a compressor in engine No. 3 had some trouble, and it sounded like it exploded, but I guess it’s like a jet engine backfire, which is very loud,” Bulls radio analyst Bill Wennington said Monday on ESPN 1000’s “Waddle & Silvy Show.” “Sparks fly out of it. It happened actually right after … the captain thrusts the engines forward and it revs up and starts to go, about three seconds after that you hear a ‘Boom!’ ‘Oh, what was that, are we stopping?’ The plane keeps going down [the runway] and you’re thinking, ‘Oh no, why aren’t we stopping?’

Sounds like a great way to start a flight.

“It was funny, because we’re in the back of the plane, and the engines are right by us, and we hear it. They can’t hear it [in the front of the plane]. And apparently they couldn’t feel anything. And so we take off fine, and about five minutes later, two more booms, ‘Boom!, Boom!,’ and a couple people saw flames and sparks and stuff flying out [while looking out of] the window. We’re all thinking, ‘Well, it’s been nice.'”

Luckily, the pilot was able to turn the plane around and land it safely back at O’Hare. The Bulls borrowed the Blackhawks plane the next day for their trip to Indiana. On Monday, Mark Cuban sent the Mavericks’ team plane to pick up the Bulls and fly them to San Antonio and back. [ESPN]

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With their plane troubles behind them, the Bulls beat the Jazz at home Friday on this Marco Belinelli 3-pointer in the final seconds.