Blood on the Horns

by Roland Lazenby

  Blood on the Horns

  The Long Strange Ride of Michael Jordan’s Chicago Bulls

  Roland Lazenby

  Copyright

  Diversion Books

  A Division of Diversion Publishing Corp.

  443 Park Avenue South, Suite 1004

  New York, NY 10016

  www.DiversionBooks.com

  Copyright © 1998 by Roland Lazenby

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever.

  For more information, email info@diversionbooks.com.

  First Diversion Books edition February 2013

  ISBN: 978-1-938120-80-0

  “I wanted the Bull to be a true bull, in a bull fight. You know, he’s a big and black thing with long horns and red eyes and mean. I wanted a mean looking Bull. Most of the early submissions were of full bodies. The Bull with his head down, that sorta thing. I said, ‘I want a face. Gimme a face.’ Then they gave me a face that looked real good. Now, I said, ‘All we have to do is make his eyes red. I want blood on his nose, or red nostrils, and blood on his horns.’ Which they did. They did a beautiful job. That became our symbol.”

  —Dick Klein, Chicago Bulls founder,

  describing his work with designers in

  1966 to create the team’s logo.

  Preface

  A Room with a View

  I’m dedicating this book to my father, William Lowry “Hopper” Lazenby, a West Virginia boy with a smooth, two-handed set shot. He was a master of fakes, not just pump fakes and twitches. He faked with his face, his eyes, his arched eyebrows, anything to get you going one way so that he could go the other. He was nicknamed “Hopper” because of basketball, not because he was so good at it—although he was pretty good—but because his older brother, Clyde, was really good. Clyde was an all-stater in West Virginia and earned one of the first basketball scholarships to Virginia Tech back in the 1920s. Anyway, as the story goes, Clyde fell in love and left Tech after about a year to get married, but his nickname “Hopper” stuck. Stuck so well, in fact, that each time another Lazenby came along on the basketball team at Beaver High in Bluefield, West Virginia, he, too, was named “Hopper.” In all, there were three “Hopper” Lazenbys, which became a bit confusing in their advancing years.

  My older brother, Hampton, was another good player, but I was not. Yet that hasn’t prevented me from playing pickup ball with a passion my entire life. I’m 45 now, with aching knees and heels, and still play three or four days a week. I often wonder why I’ve continued to torture myself by playing lo these many years. I usually answer that question by saying that if you’re going to write about a game you should at least have the decency to play it regularly. But deep down I know there’s a bigger reason. Because it keeps me close to my father, who died in 1981.

  So when Phil Jackson talks about the spiritual side of the game, I have a decent idea of what he’s talking about.

  I am telling you this to explain my emotional attachment to the Bulls. There are millions of fans across the globe who have formed their own attachments to the team for their own reasons.

  This reason is mine: The Bulls are a special team, made up of special guardians of the game, of which Michael Jordan is certainly one. But the chief guardian is 76-year-old assistant coach Tex Winter, who has spent his professional life developing something he calls the “sideline triangle offense.” It’s a paradigm for the game that Winter first learned while playing for coach Sam Barry at the University of Southern California. The triangle offense has shown itself to be immensely frustrating and complicated for NBA players trying to learn it. Yet once they learn the triangle offense, what at first seemed complicated makes the game amazingly simple. It is an old-style offense, predicated on the notion of moving the ball, which means that greater players have to share the basketball with lesser players. In short, it means that people like Michael Jordan have to trust people like Dickey Simpkins. It is the essence of teamwork. The triangle, as Tex Winter teaches it, also requires all the players to read the defense and cut to open areas on the floor. As a result, it creates motion in the game, and when the Bulls executed it, those displays of motion could be dazzling.

  This, of course, was in distinct contrast to most of the other 28 teams in the NBA, which run those dreadful isolation offenses that the game has evolved to, the kind where one player works near the basket while his four teammates stand on the perimeter waiting for the defense to double-team the ball, which in turn might mean that someone would actually make a pass.

  CBS broadcaster Billy Packer, a friend of mine, attended a 1998 playoff game between the Charlotte Hornets and Atlanta Hawks. Disgusted and bored, he got up and left in the third quarter.

  Which brings me back to Tex Winter’s guardianship. He knows that basketball’s past is its future. Apparently not many in the NBA have stopped counting their money long enough to consider that. The Phoenix Suns tried to adopt the triangle offense in October and November 1996. They lost their first dozen games and gave up. “I’m not sure we were really running the triangle,” quipped Bulls reserve Joe Kleine, who was on that Phoenix team. “I think maybe we had a square.”

  The scenario wasn’t so laughable for former Bulls assistant Jim Cleamons, who took over as head coach of the Dallas Mavericks and attempted to install the triangle only to be met with a player revolt. Learning to play the game the right way takes time, time that today’s young millionaires don’t seem to have.

  It’s well documented that the Bulls had their own troubles adjusting to the offense in 1990 and 1991. But Winter likes to point out that Jackson’s steadfast determination in implementing the triangle with the Bulls was the beginning of his greatness as a head coach. It was also the beginning of the greatness of the Bulls.

  In the early days of the game, the old pros used to have a phrase to describe the passing game they ran off the post. They called it “making the ball sing.”

  The Bulls, of course, have done plenty of that over the past decade. With Jordan’s offensive brilliance and Winter’s old-style approach, they’ve thrilled millions of fans. What’s better, the Bulls have absolutely overwhelmed their opponents. It has been my delight to watch them beat in the heads of teams running lazily conceived isolation offenses. It has been my dismay that those teams still don’t get the message: The Bulls’ greatness comes from Michael Jordan’s and Scottie Pippen’s dedication to playing the game the way it was meant to be played.

  In the spring of 1998, Winter was once again nominated for the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame after having been passed over several times previously. If they don’t elect him this time around, perhaps the nice folks up at the hall should just consider locking the building and throwing away the key.

  Which brings me to the reason I wrote this book. The Bulls, on their way to winning a sixth National Basketball Association championship, were caught in a power struggle and about to break up. That was bad because the situation threatened to end the careers of two of the game’s greatest guardians, Jordan and Winter, which in turn threatened the game itself.

  I wanted to know why.

  And this book is an attempt to answer that.

  Back when he was forced to ride herd over the Detroit Pistons and all their gnarly egos, coach Chuck Daly used to have a saying: The game is simple, but the people are complicated.

  The Pistons, by the way, won two championships and found that they had absolutely exhausted their relationships. It is an incredible testament to the great competitors who have built the Bulls that they won six and were able to keep going strong despite substantial baggage.

  In short, what pushed the Bulls to the brink of a brea
k up?

  There was no short answer, but if I had to come up with one, I would say, “The insecurities of general manager Jerry Krause.”

  Then again, if I had to answer what caused the Bulls to be built into six-time world champions, the answer—right after the words “Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen”—would be “The insecurities of Jerry Krause.”

  In reality, they’re all responsible for the break up. Jerry Krause. Phil Jackson. Scottie Pippen. Michael Jordan. Jerry Reinsdorf. Tex Winter. Just as they’re all responsible for all those sweet, ineffable moments of victory.

  That is not a statement that will please Michael Jordan or Scottie Pippen, who loathe Krause. And I am truly sorry to make a statement that displeases Jordan or Pippen, because they are the giant hearts of a great basketball team. But it’s true.

  Why did they loathe Krause?

  Pippen loathed Krause because the general manager had attempted to trade him, something that Pippen considered the severest disrespect.

  Jordan also loathed Krause because he had attempted to trade Pippen and had been at odds with Jackson. Both of those things got in the way of the team’s ability to compete, and above all, Jordan would brook nothing that interfered with competing.

  Thus, as the 1998 season wound to a conclusion, Bulls fans were faced with the power struggle and possible break up of the team. It was a control thing between Krause and the team’s two superstars, with Jackson and Winter and Reinsdorf sort of stuck trying to sort things out and move forward. Or something close to that.

  Which brings me back to my father’s set shot. He used to play in the semi-pro industrial leagues around southern West Virginia back in the late 1930s and ‘40s. Because I was born later in his life, I never got to see him compete. But I heard tales of how he would lace up that shot, sometimes even when a teammate was wide open under the hoop. I heard that my father once played a game against the Original Celtics, the great barnstorming pro team of that era, and that he was absolutely delighted when Celtics star Davey Banks sat in the stands at midcourt and swished a shot on the first try. I have no idea if these stories are true, but I believe they are, because I used to shoot with my father. He had been badly burned in 1946, before I was born, and could no longer play anything more than h-o-r-s-e or a lightweight one-on-one. We had a 12 by 12 concrete court in the driveway, but he preferred to launch his shots by the giant elm in the side yard, a good 30 feet or more from the hoop. He’d fake one way or another, then pull up and while his eyes grew wide, he’d launch that two-handed set and give a little whoop as it hit, which was sort of his version of talking trash.

  His real lesson for me, of course, was that life, just like a good game of h-o-r-s-e, needs wide parameters.

  Phil Jackson was talking with me about the power struggle one day when he said something that reminded me of my father. Jackson was talking about how Krause was always trying to establish some sort of control with Pippen and Jordan. “It’s all control,” the coach said. “It’s all wanting to control. I think it’s good to have a sense of control, but you have to make your perimeters big. An expansive thing, instead of making it narrow, and then people are bumping into those fences all the time.”

  The greater the people involved, the greater the parameters, it seems.

  From there, I jumped to a naive notion. How about getting all the key figures involved to sit down in a room to discuss the thing? They all had done things to anger and hurt each other. They all had their pain. Why not just talk it out? So I asked Jordan about that one day.

  He tilted a questioning eye at me.

  “Without blows?” he asked. “There’s no way.”

  “Maybe in a padded room?” I suggested. “Why couldn’t it be that simple? Just to talk it out?”

  “Even if you put all five of us in one room,” he said, “and we tell our pains or whatever, we’ve proceeded past that. And we had to, to be successful.

  “You know what?” he said. “From my perspective, a lot of my pain was over and done with early. And I still pursued my job with the same integrity and determination.”

  He implied that Krause had not been able to get past his pain, and, in fact, was allowing personal issues to get in the way of winning, which to Jordan was the worst possible sin.

  “All the pain and suffering and hurt aside, you still gotta look at what jobs are being done,” Jordan said. “If you’re gonna sit here and hold grudges, then why should I go through my career…. If I hadn’t forgotten that moment, I’d still be giving less than 100 percent, or I’d think of revenge. But I moved forward with the notion of winning.”

  It was clear that the parameters weren’t big enough to allow them to sit down and talk it out.

  So this book has become a vastly inferior version of that room. An attempt to get it all out on the table. A room with a view.

  For the Bulls.

  For their fans.

  For my old man.

  Roland Lazenby

  June 15, 1998

  “You’re gonna have to ask yourself, who do you trust?”

  —The Devil’s Advocate

  1: Power Days, Glitter Nights

  No matter where he played, the buildings virtually sparkled for Michael Jordan. Each game, as he stepped onto the floor for introductions, he was greeted by the flashes of a thousand small cameras. The phenomenon was most brilliant at the United Center in Chicago, where the introductions would build to a crescendo of noise and light until Jordan’s name was called as the fifth starter, and the arena became a pulsating strobe. Later, at the opening tip, these same lights would again flicker furiously. But they were most maddening during free throws, when Jordan went to the line, and the rows of fans behind the basket would break into a dizzying twinkle, bringing to mind a mirror ball at a junior prom or perhaps the consorting of hyper-charged fireflies on a summer evening.

  The fans were regularly reminded that flash cameras were forbidden, that the flashes were unnecessary in the National Basketball Association’s fancy, well-lit buildings. But that didn’t deter them, and the security staff in every arena seemed to have acquiesced to their thrill at recording the moment.

  Asked how he could possibly shoot free throws under the conditions, Jordan replied with an avuncular smile, “I got used to that a long time ago.”

  Jordan had always been a superstar who understood and accommodated his fans. That was particularly true during the 1997-98 season, as indications grew that it could well be his last in pro basketball. He understood that seemingly everybody wanted an Instamatic record of what appeared to be his final days in the game, even if they were bleary, out-of-focus prints from the upper deck that reduced Jordan and his teammates to hazy apparitions. For the fans, the photo prints were proof that they were there, witnessing his greatness in person. The photographs were something to be tucked in the hope chest as a family heirloom. Michael was bigger than Babe Ruth, the grandkids could be told later.

  Babe Ruth? Actually, if Jordan was comparable to anyone, it might have well been pro basketball’s other truly great competitor, center Bill Russell, who led the Boston Celtics to 11 championships in the 13 seasons between 1957 and 1969. It was Russell’s fate to dominate the league during the final ugly days of segregation. There was fan adulation, but there was also hatred. How far did it go? One time somebody broke into Russell’s house and defecated in his bed. Good enough reason, it would seem, to be an angry young man.

  That was not Jordan’s experience, though. Tens of thousands of fans paid homage to him each game night. Hundreds, sometimes thousands, more gathered in the streets. Outside the arenas. Outside his hotels. Hoping to catch a glimpse as Jordan and his teammates exited their bus. Countless others sent him tribute, filling a succession of storage rooms with cards and letters and flowers and gifts and requests.

  But the camera lights were by far the warmest measure of his popularity. Each time he made a spectacular play, Michael Jordan�
�s world glittered, a twinkling firmament of adulation that served as a backdrop for his every move.

  It was a cold night in mid-March, and the Bulls were back in snowy Chicago to face the New Jersey Nets in the United Center after a rain-soaked, two-game road trip to Texas. Each game was a countdown, with just seventeen appearances remaining on the regular-season schedule. On the surface, there was little to reveal the grip of anxiety quietly tightening around the franchise. But the key figures all sensed the impending showdown over the future of Jordan’s career and the future of the team, a showdown that had been building all season. It was a game of chicken, with each side waiting to see who would blink first.

  “It’s about power,” Bulls coach Phil Jackson had explained hoarsely in a private interview at his office in the Berto Center, the team’s handsome practice facility in suburban Deerfield, hours before the game. When Jackson began coaching the team in 1989, his hair was black and his face was fresh. The time had not been kind, and neither had this season. His tired eyes were ringed by dark circles, bringing to mind those lines from Townes Van Zandt:

  Livin’ on the road, my friend,

  was gonna keep you free and clean.

  Now you wear your skin like iron.

  Your breath’s as hard as kerosene…

  Power, indeed. The Bulls were caught in the throes of an internecine struggle for control of the team, with Jackson, Jordan and teammate Scottie Pippen pitted against Jerry Krause, the team’s vice president of basketball operations/general manager, who announced before the season began that Jackson would not return as coach in the fall of 1998.

  “This is it,” Krause had said. “Phil and I know it. We all know it.”

  In announcing his move, Krause did not identify exactly what had led to Jackson’s scheduled departure, but the relationship between the coach and general manager had obviously worn thin, which was not unusual for pro basketball, a small business of big media attention, big salaries and big egos.