EVERYWHERE PHIL JACKSON LOOKED HE SAW RED.
The city of Chicago, celebrating the Bulls’ first-ever National Basketball Association title, was wearing the Bulls’ red like an expensive suit. It was a city more used to disappointment and failure from its teams, finally able to puff out its chest and do a little strutting. And on this night, as the Bulls players gathered at the Four Seasons Hotel downtown for the last team party in what seemed like a month of celebrations since winning the title, Jackson could see from the crimson coloring around his players’ eyes that they had joined the city in its reveling. But he could also see that their eyes still twinkled from the night they had shone brightest.
He could see his young stars, Horace Grant and Scottie Pippen, who had flashed across the NBA this season like comets, growing brighter and stronger, helping lead the way to a four-games-to-one victory in the Finals over the Lakers. They had joined with the baby-faced kid, B.J. Armstrong, in a dance line at the team’s postgame party, and were swaying to the music and singing as the band played into the early morning hours.
Jackson could see his backup center, Will Perdue, in many ways a symbol of his team, long maligned but lately cheered. The Bulls had been the team of Michael Jordan, a one-man show whose supporting cast strived but usually failed to overcome its limitations. Few had more limitations than Perdue, but he had become a competent player, a nice piece of the puzzle, and he was now celebrated by the hometown fans, perhaps as much for his ability to survive the once-angry mob as for his contributions. Perdue had survived as a test track that daily wore the tire marks of veteran center Bill Cartwright. So he sat this night with Cartwright and pounded playfully on Cartwright’s head and shoulders, yelling, “This is for the elbows to my head, and this is for the elbows to my nose, and this is for the elbows to my side….” And the two banged and hugged and laughed and looked like two of the biggest teddy bears anyone had ever seen.
And then there was Cliff Levingston, a spare part for most of the season who had proved his worth down the stretch in the playoffs. And Stacey King, the bouncy kid who’d taken his lumps in a disappointing season for him, and Armstrong, and Dennis Hopson, who also had been more wallflower than dancer for long stretches at a time. All had been discouraged by the intricacies of the offense, known to the players as “the triangle,” adapted from the teachings of assistant coach Tex Winter. But now they were serenading the grandfatherly coach in a rap version of the championship shuffle.
“Oh, we believe in the triangle, Tex, we believe, yeah, we believe in that triangle. It’s the show for those in the know. Goin’ to the triangle and goin’ to win a title.”
Jackson could feel his thin lips curling into a smile. He admired the quirky Winter, and he had stuck with him, even when his star, Jordan, said he didn’t care for that particular system because what had Winter won with it anyway? And Jackson stayed with it even when the players grumbled early in the season and Winter came to him and said he should drop the system because the players had to believe in it for it to work. He would make them believe, Jackson insisted. And now they were singing.
There was Jerry Krause, the Bulls’ general manager, joyous perhaps less from the win than from the fact that the players were treating him like one of the guys. A humorless man who lived for his job, Krause was the object of the anger some of the players felt toward the Bulls over money. Overweight and sensitive about it, Krause had been the kind of kid who’d had trouble making friends. But here were the guys, his guys, yelling out to him just as if he were one of them.
“Getting laid tonight, Jerry?” came the shouts. Manly stuff, guy talk. “Gettin’ any, Jerry?” said one player as Krause’s devoted wife, Thelma, stood by.
“You know it,” Krause said happily.
“Pax, Pax,” Perdue chimed in. “What was it? About $100,000 per shot? Like a cash register. $1.1, 1.2, 1.3…”
Owner Jerry Reinsdorf, nearby, could only laugh. John Paxson, the veteran with the all-American-boy looks, one of the lowest-paid starters in the league, had made five straight baskets down the stretch in the final game. Every time the Lakers had threatened, there was Paxson to take the big shot. And now his contract was up. “What were those shots worth, Pax?” bubbled Perdue. “Just going for the new deal?”
And then there was Jordan. Jackson knew that was a smile that wouldn’t wipe off. The crying was done; it had come, unexpectedly and touchingly, in the locker room right after the game, in a huge release. He was the star who couldn’t win, they had said all these years, and now not only had his team won, but he had too in the biggest way, the way he’d always dreamed it would be: He was the Most Valuable Player of the series, chosen unanimously. One of the eleven electors had all but refused the ballot, saying, “Who else could it be?” And Jordan had done it against his archrival Magic Johnson, who had been held up by basketball purists as the exemplar of all that Jordan wasn’t: a great passer, a great teammate, a winner. Well, they couldn’t say that anymore.
First they prayed. After rushing into the locker room, the Bulls gathered in a circle for the Lord’s Prayer, and then popped champagne bottles while looking for beer to slug down. Jordan collapsed into his seat for the TV cameras, but it was all too much. His head fell into the lap of his wife, Juanita, and he sobbed. His dad, James, who had never stopped telling him that he’d get to this moment, massaged his neck. But Jordan couldn’t stop. His body trembled and he tried to wipe away the tears of joy, of relief, of promise fulfilled at last. His stomach ached and his breath was short. He’d never felt better. Better than in college when he was a freshman and his North Carolina team won the NCAA title. That one was too easy. This one was a struggle, against odds and doubters for seven seasons, and now it was over. He sucked down champagne like a baby sucking on a bottle. He cried and he wouldn’t sleep. He was feeling pure, unrestrained joy.
The morning after that final victory, Jordan clutched the championship trophy like a long-lost friend. He wouldn’t put it down, and everyone saw him walk off the plane with it. He slept with it all the way back to Chicago and he wouldn’t let it get farther than five feet away from him on the team bus. It was the symbol of the struggle and it had to stay close, just in case anyone still questioned him.
Jackson saw all of this as they assembled before him this night. They had flown back to Chicago, where they were met at the airport by a few hundred fans, and the players went right up to the fence so they could touch one another, to form the kind of bond they enjoyed in the raucous Chicago Stadium. And they had gone to Grant Park in the city’s heart to give their hearts to the city. They had formed a short motorcade and the fans reached out just to touch them as if they were holy men, and Paxson waved and the hands were grabbing, clutching all over until his wife drew their two sons in close together because the hands were everywhere. And then they had gone up on stage and hundreds of thousands cheered and rained gratitude down on their every word.
And they hadn’t come down yet, nor slept much, buoyed as they were by the affection and exuberance, until they were standing there before Jackson for the last time after this magic carpet ride of a basketball season. This would be the last team party, for the players and staff and management only, before they would head their separate ways for the summer. Jackson had asked his players to get together once more as a group, twelve men of various faiths and faculties. They had endured much this season. They had lived together since last October, sharing sweat and glory, sometimes as compatible as a roomful of alley cats, as distant as former lovers. But they had grown with one another, accepting each other’s faults and sharing in each other’s successes. None had ever come this far before, and from the lonesome kid, Scott Williams, to the proud loner, Cartwright, their eyes reflected their relief and glee. Jackson didn’t want it ever to end for them.
“You should know that many championship teams don’t come back,” Jackson started out, the buzz of excitement quieting down for a while. “This is a business. I’d like to have all of you back, but it doesn’t always happen. But this is something special you have shared and which you’ll never forget. This will be yours forever and it will always be a bond that will keep you together. I want to thank you all personally for this season. Now, get back to the party.”
Who could have imagined, only one year earlier, that there’d be this party, this joy, this togetherness on this night?