“Won’t be long ‘til I’m puttin’ on my flying shoes.”
—Townes Van Zandt
It all made perfect sense in a Zen sort of way. For the third straight season, the Chicago Bulls had faced an uncertain future. They were a great team, yet the slightest disruption to their modus operandi would likely have been taken as an excuse for the team’s chairman and general manager to break them apart. That meant that a major injury, internal squabbling, or just plain old everyday fear run amok could have spelled their doom. Yet that hadn’t happened. One of the reasons was the Zen concept of “living in the moment,” not losing concentration, not giving in to their concerns about the future.
“It doesn’t affect him at all,” Steve Kerr said of Jackson. “And that’s to his credit. He always preaches being in the moment and living for the moment and enjoying each day for what it is. He’s got a lot of little pet quotes and sayings that allude to that, and he practices that. It could be the last run for all of us, and he’s gonna have fun.”
Jordan agreed, saying that Jackson’s dealing so smartly with the adversity of the season had been good for him “because he finally gets some notoriety as a coach. He’s a wise, smart coach, not just the guy who coached Michael Jordan, Scottie Pippen, Dennis Rodman. He uses his talent to blend everybody together to have one focus. And he’s doing a heck of a job of that.”
By all rights, the separation anxiety alone should have been enough to splinter the Bulls into factions. But they all believed in Jordan, Pippen and Jackson, and that bound them even tighter. Jackson loved the unity of it. Zen warriors. In the moment. Doing battle.
As the season unfolded into February, it became clear that there was plenty of battle to do, on and off the court. They opened their western trip with wins in Vancouver, Portland, and Golden State, then they got waxed by the quick young Lakers in Los Angeles, and one night later righted themselves against lowly Denver.
It was in Utah, on the eve of their rematch with the Jazz, that word came that Krause had decided to unburden his mind to Tribune columnist Fred Mitchell.
Jackson would definitely not be back, Krause emphasized.
“If Michael chooses to leave because there is another coach here, then it is his choice, not ours,” Krause told Mitchell. “We want him back. We are not driving anybody out. We are not driving Michael out of here. That’s bull.
“The decision on Michael will just have to take a proper time when we will sit down and talk,” he said. “We will talk about what he wants to do and what the situation is with the franchise and who is going to be here, and what our (salary) cap situation is. We would like to have Michael back. But Michael is going to have to play for someone else. It isn’t going to be Phil.”
Krause also said that Jackson wasn’t “being run out of here. Phil agreed that this would be his last year. He did not want to go through a possible rebuilding situation. Nobody is running Phil out of town. It was a well thought-out decision.”
Krause also offered up an opinion on the difficulty of rebuilding with Jordan still on the roster. “Obviously, with Michael and the salary he is making now, it would be very tough to improve our team. Our cap money would be gone. It is a highly complicated thing. I would say that no NBA team has faced this type of situation before, cap-wise.”
Krause should have known Jordan would take the statement as a challenge. After all, the GM had worked with the star for 13 seasons. Krause also should have known that Reinsdorf would be angered by the statement. After all, the chairman’s philosophy was to make no decision, to take no heat, until necessary. Krause had done just the opposite. He had spoken prematurely. No matter what he said later, his words only cemented the impression that he was eager to pack up the current championship team, to clear the salary cap, so that he could begin rebuilding.
Krause’s comments created a bit of a media frenzy that morning at the Bulls’ shoot-around before the Utah game. Jordan again emphasized that if Jackson weren’t retained, he would move on, too. “It still stands true,” Jordan said. “That’s been my thought process for the year, pretty much. I felt that management has to make a decision in terms of what they want to do with this team, the direction they choose to go in. They have to make their choice.”
The Bulls lost that night in Utah despite the fact that they had run up a 24-point lead early in the game. The outcome allowed the Jazz a season sweep of the two-game series and home-court advantage if the two met in the 1998 Finals. While the rest of the team returned home to rest during the All-Star break, Jordan journeyed on to New York to take part in the All Star events. He was sick from a cold and almost ducked out to be home and rest with his family. But a gathering of global media awaited, more than 1,000 journalists, and Jordan was ready to fire back at the two Jerrys.
He missed Friday’s opening media sessions but weighed in Sunday afternoon in the locker room before the game, a crowd of reporters pressed in around him. Asked first about the situation with his team, Jordan said, “I haven’t seen any light on the other side of the tunnel at all. I think management has stated their position. I don’t see how it’s going to work in my favor.”
Did the fact that the Bulls’ run seemed to be headed toward an end leave him sad?
“There is a sadness,” he said. “But any time it comes to an end, there’s a certain sadness.”
From there, he fielded a variety of questions from reporters.
After answering those questions, Jordan went out and scored 23 points to lead the East to victory in the All Star Game. The performance netted the third All-Star MVP award of his career. Better yet, it again emphasized Jordan’s dominance over the game, something he would demonstrate again and again over the spring. In the process he would hammer Krause’s statements about the need to rebuild the team into a thin argument.
In the wake of Jordan’s comments, Reinsdorf issued a statement calling for an end to premature comments about the team’s future. Word spread around the Bulls’ offices that Reinsdorf was angry with Krause, that the GM had lost face because of his comments.
“That’s one thing that Jerry Reinsdorf does very well,” Steve Kerr observed. “He stays away and doesn’t get involved in all of it. He lets Jerry Krause and Phil and everybody else go about their business. Obviously, he’s ended up sort of in the middle of this. But usually Krause is the front man.”
Practice resumed at the Berto Center on Monday after the All-Star break, and afterward, Jackson spoke with reporters, emphasizing that he was leaving. “There is no other option,” the coach said. “We’ve made an agreement that that’s what is going on and that is the direction we are going as a basketball team. It’s going to be hard to say goodbye. It’s going to be really tough.”
Then he quibbled, leaving the door ajar that indeed he might find a way to return, which left Krause furious but muzzled.
“I’m not saying our beds are made,” Jackson said, “but they are laid out and ready to go. Early in training camp I sat down with Jerry Krause and Jerry Reinsdorf and we expressly went over this again and said this is our swan song as a team.”
Then he said, “Michael has a tremendous sway in this game, as we all see from the effect he had in the All-Star game. Michael is the only one who could change it.”
About Jordan’s threatened retirement, Jackson said, “It makes me feel like I am standing in the way of him continuing his career. Some of it does. The other thing is that the organization is a bit to fault in it, too.”
Jackson then predicted that Krause wouldn’t change his mind. “That’s not going to happen,” he said. “I think the amount of intensity we’ve had over the last two seasons, the directions we’ve changed and the divergent paths that both Jerry and I have gone on just spelled the fact that the relationship had reached its course. It’s time for him to do what he wants to do in his management of this organization, and it’s time for me to move on wherever I have to go. Michael can throw a monkey wrench into things, but that’s their decision and that’s the way we have to look at it.”
In his New York Post column during the All-Star break, NBC analyst Peter Vecsey had suggested that the Bulls were paying Jackson $500,000 in hush money not to speak out about the situation.
“I didn’t get back from the All-Star game until Monday afternoon,” Jackson later recalled. “We had practice and I didn’t see his column. I had questions from reporters about this, and I didn’t understand it. It was totally misrepresented. There is not anything like that in my contract. Last year at some point during contract negotiations, we said at some point that if we don’t come to an agreement and we have to step away what’s going to happen? There was some talk about a severance. Because we actually began thinking, ‘We may not reach a common ground on this and this may become difficult for the franchise.’ So we talked about it in that context. But I had no intention of taking hush money, or whatever to be quiet, or whatever it was meant as. But, you know, severance money is severance money.”
In the wake of the All-Star Weekend, the atmosphere around the Bulls tightened as the trading deadline neared. Would Krause dare trade Pippen? It seemed unlikely. Not with the uproar that his comments earlier in the month had caused.
But the team did send young forward Jason Caffey to Golden State for David Vaughn, an unproven player, and two second round draft picks. The move set off immediate speculation that Krause was intentionally weakening the team.
“This is a horrible thing to say,” said one longtime team employee. “I wonder if Jerry and Jerry almost want us not to win this year, so they can have the excuse to rebuild. It’s an unbelievably dangerous thing to say, especially with a tape recorder on. I’m just wondering about their emotional state. You don’t want to think that, but you have to wonder.”
Jordan, meanwhile, was angry, pointing out to reporters that losing Caffey, an athletic rebounder, was like losing family. One reporter asked Kerr if it seemed like management was putting another obstacle in front of the team to prevent the Bulls from winning the title.
Kerr laughed. “That’s a good way to put it,” he said. “We were all a little dismayed. We feel like it hurt our depth. He’s big and strong and athletic, and I think that really hurt our depth. They’ve got their reasons for doing things. There’s not very good communication between players and management, so there’s not a whole lot of that that goes on.”
Asked if he meant that he thought management had put up an intentional obstacle, Kerr paused a moment, then replied, “No. If you look at it, both Jerrys … to win another championship, ultimately, is two more big feathers in their caps. I can’t imagine that they would want to sabotage anything. That would be counterproductive to their own desires. That doesn’t really make sense.”
“You don’t think it makes it easier to break up the team to say ‘See, we told you?’” the reporter asked.
“You know, maybe we should call Oliver Stone and he could make a movie out of it,” Kerr said. “He would have a field day with all of this.”
Terry Armour of the Tribune figured Krause had scored one against Jackson and Jordan with the trade, a perception that also registered with many fans. “The Caffey move,” Armour said, “to me is strictly—and I could be wrong here. I’ve been wrong before—‘see if you can win with a David Vaughn.’ To me, it just looks like, ‘OK, let’s make some minor moves that will make it hard for us to get there.’ But you know, who would want to want to do that? Realistically, who would want to weaken their case? You can accuse somebody of that, but realistically, it doesn’t make sense that somebody would want to do that.”
Behind the scenes, the Bulls’ assistant coaches had lobbied hard for Krause to keep Caffey, but Jackson quietly agreed with the deal. He knew that Krause had no plans to re-sign Caffey, who would be a free agent at the end of the season. Plus, Jackson was hoping that the Bulls would be able to find a player like Brian Williams, who was able to guard smaller, quick centers. Williams had been a godsend during the 1997 playoffs. Obviously, no player of Williams’ quality was available in 1998, so Jackson figured that a “Dickey Simpkins type” player, someone about 6-9 or 6-10 might be available to help out defensively.
“I actually wanted to bid out Caffey (for a trade),” Jackson explained. “Jason wasn’t going to get a chance in this organization. He’d go through his free agency and he wouldn’t be re-signed by this organization. For a kid that I liked, it was a good opportunity for him to go. But I didn’t want to hurt the team. I wanted a bigger kind of a player like a Dickey Simpkins who could play centers that are small like Mourning. And Jason was a little too small to play the Shawn Kemps. He’s a 6-8 guy as opposed to a 6-10, 265 pound guy. So that’s the difference.
“I told them that’s what I wanted,” Jackson admitted privately. “We wanted a Brian Williams type player. I’ve always had that type of center. Stacey King and Scott Williams.”
As it turned out, Simpkins was soon put on waivers by Golden State, allowing the Bulls to waive Vaughn after a few days and sign Simpkins.
“Dickey’s that kind of guy,” Jackson said. “The job is his to do. It’s not a heavy minute role. We don’t see that guy coming in there and playing 30 to 40 minutes. But he can play 16 minutes a game for us and help us out if possible.”
Simpkins, whom the Bulls had traded in the fall of 1997 to Golden State for Scott Burrell, was truly elated to be back in Chicago. “It’s like going off to war, then coming back,” he said.
Or maybe vice versa.
Behind the scenes, Krause was furious with Jackson. The general manager alleged that the coach was supposed to explain the trade to the players but that Jackson had failed to do so, opening the door to speculation that Krause was sabotaging the team. “Phil was supposed to take care of the team, and he didn’t do it,” Krause said. “He was supposed to explain it to the players. But once again he left me looking like the bad guy.”
With the tension, people in the organization increasingly complained to reporters that Jackson had grown arrogant. “I’ve heard from different circles,” Terry Armour said, “that one thing that Phil may have done to rub the organization the wrong way is that he came in on a winning situation and took it to the next level.
“The belief is that, whatever reasons Doug Collins was let go for, Doug would have done it,” Armour said. “Doug would have been right there to do it. Phil got arrogant. You know winning changes people, and that Phil went from being a team player as far as the organization is concerned, to saying. ‘Hey, maybe I’m the guy who did this.’
“He may come across as arrogant to some people because of the way he talks,” Armour added. “Some people take that as being a snob, or that he’s trying to show us how smart he is. But I don’t think it’s that way with him. I would not consider him arrogant in his dealings with the media. He knows how to play the game, too, as far as the PR thing. You can tell when people are arrogant with the media. They embarrass you when you question them. Phil is not like that. I think, if anything, Phil might be too honest with us. Maybe it’s a PR move, but Phil will answer our questions, good or bad, and he doesn’t really think about repercussions.”
The sensation was unique in sports. With their “divided house” in full conflict, the Bulls entered the spring playing both for and against the organization. That seemed to work well enough. Jordan and company ran off eight straight wins, dumping Toronto, Charlotte, Atlanta, Detroit, Indiana, Toronto again, Washington and Cleveland before finally losing again on February 25th when the young Portland Trail Blazers gave the Bulls only their third defeat of the season in the United Center. As they had done in the past, the Bulls answered defeat with another torrid burn of winning and would roll through March at 13-1, emphasizing to opponents and fans alike at every stop that these Bulls were indeed back to their old dominant selves, or something close.
The head of steam was aided by nearly a week’s rest in the schedule after wins over Sacramento and Denver. The Bulls sat at home, healed their injuries and stoked their fires. Jordan even had time to rummage through his closets to find a vintage pair of Air Jordans to wear for what was billed as his last visit to Madison Square Garden, the game against New York March 9th when the Bulls resumed play. Never mind that the shoes were gaudy and flimsy, they were the perfect touch to send a public message, creating further anxiety about Krause and Reinsdorf shutting down the Bulls early.
It also sent a little private message to Reinsdorf, reminding the chairman of just how much they loved Jordan in New York. Boy, did they love him. The Sunday afternoon game was televised on NBC, and Jordan in his red shoes was like Dorothy standing at center court, clicking her heels three times and saying, ‘There’s no place like the Garden.”
One by one the Bulls’ staff members and players noticed Jordan had unpacked the shoes and set them by his locker. Team photographer Bill Smith took it as a sure sign that this was indeed Jordan’s last season. The rest of the public soon got the message.
“It was a big topic of conversation,” Steve Kerr said of the locker room buzz before the game. “I couldn’t believe it. My first reaction was, ‘What is he nuts?’ I was thinking this could be plantar fascitis big time. Did you see those things? They looked like cardboard put together. It’s amazing how far the shoe industry has come in the last 14 years. It was kind cool, kinda neat to see. He was obviously kind of projecting an image of coming full circle. I assume he kind of broke those shoes out in the Garden. I don’t know. He obviously had it on his mind that this might be his last shot here.
“I was betting guys that at some point he’d take them off and go back to the new ones,” Kerr said. “But then when he hit his first four shots I changed my mind and said, ‘No, he’s gonna wear ‘em the whole game.’”
“I overheard him telling some guys that he’s got a few at home,” Pippen said, “and he felt like this was probably his last game in the Garden.”
“I went kind of retroactive today with the shoes,” Jordan admitted. “I was joking with my wife about it. I was actually doing some cleaning up at home and kind of ran into them.”
His feet covered in red, Jordan treated the adoring Garden crowd and the television audience to an old-style performance, filled with whirling, impossible drives to the baskets and reverses and dunks and whatever else popped to the surface of his creativity, all of it good for 42 precious points.
“I played up in the air a lot today,” he admitted afterward. “I’m not afraid to play that way. There was a need there, and if there’s a need there, I have to address it. I’m not really thinking about the moves and how excited the fans are. The oooohs and aaaahs tell you that. Some of the moves seemed to be coming from 1984.”
Once he switched hands on the ball in trademark fashion for a layup. Another time he absorbed a blow from the Knicks’ Terry Cummings, turned in midair and still flipped the shot in over his shoulder.
“That’s a heck of a shot,” Knicks coach Jeff Van Gundy said, shaking his head.
“It’s just so much fun to be a part of this team,” Steve Kerr said of Jordan’s acrobatics, “because you see that routinely, and yet you can’t ever take it for granted. You can take the total performance for granted. Forty two points, we see that all the time, but those moves that he does are just so amazing that I find myself cheering just like everybody else in the stands.
“It’s one of my favorite atmospheres in the NBA,” Kerr said of the Garden. “It’s electric in here. The fans are very sophisticated. They understand the game. They love Michael, and yet they hate him. It’s a neat feeling to be a part of it.”
With Jordan’s outburst and Pippen’s defense in full force, the Bulls drove to a 102-89 win. The game also marked Kerr’s return to duty after missing six weeks with the fractured left clavicle. Kerr entered the game with two minutes left in the first quarter and promptly threw up and hit his first shot. On the day, he would finish with eight points.
Afterward, reporters ribbed Kerr about shooting so quickly. “I don’t think I’ve ever actually seen you shoot on your first touch,” the Daily Herald’s Kent McDill told him.
“I felt like Bill Wennington,” Kerr replied, the joke being that Wennington was known for being so eager to get his shots in that Jordan called him “trampoline hands.”
“Vinnie Johnson is gone,” another reporter told Kerr, “but you might be Microwave II. You didn’t waste any time getting that shot.”
Kerr laughed and said he wasn’t a threat to the former Pistons’ sixth man who was known for heating up off the bench in a hurry. “He’s got nothing to worry about,” Kerr said. “They might call me like the Toaster Oven or something. But it probably wouldn’t work very well.”
Kerr, the league’s all-time leader in three-point field goal percentage, was viewed as a critical element for the Bulls’ bench. His injury, plus the recurring knee troubles of center Luc Longley had left the Bulls searching for rotations even while they won. The time off, though, worked in his favor, Kerr said. “This last two months has been great for me because, while I was healing I was really kind of getting refreshed and mentally prepared. I stayed in shape physically, and I’m just so excited to be back playing. Sometimes in the long course of a season, you can get kind of worn down and you lose a little of your spirit. I’m just so fired up to be back.
“That’s one of the things about injuries, you have a lot of time to think,” he explained. “I really thought about my situation here and my future, and I realized that early in the season I was probably pressing a little bit because of the uncertainty over next year, me being a free agent and nobody knowing what was happening with the team. I realized that I was gonna have probably 20 games left and then the playoffs. And then, who knows? That might be it. So I better enjoy it and be aggressive and try to have as much as fun as I can when I do come back.”
His explanation was a window to how many of the Bulls felt. Scott Burrell, for example, had battled his insecurities about the triangle offense, which was predicated on the Bulls’ players reading the defense and reacting, much like a quarterback in football reads defenses and reacts. That was one reason it was difficult to learn.
“Each pass is a different option, and no plays are really called,” Burrell explained. “When a pass was thrown in, I had to think about it first, instead of just reacting. And you can’t play while you’re thinking. You gotta keep a clear mind. When I got the ball, I didn’t know what to do about passing. I didn’t know about shooting or doing anything else with it. The way they teach you makes it a lot easier. It takes them a long time to teach you, but after that, it’s so much easier.”
It was pointed out that Jordan had developed a trust in former Bulls guard John Paxson, and eventually trust in Kerr. Jordan knew that when he passed to them, odds were they would knock down the open shot. Burrell had begun to find his open shots in the offense. Had Jordan come to him and expressed a confidence?
“Nah. He’s not gonna come and talk to me,” Burrell said and laughed. “I’ll find out for myself. If I’m open and he throws me the pass, then we’ll know.”
Without question, Burrell’s growing comfort in the offense was adding to Chicago’s depth. But the injuries and Caffey’s trade had left the players questioning their ability to dominate a playoff series the way they had in recent seasons. “I don’t know if we’ll ever be able to get to that point from a personnel standpoint,” Kerr admitted. “We’re just not as deep as we have been. But I think we can still win the championship. It’s going to be more difficult.”
At first it was reported that Knick and Jordan friend Charles Oakley had gotten Jordan’s red shoes in the wake of the Garden game. But Bulls equipment man John Ligmanowski had secured them for his private collection. Jordan admitted as much the next week. “My right foot has always been 13 1/2. My left foot has always been 13. And everybody said I tried to squeeze my foot into a 12. That was not true,” Jordan said, though he admitted the shoes had given him blisters.
Regardless, the touch had been well worth it from an entertainment standpoint. Beyond that, it had allowed him to score big points in his public relations battle with the two Jerrys. “That move was a brilliant public relations move,” said John Jackson of the Sun Times, “because it brings attention to the fact that he’s serious about retiring because in his own mind he considers this his last game in Madison Square Garden, so he’s looking to make it special. Obviously, this isn’t an idle threat. Doing it this way, by using the red shoes, he doesn’t have to come out and say it. He doesn’t have to say, ‘I’m retiring.’ He doesn’t put himself in a position to look like a spoiled athlete.”
It was obvious that Jordan was campaigning against management, but he appeared to be rethinking his position, observed Bruce Levine, the reporter for WMVP radio. “I’ve never seen anything like it. He has been an open book to talk about the contract, where the team should go, about Phil and his destiny with Phil. But he’s kind of changed his opinion over the last six or seven weeks, but it’s more of a wait and see policy now. If Michael Jordan does change his mind and play for another coach, who’s gonna say anything?”
Kerr agreed that Jordan was campaigning, but seemed to be doing so with a sense of frustration. “He speaks up,” Kerr said, “but there’s not a whole lot he can do. Everyone kind of assumes that if he wants he can just step in and just kind of take over the whole organization. But it doesn’t work that way. He’s wants people’s respect, but he’s still going to respect management. But he doesn’t go overboard, like Scottie or someone like that.”
Pippen was asked if he was amazed that Krause and Reinsdorf would let Jordan and the rest of the team just walk away from the game. “I’m looking toward that,” he said, “so it doesn’t amaze me at all. I think change is good for you at some time. Maybe it’s just that time for me.”
Kerr, though, had a definite opinion. “It’s unfortunate,” he said. “I think Scottie deserves to be a Bull for his entire career. But if it doesn’t happen, it doesn’t happen.”
Keeping Krause from breaking up the team was obviously Jordan’s goal, John Jackson said. “The reason Jordan’s saying his leaving is not a hundred percent a done deal is that in his own way he’s putting enough public pressure on them to put them in the position where they can’t really do that. If they break this team up and try to start rebuilding next year, the team’s not gonna be that great. They’re talking about building another championship club, but that’s gonna take another five or six years down the road minimum. They’re gonna have to get through a tough period. They’re gonna have to have the support of the public and the fans before they can do that. What Jordan’s campaign does now is basically back them in a corner, where public sentiment is so much against them that they’re gonna have no choice but to back down.”
Kent McDill of the Daily Herald said, “Krause doesn’t want to be the man who chases Michael out of the game. He just wants to get rid of Phil. He wants a coach who respects him. He likes to be a kingmaker, and he feels that Phil doesn’t give him the respect he deserves for putting him in a position to be considered one of the top ten coaches in NBA history.”
“To be honest,” said the Sun Times’ Jackson, “if I was Krause and I was in his position, I think I would want to change coaches right now, too. I think it’s time. I think Phil’s a little burned out in this job. He has changed a lot, and he has gotten a bit arrogant. The decision to change coaches is a valid one, and I think Krause is right on about that. But the problem with it is, Jordan has aligned himself so heavily with Phil. Sometimes perception is more important than reality. And the perception is that if Krause makes a coaching change now, he and Reinsdorf are showing no loyalty to Phil, they’re just kicking him in the ass.”
“I don’t see any reason,” said Kent McDill, “why this whole thing just couldn’t keep on going.”
PLAYBACK
If the springtime meant that Jordan had to campaign to keep his once-in-a-lifetime team together, it also afforded him rare occasions to sit back and reflect on just what his career had meant to him. Sometimes these moments would come in the hours before a road game, sitting around with a few reporters. These sessions disappeared as the season tightened. But when the mood and circumstances allowed, he would sip his pre-game coffee with cream and sugar and visit the past and sometimes the future.
If he wanted, he could have simply ducked into a private screening room at home and opened up his library of videotape, for just about any selection from any point in his career. “I got it all on tape,” he explained. “Everything that was on TV, I got it.”
Regardless, he had not viewed any of it. “I don’t watch it because I’m still building it up, building up that library,” he said. “I think a library is something where if I want to refresh my memory, I can. But right now my memory is still good. I don’t want to feel like I’m losing my memory, like I have to go back and refresh it. It’s special for my kids. I know where I’ve been, and I know pretty much a lot of the games that I’ve had, against who, and what my thoughts were at the time. I’m a library in terms of the game, in terms of my participation. So whenever I start losing that, then maybe that’s a good place to go back and replace those memories.”
How good was his memory? Asked about a 1983 game against the University of Virginia, he knew it immediately. In the closing minutes he had stunned the crowd at University Hall in Charlottesville by soaring across the lane to block the shot of 7-foot-4 center Ralph Sampson. “That was back in young days,” he said, admitting that he had no idea he could make the block. “I surprised myself. That was the beauty of my game, and it has propelled me to my career to some degree. No one could sit there and tell you that I could do anything. I couldn’t tell you what I couldn’t do and what I could. And that was the beauty of everything. Even today, you can’t sit here and tell me what I can do and what I can’t.”
“The surprises of your athletic feats aren’t gone yet?” he was asked.
“That’s my whole point,” he said. “That’s the beauty of the game. Even I don’t know what I can do. If I knew, why would I play?”
His favorite Bulls championship was 1996, he said. “That’s the first time I really came back and focused on my career without my father. That was probably my best.”
Even that, however, didn’t outrank the 1981 NCAA championship team he played on at North Carolina. “It’s hard to outrank Carolina,” he explained, “because that started everything. The confidence, the knowledge, and everything I gained from that, is without question the beginning of Michael Jordan as a whole. So the beginning is always going to outweigh everything else that has happened since.”
Yet he also acknowledged that his favorite championship could be ahead of him. “It’s not resolved until I say, ‘I’m done.’ Until I accept it,” he said. “Until I accept it, that’s all that matters.”
He also held plenty of sweet feelings about the thousands of hours of practice over the years, another factor that set him apart. “It becomes such a routine for me that I don’t view it as hard,” he said. “I guess the hard thing about it is when you think about other players who should have those same feelings but yet they don’t. That’s the hard part. And that’s probably why I’d never be able to coach, because I have a whole different perception about how you should do things and how you shouldn’t. I could easily get frustrated watching other people not take advantage of an opportunity given to them.
“It’s not necessarily younger players,” he added. “It’s older players, too. Older players have bad habits, bad preparations for games and things like that. You could say it’s predominantly young players, because they’re young and have their future ahead of them. But some of the older players, veteran players, have bad habits, too.”
When he came to the Bulls in 1984, he found a team held hostage by drug abusers and slackers, people with deeply negative attitudes. “I found bad habits that were multiplied because of bad things surrounding the team,” he recalled. “I’m not saying I had the perfect approach, but I had good habits. I was taught good habits. And I was able to utilize them for what was most important to me—basketball. I prepared myself. I practiced hard. I did all the necessary things to make myself a better basketball player. I’m not saying everybody should be like Michael Jordan in this situation. You can be your own person. But you’ve got the have the same outlook in terms of what you’re productivity’s going to be on the basketball court and how you want that to happen. It doesn’t happen just in games. It starts in practice, and that’s the way I approach it.”
His experience had left him concerned about the future of the league. “One person can’t solve a multitude of problems, a multitude of concerns,” he said. “As a member of the NBA, I’m concerned that this league can be marketed to be, or misunderstood to be, spoiled kids with a lot of money, with no effort, no motivation, paid off of their potential, never reaching their highest potential because of the spoiling of athletes. I don’t want that attitude.
“A long time ago,” he said, “people spoke of the league as no defense, just a lot of scoring and no fun to watch. Teams scoring 150 points or whatever. The league has worked on that image to where it’s very competitive. You can see the challenge, you can see the strategizing going on during an NBA game. But we’re certainly on the verge of losing that perception because of a lot of the things that have happened within the game. Once you get a crack in the armor, believe me, the whole armor is in danger because it becomes magnified and starts to spread and people start to look at the littlest things in the largest ways. For years they’ve done a great job of keeping things nice and tight, where other leagues have had their problems. Now as you look at it, baseball has come back to a certain degree. Football has certainly come back from their strike. And basketball now is showing cracks, and it’s gonna start to spread if you don’t take care of it.”
One way to take care of basketball was to share the game’s immense wealth, he said. “Some of the money should go back into the communities. The player’s association should step forward. So should the league. It’s a very profitable situation. They should give back to the community in some form, if it’s the Team-Up situation, the Stay In School program, or some other expanded program, what they should do as well is support the ex NBA players, the guys who pioneered this whole process. That’s one of the points that should be talked about.”
As a player he had obviously been a guardian of the game, which led to questions about his interest in becoming a team executive, like Jerry West of the Lakers.
“When I walk away from the game, I’m separated, other than being a fan,” he said. “I have total admiration for what the game gave to me and certainly will have interest in seeing that other players maintain the success of the Chicago Bulls as well as the league.
“I think I could make a pretty good GM,” he added. “If you tell me to manage my money, I could manage the dollars in terms of who I paid. But if the public’s perception of who deserves what interferes with that, then I couldn’t be a very good GM.”
“Would you borrow from the Jerry Krause school of management?” he was asked.
“Never,” he replied quickly. “It would be totally independent of the Jerry Krause school of management. I wouldn’t sneak around. I wouldn’t be the Sleuth. That’s one thing you wouldn’t call me.”
“Your clothing line won’t have the Krause hat and coat?” he was asked.
Jordan laughed. “Or the … Nothing.” He obviously started to say crumbs and thought better of it. “I almost slipped,” he said, still smiling. It was obvious he wanted to turn loose his full sense of humor, but this wasn’t the team bus.
Did he see anything positive in Krause’s relationship with the team? “He works hard,” Jordan said after a moment’s thought. “I give him credit. He works hard to make things successful, or he works hard to get you to like him, one of the two. He works hard. But really I don’t try to figure it out. I would rather save my energy.”
Asked if there was anything in basketball he hadn’t done, he replied, “I haven’t won six championships.”
TEXAS
From their win in New York, the Bulls jetted back home briefly to notch a big win over the Heat before heading south for a two-game trip to Texas. First up were the Dallas Mavericks, a team stumbling through yet another misguided season. “I think we’re jelling now,” Jordan said, sitting in the locker room at Reunion Arena before the March 12h game. “I think we’re focused now. I think we’re trying to finish off the season right.”
David Moore of the Dallas Morning News asked him if he had seen Kevin Garnett’s comment on national TV that he didn’t want to be one of the people coming into Chicago to play for the Bulls in the wake of Jordan’s acrimonious departure.
Jordan laughed, fully enjoying the anecdote. “I think a lot of things have to be considered,” he said. “What do you say to the next team, the next stars that come in, from a management standpoint? You show a sense of loyalty to us, we’ll show a sense of loyalty to you? And do you believe that? Or do you just hear it? That’s the danger of what’s happening with this organization. What can you tell the next group of guys who come in to pursue a championship? Do you tell them the same things they told us? Or do you tell them something else that may have the same effect? That’s the key.”
From there, the Bulls went out and ran up a decent lead against the struggling Mavericks. Chicago was up by 18 with about five minutes to go, and the fans were leaving in droves. But then the Bulls lost focus and watched the Mavs stage a strange comeback, aided by a succession of Bulls miscues and questionable calls, to tie it in regulation and win it in overtime. It was only the Bulls’ second loss since the All-Star break, but later they would look back on it as the place where they lost homecourt advantage against the Jazz. In the waning seconds of overtime, a disgusted Jackson sat on the bench, clipping his fingernails.
“Sometimes you give ‘em away in this game,” the coach said afterward, “and we certainly gave that away. We had some help. The referees helped us give it away, but that’ll happen sometimes on the road.”
“We played giveaway,” Tex Winter fumed. “It was ridiculous. In the long-term it’ll be good for us. This team’s had too much success.”
“It’s about as stunning a loss as you can imagine,” Kerr said.
Getting dressed afterward to head out for good times in his home town, Rodman complained, “We gave it to ‘em. If we had had the starting five in there, that game wouldn’t have been close at all.”
He wore a Sly and the Family Stone look, with a lime green paisley shirt, sunglasses tinted bright yellow, a leopard skin cap, and a thick necklace, which Jackson had commented before the game was heavy enough to use on a tow truck. Rodman began criticizing Jackson and stopped. “I don’t want to say nothing wrong,” he told the gathering of Dallas media in the locker room. “When you fuck around the whole fourth quarter and don’t put a team like that away, any team in the league can beat you. It was pathetic.”
Told that Winter had said the Bulls would learn from the loss, Rodman scoffed, “Man, we too old for this shit. What can we learn that we don’t already know? That’s kinda stupid, isn’t it? We been in this league for 50 years. Fuck. We know what the fuck we should do, just let us play.”
Asked where he was headed in his outfit, he said, “I’m gonna go out, have a couple of beers and party my ass off. I think it hurts worse when you lose a game like this. Go out have a couple of beers, and your girl says she’s not gonna have sex with you. That hurts. That means you’re double-fucked.”
Flanked by two body guards, Rodman strolled out of the arena past rows of fans chirping for an autograph. At the security entrance, he hopped into a limo. A few feet away the rest of the Bulls had gotten onto the team bus. Jordan, in the very back seat, was sitting quietly, his face resting in his palm. There would be no noise this night.
The next day, after watching the game film, Winter had an even darker concern. It looked as if the Bulls had quit down the stretch. “We had a complete collapse, the worst I’ve seen in all the time I’ve been with the Bulls,” the assistant coach said. “That’s 13 years. I’ve seen a couple of other collapses, but not like that. We’ve had games where I’ve felt like we’ve given up, where we were down and didn’t really come back, more so this year than any time in the past.”
The big loss in Miami earlier in the year had been one of those games, he said. “That’s concerned me. And then to see a world-championship ball club with all the experience we have collapse like we did … We just weren’t very smart. I think the guys feel badly about it. But this team has had too much success. They need to be humbled a little bit.”
It was pointed out that Jackson seemed to be the kind of poor sport who never took losing well. “I don’t think any of us do,” Winter said. “Winning is nice, but losing is just awful. There’s a big difference. Sometimes when you win, you’re still not happy because of the way you played. But, boy, when you lose, it’s just devastating. We’ve never lost much. It’s so hard to take losing when you’re not used to it. Once you get the habit of losing, it doesn’t bother you quite so much.”
“There’s some anger and disappointment,” Jackson agreed. “Most of the guys went out in Dallas and blew it off. They got rid of it that night and slept it off. We looked at the tape and put it to bed, buried it. It’s past.”
The Bulls assured that two nights later by playing what Winter would call their most energetic game of the season in rainy San Antonio. Jackson surprised nearly everyone by starting Kukoc against Spurs center David Robinson. An even bigger surprise was that it worked. Although Kukoc lacked the bulk, he had the quickness to give Robinson some problems, and the Bulls hopped out to a 10-2 lead.
The other Chicago concern was outstanding Spurs rookie Tim Duncan, but Jordan answered that on an early Duncan drive by swatting the rookie’s shot away. At the other end, Duncan returned the favor with a block of Jordan’s shot that sent the Alamodome crowd into a frenzy.
Undeterred, the Bulls closed the first period leading 27-17, having made up for their 35 percent shooting with nine offensive rebounds, including four by Rodman.
The Spurs used the second period to close the gap and pulled to 40-39 by intermission. But Kukoc opened the third by flashing in lane, taking a pass from Harper and dropping in a soft eight foot hook. With that momentum, the Bulls pushed their lead back to 51-41
Kukoc again opened the fourth with a whirligig finish in traffic that looked like it had been copied from a Jordan highlight reel. The Spurs pushed hard, but the Bulls shoved right back. Having learned his lesson two nights earlier, Jackson worked the officials furiously, prompting a fan to yell, “Forget it, Phil, they won’t let you come back.”
After outdistancing the Spurs by 10, the Bulls continued their burn through March, returning home to buzz New Jersey, then dipping down to win a big game in Indiana. They got a Friday night home win against Vancouver, then headed north into a snowstorm that left them circling for an hour over Toronto and reminded equipment manager John Ligmanowski of a few seasons back when the team jet nearly got flipped by wind shear in Detroit.
Once they landed, the Bulls found the young Raptors as problematic as the snow. Jordan shook hands with Toronto team captains Doug Christie and Dee Brown, then grinned broadly and hopped around during layup drills trying to awaken his legs. There were bags under Jordan’s eyes, the weariness weighing on his smile.
Just before tipoff Johnny Ligmanowski dispensed the gum which is so important to this team and even tossed a few pieces to press row. After the introductions, the Bulls lined up to slap hands and began their jumping, Watusi-like, while waiting to go on the floor. Pippen came over to the press table to get one final stretch while casting furtive looks at the Raptor dancers.
“Scottie, Toronto next year,” one fan yelled hopefully.
Pippen smiled and turned back to the gyrating dancers. Then the men in red circled Jackson for last-minute instructions, all of them chomping their gum in unison.
Kukoc opened the game with a rebound, and Jackson wasted no time before barking at him. At the offensive end Kukoc held ball on the perimeter.
“Here, here,” Jackson shouted hoarsely, motioning to Pippen inside.
Kukoc delivered the pass, “Now to the goal,” Jackson yelled. But Kukoc had anticipated and already cut, and Pippen hit him with the return pass for a nice two-handed jam.
Things were right in the Bulls’ world, at least for the moment. But that was all that Jackson wanted, for each moment to unfold in timeless beauty and simplicity. On the next possession, Jordan scored and danced away from the goal with the trademark Jordan swagger, that mix of elegance and gameliness.
Moments later, Kukoc would miscommunicate with Jordan on a pass, and the star’s anger would flash. He stood with palms up and open, questioning with frustration. Where was the ball? Then Jordan turned away, and Kukoc decided to pass. A turnover. Jordan answered with a daggerlike look and frowned darkly at Kukoc during an ensuing timeout.
The Raptors took advantage of Chicago’s confusion to forge a lead, but in the second period Rodman’s energy pumped the Bulls back on top. Later, when Rodman returned to the bench, Tex Winter followed him to his seat, to bend and tell him how fine the effort was. Rodman took the compliment without speaking, but his face showed the satisfaction.
In the third period, the Bulls expanded the lead to a dozen, but then came the loss of focus, just as it had in Dallas. Somehow, Jordan and his teammates managed to just hold on at the end, allowing the younger Raptors to make the final mistakes. Jackson smiled. The Bulls were living on the edge, but Pippen was back, and they were winning. And best of all, they were alive in the moment. Right where Jackson hoped they would be.