The fact that Jordan chased some would-be teammates off “may be good a good thing,” Kerr said. “You’ve got to kind of weed out the people who can’t really help out. And Michael has a way of finding those guys, finding weaknesses.
“Obviously we all have weaknesses,” Kerr added and laughed, “except for Michael. And what he does, he forces us to fight and be competitive, to fight through those weaknesses and not accept them, to work on them, and to improve ourselves.”
Make no mistake, though. What Jordan did was pure challenge.
“There’s not a whole lot of encouragement,” Kerr conceded. Scott Burrell, new to the Bulls in 1997-98, could certainly confirm that. At 6-6, Burrell was gifted with the kind of athleticism that made him an outstanding high school quarterback in football. He was also a good enough pitcher to get drafted by the majors. But for five seasons he’d made his living in the NBA after a solid college career at the University of Connecticut. Despite his size, Burrell had the ability to get down and guard quick, small guards in the NBA, a facet that Jerry Krause loved. The Bulls general manager had tried for years to work a trade for Burrell but wasn’t able to do so until the 1997 offseason when Chicago traded forward Dickey Simpkins to the Golden State Warriors to get Burrell.
The only knock against Burrell was that his NBA career had been plagued by a series of serious injuries. But as soon as he arrived in Chicago, he discovered that the Bulls’ extensive training and weightlifting program would go a long way toward keeping him healthy. He also discovered a level of intensity among Chicago’s players in doing the training work needed to remain supremely competitive. It was obvious that Jordan’s drive was infusing the whole roster.
Yet, like many players who come to the Bulls, Burrell spent his first months with the team struggling to get a grasp of the complicated triangle offense. As a result, Burrell also found himself coming face to face with Jordan’s competitive fury.
Early in the season, Burrell was late for practice because he had been helping guard Randy Brown with some personal chores. When Burrell finally arrived, Jordan glared at him, a team staff member confided. “Michael told him, ‘You get your ass here. Don’t you ever be late again. We don’t come to practice late. You’re out there hanging with Randy Brown. You can’t do that shit. Randy can handle it. You can’t. You get your ass here on time.’ He lit him up. Michael was serious as could be. Michael knows everything that’s going on.”
It might be the way some players would talk to a rookie but not a veteran of five NBA seasons, which left Burrell unsure of exactly how to respond. What’s worse, Jordan’s treatment wasn’t just an occasional confrontation. It also included what seemed to Burrell like constant teasing and humiliation, even during the tonk games Jordan, Pippen, Burrell, Harper and Brown would play on the team plane. To the surprise of his teammates and the Bulls’ staff, Burrell began going right back at Jordan, something that few people dared to do. Some teammates tried to tell him it was better just to take the tongue lashing quietly and hope that Jordan turned his attention elsewhere.
“Scott Burrell would stand right in the fire, right in the middle of it, ride it along, try to stick up and try to hang in there,” a Bulls insider observed. “He was not gonna be defeated.”
It wasn’t easy. On another occasion, when Burrell struggled with his play, Jordan told him, “We’re gonna trade your sorry ass back to Golden State for Dickey Simpkins.”
The words stung and added tremendous pressure to Burrell, but he was even more determined not to back down. “I look at it as motivation to make me a better player,” he said, admitting that five months into the season he still wasn’t sure how to take Jordan’s words. “But I don’t really know what it is. I can’t control what he says. I can’t do anything about it. Whatever he says, I use it to motivate me.”
“I’ve been challenged before,” Burrell said, “but not on an everyday basis like this.”
Still, Burrell said he figured that if Jordan was intent on having him traded, “he’d have done it by now.”
For his part, Jordan smiled when asked about Burrell. “I’m about to give up on him,” Jordan said, then quickly added, “I’m just kidding.”
Burrell was like any other talented player trying to find a role in Chicago’s championship chemistry, Jordan said. “They have to find out about themselves. They have to come to our level. We have high expectations around here. We have certain things we have to go through, and certain dedication you have to give. To be a part of this team, you have to submit to that. And I’m the one who gives them a lot of shit to make sure they meet up to that standard.
“We all reap the benefits from it. He’ll be happy that he did it once we win the championship, because he’ll understand it then.”
Asked about the stridence of Burrell’s introduction, Jordan said, “Sometimes I have to beat it in his head. He’s a good kid, though.”
“I don’t know why he does it,” the 26-year-old Burrell said, “whether he’s trying to make me a better person or what. I haven’t known him long enough to try to get close to him.”
“What Michael wants to do is toughen him up,” said one longtime Bulls employee. “And Scott has a little confidence thing.”
“He’s toughening up Scott,” agreed another Bulls insider. “He’s giving him some thick skin and building up his game, building up his game mentally.”
“That’s what it is, mental,” Jordan said. “You gotta force them to think. This team is not a physical team. We don’t have physical advantages. We have mental advantages, and I think that’s what you try to force him to utilize, his brain more than his muscle.”
What Jordan had to teach his new teammates couldn’t be learned in a finishing school. Instead, it was a process of hard knocks, and Jordan was only happy to apply them.
“That’s going through the fucking stages of being on a losing team to a championship team,” Jordan explained, his voice turning harsh. He, of course, learned these lessons over the seven years he was trying to lift Chicago to a championship level. The Detroit Pistons, better known as the Motor City Bad Boys, took quite a delight in dealing out their own brand of meanness. There was, after all, the enduring image of Jordan sobbing on the back of the team bus in 1990 after the Pistons had issued the Bulls a physical whipping in the Eastern Conference finals for the second straight year.
In those earlier years, Jordan was an emerging leader, and while he perhaps showed more patience with his teammates, there was no question his motivational touches even then were often brilliant. The result was that the Bulls became very good, and it seemed that Jordan had learned just how to keep them there. Chip Schaefer recalled that in 1993 the team was in the middle of a disastrous West Coast road trip and had arrived in Denver having lost two of the previous three games. “There are times that we travel the morning after games,” Schaefer recalled. “Generally those are times where the guys have gone out after a game and had a few drinks or whatever and gotten in late. And we’ll fly the next morning to the next city. Sometimes we’ll have a day off, and sometimes we’ll have a practice scheduled. A lot of times there’s a mood with this team where Phil will give the guys a day off because they need it. For some reason, Phil went ahead and had practice that day. We were in Denver at McNichols Arena, and guys were just bitching and moaning about practice. Just a real negative attitude. Michael’s just sort of sitting there as I was taping him. Horace Grant was there bitching, and Scottie and B.J. Armstrong were complaining. Michael is always the last guy to get taped, and after I finished he’s there lacing up his shoes, soaking it up as these guys around him are bitching about having to practice. He finished lacing and sat up and said, ‘Let’s go, millionaires.’ It was simple, sort of innocuous comment, but he said a lot in those three words. He was telling them that we had just lost a couple of games and it was time to go to work.”
And that, as well-pa
id athletes, they had an obligation to work hard.
“With Michael,” said former teammate Horace Grant, “it was always mental.”
There was little question that Jordan was far more strident in his relationships with his teammates after his return from retirement in 1995. The team, after all, was rebuilt while Jordan was away from the game, meaning that when he returned he found himself working with a group who had no real idea how to win a championship.
“A lot of these guys have come from programs who have never experienced the stages of being a champion,” Jordan said of his rough approach with new teammates. “I’m just speeding up the process.”
With Burrell, it seemed to be working.
By March, he had mustered the courage to challenge Jordan in a game of one on one, something that Kerr had never considered attempting. “Scott is stupid,” he said, laughing. “I’m not stupid.”
Burrell even had a chance to win, with the score tied at six all. Burrell had the ball, but Ron Harper, an interested sideline observer, called Burrell for traveling. The ball went over to Jordan, who promptly went to the rack for a slam and a 7-6 win.
Michael ended up getting the last shot to win, but Scott Burrell was talking trash right in Michael’s face,” said one witness. “Michael hit the winning shot and pranced off.”
A few days later, Burrell was able to secure a rematch. But Jordan won easily. “Michael just walked off,” said a Bulls employee, “and Scott was like, ‘C’mon, let’s go back out there and finish this!’ Then Michael finally said, ‘You just want to play so you can go tell your kids when they grow up that you beat Michael Jordan once. What am I gonna tell my kids? I beat Scott Burrell? Big deal. They’ll slap the hell out of me.’”
Burrell laughed at the retelling of the story and pointed out that he had a little better luck playing cards against Jordan, the only problem there being “it doesn’t matter if he wins or loses, his bank account doesn’t go any lower.”
On the court, Burrell had begun to get the hang of the Bulls’ offense and had found the proper places to get and hit his shot. Just before the New Jersey game, in a big matchup against Miami, he passed up a three-pointer and instead zipped the ball to Jordan for a jam.
“Jordan went right up to Burrell,” a team employee observed, “and pointed at him, gave him a pop that said, ‘That’s my boy. That’s why I’ve been working on you the last five months.’ That’s what’s amazing about a guy like Michael. He’ll work on you and work on you and work on you and challenge you. But it’s all with a reward. He toughens you up and the team wins and everybody’s happy.
“He’s got balls of steel and no conscience,” the Bulls insider said of Jordan. “Michael thinks he can win with just him and four little sisters of the poor. But the little sisters of the poor have to be tough and have confidence.”
“I don’t mind that at all,” Krause said when asked of Jordan’s approach with Burrell. “I like that. One thing about Scott Burrell, I knew he was strong. ‘Cause I knew Scott from years back. I’m proud of that trade.”
Where there seemed to be light at the end of the tunnel for Burrell, there was none of that for Toni Kukoc and Luc Longley, who had been consistent Jordan targets since his return to the team in 1995. “With Toni and Luc, it’s very pointed criticism of their games,” Kerr said, “because he sees a lot of potential in them that hasn’t been tapped.”
Jordan’s criticism can be tough, Longley admitted. “But he does let up. He’s gotten better about it as he’s gotten to know me. He understands what different guys can tolerate, respond to. It was heavier early on. But he knows me better now, knows what I can and can’t do. I don’t get tired of it at all. It’s part of the dynamic of this team.”
Kukoc, though, said it wouldn’t bother him in the least if Jordan decided to embark on a period of extended silence.
“Sometimes, those things you can take hard right away, when you hear things right away,” the Croatian forward said. “They might not always be pleasant and good to hear.”
When the language was too harsh, Kukoc said he’d wait to calm down, then go tell Jordan that it was too much. And Jordan was always willing to listen. “He has no problem talking about things, discussing things,” Kukoc said. “I wouldn’t give it back to him. I’m not that kind of person that can go kind of hard. I’m gonna wait five or ten minutes, and try to talk to him about things.”
“It’s another way he has of challenging himself,” Tex Winter theorized, pointing out that if Jordan was so hard on his teammates it allowed him little room for personal letdowns.
Steve Kerr agreed, pointing out that “if you look at his past, it’s filled with moments of sort of created challenges for himself to raise his level. The Van Gundy thing (in 1997 when Jordan took a routine comment by New York coach Jeff Van Gundy and turned it into his motivation for scorching the Knicks in a regular-season game) was relatively innocent, yet Michael turned it into armageddon or something. There’s no question he finds ways to motivate himself.”
“Michael has made up his mind that he’s going to enjoy his time of playing basketball,” Tex Winter said. “I think he made his mind up a long time ago. He enjoys playing, and he wants to keep it fun and loose. And that’s what he attempts to do. His methods sometimes in my mind are questionable. But if that’s what it takes for him to enjoy himself and to challenge himself, then so be it.”
“The thing that amazes me,” Kerr said after a moment’s thought, “is that the standards he has set are so unbelievably high that it’s almost unfair that he has to maintain them. It’s incredible. Every arena that we go into all season long, he’s expected to get 40 points. He loves it. That’s the amazing thing about him. The combination of incredible talent, work ethic, basketball skills and competitiveness. It’s just an unbelievable combination.”
Kerr also agreed with Winter: Jordan was a quite complicated piece of work. “Most of us are pretty straight forward and easy to figure out,” Kerr said. “He’s not easy to figure out at times.”
Jordan acknowledged that, as Paxson had said, he sometimes had come down so hard that he’d run people off. “You have a better understanding for me as a leader if you have the same motivation, the same understanding for what we’re trying to achieve, and what it takes to get there,” Jordan explained. “Now, if you and I don’t get along, certainly you won’t understand the dedication it takes to win. So if I run ‘em off, I don’t run ‘em off with the intention of running ‘em off. I run ‘em off with the intention of having them understand what it takes to be a champion, what it takes to dedicate yourself to winning.
“I’m not hard every single day. I mean there are days where you have to relax and let the tension flow or ease. But for the most part, when you have to focus, you have to focus. As a leader, that’s what I have to do.
“And I’m not by myself. Pip does the same, and Phil does the same. But I do it more consistently, I guess, because I’ve been here the longest. I feel obligated to make sure that we maintain the same type of expectations, the same level.”
Jordan did admit that his status and standing in pro basketball allowed him to do things that perhaps no other player—probably even no coach—could get away with. “You don’t want to do it in a way that they misinterpret the relationship,” he said. “It’s nothing personal. I love all my teammates. I would do anything. I would extend myself to make sure they’re successful. But they have to do the same. They have to have a better understanding of what it takes.”
Perhaps, no one had suffered more of Jordan’s verbal torment over the years than Krause. Yet, like some players, the general manager seemed determined to stand up to the superstar. Krause had even been known to caution the new players he brought to the team not to cave in under Jordan’s verbal fusillades, not to “defer” to Jordan because that could mean losing the star’s respect.
At th
e start of this season, in fact, Krause risked a Jordan chastisement by telling reporters that players and coaches alone don’t win championships, “organizations do.” In another setting, Krause’s comment could have been well taken. Yes, organizations did win championships, but the flip side of the argument was that Jordan’s demanding nature was the engine driving the franchise. He set the standard. No one involved in the organization wanted to let him down, wanted to fail him, and that extended from the lowliest marketing assistant to his teammates to Krause himself.
As a result, the Bulls were the best of many things. They were the best coached, with a staff that worked intense hours, figuring out opponents and how to break them down. The team also featured the league’s best management from a personnel standpoint. The scouting was thorough and likewise intense and continued to add a steady flow of auxiliary talent around Jordan, of which Burrell was a sound example.
The claim that the Bulls were the best marketed team in the NBA was no stretch, either. Game nights were a delight in the Windy City, taking on the feel of well-staged, superbly acted theatre. The central plot always involved Jordan’s and his teammates’ magical performances, around which the team’s marketing staff added the proper dashes of comedic relief and fan participation.
Yes, it could easily be argued that the end result of Jordan’s demanding, inspiring nature was the total package that was the Bulls.
Not surprisingly, Jerry Reinsdorf was not enamored of the idea of Jordan motivating Krause. “Jerry Krause has gotten the best out of Jerry Krause,” the chairman said. That perhaps was true. But it was Jordan who had demanded it of him. Demanded it of them all.
“You find the talent. Then you delegate.”
—The Devil’s Advocate
3: On the Bus
It was on the team bus during the 1997 playoffs that Michael Jordan killed Jerry Krause. Absolutely killed him.
Blood on the Horns Page 5