A few weeks following the end of the Bulls’ 1990–91 championship season, I called Horace Grant to confirm a piece of information for this book. I had taken all of the players and coaches aside early in the season to tell them I’d be working on a book this season, and Grant had only vaguely remembered.
“That’s right,” he agreed. “I guess it should be interesting after everything that happened.” Grant seemed to be thinking for a while, and then he finally said, “I don’t know if you’re going to write any things that make me look bad, but as long as they’re the truth, that’s okay with me.”
I relate this conversation only because it’s indicative of the way Horace Grant deals with people, but he was hardly the exception among the Bulls. It’s easy to come away from this season wondering how such a disparate bunch could win a title.
The Bulls won for reasons discussed throughout the book. But I would take exception with the notion that their behavior—often angry with one another and management—suggests that they were an unusual team. I suspect many teams in pro sports exhibit the jealousies, anger, and resentments that often occur in this story. And why shouldn’t they? Frankly, it’s unnatural to take twelve young men united only by their athletic ability, put them together for about eight months, pay them varying fortunes of money, give them one ball to play with, and then expect them to maintain some sort of storybook, harmonious relationship.
Athletes too often are depicted as something less than complete human characters. They’re supposed to be heroes and role models; they’re not supposed to have to stay up all night with sick children, face cranky mothers-in-law in for long visits or have angry or ailing wives. But they do. And they have the same problems everyone else has. It’s just that no one pays to see such problems or hear about them. Athletes are paid to perform. The Bulls did that as well in 1990–91 as perhaps any team in NBA history. But they also fought and feuded and were angry some days, giddy others. They ran the range of human emotions, although when the interviewers were around they mostly gave them what they expected to hear.
This book has been an attempt to look past that, to open the door to the locker room, take you on the team bus and plane, and let you sit with the players while they talk about their teammates, their coaches, management, and friends. Imagine your family with a reporter coming into your house to record everything that occurred during a year. Would some of the things that reporter heard surprise your friends and change the impressions they had of you?
That’s essentially what I did. Although I didn’t have access to the team plane or private meetings, I was able to piece together events that occurred there and elsewhere through relationships built up with this team. This is really a three-year project, that being the time I’ve covered the Bulls for the Chicago Tribune. I traveled with the team, saw virtually all their games, sat for hours in the locker room before and after games talking with players and coaches, met them at their hotels on the road and regularly after their daily practices. This book is the product of those sessions and literally scores of hours of interviews with most of the principals over that period.
A word about them: I cannot point to a player or coach among the Bulls whom I dislike. Some I found more interesting than others, like Bill Cartwright, Michael Jordan, B.J. Armstrong, Scottie Pippen, John Paxson, Craig Hodges, Will Perdue, and Grant. Some I didn’t spend as much time with, like Scott Williams, Cliff Levingston, Stacey King, and Dennis Hopson. But I never found any uncooperative or unattractive in any way.
I was routinely amazed by the ease with which Jordan handled himself in all public situations, his inordinate patience with an adoring public, and his fascinating magnetism and charisma. I respected Cartwright’s grace, intelligence, and dignity, and Paxson’s ability to charm people and mean it. I enjoyed watching Pippen mature and remain playful, while Armstrong always was a kid you wanted to hug. Perdue always showed a remarkably perceptive side and quick, engaging wit. King rarely let his personal troubles, which extended beyond basketball, interfere with his commitment to a smile. And Hodges remained an encouraging beacon of faith for anyone who cared. Hopson was always a gentleman, like his old friend Brad Sellers, and Grant was a welcome port in stormy seas.
And a few words about some of the men who pulled the strings. I discovered managing partner Jerry Reinsdorf to be one of the most misunderstood men I’ve ever known, a guy whose heart and head were constantly at odds, with his heart winning more often than anyone would like to admit. The assistant coaches were a glorious bunch, especially the sagacious John Bach, a true renaissance man of the era. Which brings me to the head coach, Phil Jackson. When my agent read some preliminary parts of the manuscript, she remarked that Jackson was the hero of the story. I think he would be the hero in whatever story he was a part of. Every time I talked to him, I came away knowing something new or thinking about something I’d rarely considered before. I spent four years in Washington, D.C., covering Congress and the White House and never met anyone as interesting. He was calm and smart and funny, and often with a distinctly left-handed view of things. And he was as engaging to be with at the end of the season as he was at the beginning.
I’d also like to get in a few thank-yous, principally to literary agent Shari Lesser Wenk, who was a source of strength and encouragement throughout the year. I’d like to thank Simon & Schuster editor Jeff Neuman for willingly taking a chance and sticking with a first-time author and impressively living up to his title. I’d especially like to thank my Tribune editors, Jack Fuller, Dick Ciccone, Dick Leslie, and Bob Condor, for their support throughout the long season. There are several others who helped along the way I’d like to thank, like Gary Graham, George Andrews, Mike Imrem, Mike Conklin, Don Sterling, Mike Kahn, Jimmy Sexton, Bob Ford, Kent McDill, Dale Ratermann, Rick Pauley, Pete Vecsey, David Benner, Jeff Denberg, June Jackson, Dean Howe, the Bulls PR and executive staff, and especially my wife, Kathleen, for accepting the abnormal life of an NBA beat writer/first-time author and for keeping our son, Connor, from hitting the kill button on the computer.
And as for Horace Grant, well, after being around him for three years, I still can’t even think of anything that would make him look bad.