Still, to observers, they seemed like an odd couple. Here was Jack Haley. Nice guy. Clean cut. All-American. And there was Dennis Rodman. Obviously on the highway to hell. And honking his horn to get into a passing lane.
Most relationships have a dark side, and for Rodman and Haley, it was their shared passion for gambling. For Haley, it was baccarat. For Rodman, it was rolling bones. During the season, they would catch a quick plane to Vegas whenever the opportunity arose. In the summers, they flew there nearly every weekend, making as many as 19 trips in one summer, always staying at the Mirage, where, Haley said, “they treat us like royalty.” Eventually, Rodman would wear out his welcome at the Mirage but not before he had done more damage to his bank accounts.
For years, Chuck Daly had worried that Rodman was going through all of his money, that he was throwing it away on the craps tables in Vegas. Time would show that those fears were well-founded.
“Dennis is not a shy gambler,” Haley said in 1995. “He plays for very big stakes. That’s one of the things we have in common. I’m a big gambler myself. We spend a lot of time in Vegas. We’re out there a large portion of the summer. We fly in and out. I mean Las Vegas is a big part of our lives. Dennis plays nothing but craps. I’m a baccarat player. Of course, we’ll play each other’s. I’ll play craps with him, and he’ll play baccarat with me. If we play say eight hours a day, he’ll be on the crap table seven and a half hours.”
On the bad nights, Rodman would lose as much as $30,000. At times, though, things got worse. Much worse.
Haley said, “The biggest night I’ve ever seen Dennis have, I think he won $89,000 one night. I’ve seen him drop $200,000 in a weekend. Part of the $200,000 he lost, though, was the $89,000 he had won the week before. He won 89 the trip before, and we went back, and instead of the average $500 bet, it was a $5,000 bet. The next thing you know you’re in big trouble.
“One thing that impressed me more than anything, he was losing and he was losing huge. We pulled up at the airport to get out of the taxi, and the cab was only six bucks, and he said, ‘I got it.’”
Rodman just didn’t seem to know when it was time to let somebody else pick up the tab, just as he didn’t know when it was time to quit.
“Later we went right back at them and recouped a portion of the losses,” Haley said. “This was during the summer. During the season, you’re in and out. You can’t lose that much money. You set a limit for yourself every night.”
Isn’t the league concerned about the gambling? Haley was asked during a 1995 interview.
“What can the league say to him?” he replied. “What can they say? That’s legalized gambling. They can’t tell us how much money to bet. We’re not Michael Jordan (referring to 1993 revelations that Jordan had lost more than $1 million while wagering on his own amateur golf rounds). We’re not betting a million dollars, but we’re betting more than the average player. People have to put it in perspective. If a regular person goes, and they lose a thousand dollars in Las Vegas, what’s the difference if a guy making $2.5 million loses $10- or $20,000? It’s the same thing.”
Later, in a subsequent interview, Haley would suggest that he had overstated Rodman’s losses. Perhaps. But there would soon be little question that Rodman’s finances were a mess, and his gaming was part of the problem.
A MATERIAL GUY
Rodman’s strange and wacky ways wouldn’t have been of such tremendous public interest if he hadn’t been home one night with Haley watching a Knicks game on cable.
“Dennis and I are watching a Knicks game on TV,” Haley said. “Madonna is in Madison Square Garden and they interview her after the game, talking about NBA players. She makes a comment to the effect that of all the players in the league she thinks the sexiest guy is Dennis Rodman. Of course we pounce on that.
“We decided to let our PR guy contact her PR person. And her person actually said, ‘Yes, Madonna is writing an article for Vibe magazine.’ So they got back to us, and Madonna said, ‘Can I interview you?’ Dennis said, ‘Sure.’ Dennis hops on a plane after a game, flies to Miami to meet with Madonna for this supposed interview. They did a five-minute token interview, then went out on the town, danced all night and had a great time, spent the night together. From there, it was phone calls, faxes, conversations everyday.”
“She had ways of making you feel like King Tut,” Rodman wistfully told an interviewer. “But she also wanted to cuddle and be held.”
“They got along very well,” Haley said. “Madonna and Dennis saw each other several times. Then we went to Los Angeles. She has a home there, and that was the first time I actually met her and went out with her. I was very impressed with Madonna as a lady. I was kind of shocked. Her image as a hard cutthroat lady with profanity, she was nothing like that. She was polite, and in a partying sense, too. It was not just, ‘Oh, hi, how ya’ doin’?’ She was well-spoken and outstanding. But you can feel her power and presence when you’re with her. She wants it her way or no way. She’s accustomed to that, and Dennis is the same way, so there was some conflict there.
“They had only been dating a month or so, and she starts talking to Dennis about having a baby. She’s definitely interested in having a baby. She says to me, ‘Jack, I want Dennis to have my baby.’ I said, ‘Why, Madonna, would you want Dennis Rodman to have your baby?’ She said, ‘Dennis Rodman is the perfect physical specimen to have my child.’ I said, ‘Well, did you ever consider the mental side?’ They all laughed when I said that. That was her only response.”
The Spurs were scheduled to host the Utah Jazz in a first-round, best-of-five playoff series. The Spurs won handily in the first game in San Antonio, but in the second game they went scoreless for 16 minutes and watched the Jazz control the outcome. Even worse, Rodman clobbered Utah guard John Stockton and was suspended for the critical Game 3 in Salt Lake City. Despite the suspension, Madonna showed up in Utah with Rodman.
“At this point, they were probably at their peak,” Haley said. “Love is flying in the air, and everything’s great. But Dennis was suspended for one game. He, of course, took off with Madonna, left Salt Lake City and went up to Park City, Utah, to one of those love resorts where they have the heart-shaped jacuzzis and the whole thing. They hid up there from the press, because there was a media frenzy. No one, management or coaching staff, knew Dennis’ whereabouts but me, and I had to relay in between.
“I was eating it up, though,” Haley said with a laugh. “I was on TV doing Madonna and Dennis updates for four days. It was great. And they were doing great.”
The Spurs, however, were headed down in an upset with two losses in Utah. “We get knocked out of the playoffs,” Haley said. “Dennis has 22 or 23 rebounds. He plays great, but we lose the game. Dennis walks off the floor, directly into the locker room, picks up his gym bag with his clothes, walks right out of the locker room, still in his Spurs uniform, saying nothing to anyone but me, does not wait for the post game comments from (Spurs coach) John Lucas or anyone. He and Madonna get directly into a limousine, drive out of the arena while all of these people are screaming, drives straight to the airport, hops on a private plane and goes straight to Las Vegas, where they have a great time.”
Meanwhile, Rodman’s suspension and his apparent callousness about team issues created a storm of media criticism. Lucas and Spurs general manager Bob Bass were shown the door. Even his affair with Madonna seemed to suffer. After all, Rodman still had a live-in girlfriend in San Antonio.
“Madonna finds out,” Haley said, “and a couple of weeks later Dennis is in Vegas with this other girl. Madonna comes to Vegas, checks into the suite right next to him. Rodman later told Haley that Madonna accosted him and suggested, “Let’s hit a little white chapel right now and get married.” Haley added, “Dennis says, ‘No.’ But he leaves his girlfriend in Las Vegas, doesn’t tell her where he’s going. He says he’s going to work out. Instead, h
e hops on a plane and flies back to Los Angeles with Madonna and hides out.”
Meanwhile, his Texas girlfriend was stuck in Vegas wondering what had happened to Rodman, Haley said. “It took her two days before she realized Dennis wasn’t coming back. He’s known to hang out and be flighty anyway, so the girlfriend ends up calling me in L.A. I’m there with Dennis and Madonna, and she’s asking me where Dennis is. I finally have to tell her, ‘You should go on home.’ I sent her a plane ticket to get home.”
Rodman’s differences with spurs management dogged the team like a running skirmish over the winter and spring of 1995. The Spurs had their rules, and Rodman answered with an insurrection that cost him tens of thousands of dollars in fines.
“They were fining him $500 and they were fining him every single game,” Haley would later confide. “I’m talking about every single day, $500 a day. Because Dennis made a concentrated effort to be late. It was his way of sticking it in their side.
“I pulled up one day to practice. He’s sitting there 15 minutes early for practice. I said, ‘C’mon, let’s go.’ He said, ‘I’m listening to some Pearl Jam.’ He walks into practice 25 minutes late. It was almost his way of saying, ‘You’re not going to control me. I’m gonna be one minute, two minutes late, every single day.’”
Perhaps the primary problem for the Spurs was Rodman’s belief that David Robinson lacked commitment as an athlete. “Dennis had a real problem in his respect for David Robinson as a player,” Haley explained. “He had problems with David’s intensity and work ethic in practice. One thing about Dave. Dave could be the most talented player and athlete in the NBA. Dave is probably the greatest athlete in the game. Dave can go out and get 30 points and 12 rebounds without putting forth a real effort. He’s that good. Therefore, he’s not a big practice guy. Not a big work ethic guy. By [January], Dave would have sat out 30 practices. It’s tendinitis. It’s, ‘I’m sore today.’ Whatever it was, Dennis is a practice guy, and it didn’t sit well with Dennis. That caused a lot of their problems, just work ethic.
“Dave tried everything,” Haley said. “He tried everything imaginable to bond with Dennis Rodman, to get through with Dennis Rodman to form a friendship. I’m good friends with Dennis and I’m good friends with Dave. Dave would ask me, ‘Why don’t the three of us go to lunch? Why don’t we sit down and try to talk?’ He would try to talk to Dennis about basketball to form a bond. Dennis wouldn’t respond. Dave is very religious. He felt that part of his quest was to get through to Dennis Rodman on a religious level, to try to turn his life around. That didn’t work out at all.”
Rodman’s biggest problems involved his bank account. He was nearly broke despite a contract that paid him about $2.5 million annually. He owed substantial amounts of money to both teams he had played for, the Pistons and Spurs, and he hadn’t paid his agent in nearly three years. Settling up those accounts after pursuing his rock’n’roll lifestyle for years meant that he had very little left heading into the 1995-96 season.
He had turned 34 on May 13, 1995, an age when most hoop stars are looking at limited futures. It was clear that the Spurs wanted to trade him, rather than deal with another year of headaches. But they were having trouble finding takers. Rodman’s ideal scenario was to get with another team for the last year of his contract, perform well and sign a new two- or three-year deal in the neighborhood of $15 million.
“I’ll put $5 million in the bank, live off the interest and party my ass off,” Rodman told Playboy, just the kind of talk that made NBA general managers very nervous.
THE STRANGEST BULL
Because of NBA labor troubles, the summer of 1995 required a moratorium on all trades and contract moves, which meant that Rodman’s status with San Antonio wasn’t resolved until days before training camps were set to open. When a move was finally made, Rodman found sanctuary in the least expected of places, in Chicago, probably the city in the NBA where Rodman was hated most because of his brash intimidation of the Bulls during his days as a Detroit Piston.
The Bulls, though, were desperate for a quality power forward, and Rodman’s rebounding and intimidation were just the elements Chicago needed to contend for a fourth league title in 1996. Even Jordan and Pippen, who had loathed Rodman as a Piston, agreed for Krause to trade backup center Will Perdue for the Worm. That news elated Rodman, who badly wanted to find a basketball home. “I had no choice,” he said. “I feel like that I had a lot of negative energy going on in my life, and that was the best way to get rid of it.”
Before the trade was consummated, Jackson and Krause held extensive talks with Rodman. “We had Dennis in my home,” Krause recalled. “He stayed in a hotel but he came over and spent most of the days in my home. I asked him, ‘Dennis, why didn’t you get along with Billy McKinney (in Detroit)? Why didn’t you get along with Bob Bass (in San Antonio)?’ He looked at me and said, ‘They all want to be my friends.’ I said, ‘I don’t want to be your friend. I’m 56, you’re 34. What the fuck do I need to be your friend for? You’re sitting here with green hair and you got ear rings up your ass. We have nothing in common. I’ll leave you alone.’”
The discussions convinced Jackson and Krause that the eccentric forward could be incorporated into the team. Jackson, who was himself a bit of a rebel as a member of the New York Knicks back in the ‘70s, grew confident that he could coach Rodman. So the move was made, and as extra insurance for communicating with Rodman, the Bulls signed Haley to a $250,000 contract. Haley would be placed on injured reserve and kept there all season, which allowed him to travel with the team and keep things running smoothly for his buddy.
“It was a tough training camp because everybody was guarded,” Haley offered. “Again, you’re Michael Jordan. You’re Scottie Pippen. Why would you have to go over to Dennis? Michael Jordan made $50 million last year. Why would he have to go over and basically kiss up to some guy to get him to talk? They came over and shook his hand and welcomed him to the team, and this and that. But other than that, it was a slow process.”
Sports Illustrated came into town the first week of the preseason and wanted to pose one of Bulls star players with Rodman for a cover shot. Jordan, who had a running feud with SI, refused to pose. Pippen also declined, saying privately that he didn’t want to make a fool of himself. Finally, the magazine got Jackson to do the shot.
“The very first preseason game of the year,” Haley said, “Dennis goes in the game, Dennis throw the ball up in the stands and gets a delay-of-game foul and yells at the official, gets a technical foul. The first thing I do is I look down the bench at Phil Jackson to watch his reaction. Phil Jackson chuckles, leans over to Jimmy Cleamons, our assistant coach, and says, ‘God, he reminds me of me.’ Whereas last year, any tirade Dennis threw, it was ‘Get him out of the game! Sit his ass down! Teach him a lesson! We can’t stand for that here!’ Here in Chicago, it’s more, ‘Get it out of your system. Let’s go win a game.’”
Asked about Phil Jackson, Rodman replied, “Well, he’s laid back. He’s a Deadhead, and if he wanted to smoke a joint or two, he would.” Rodman laughed hard at that assessment, and when a reporter asked. “Is he your kind of coach?” he replied, “Oh yeah. He’s fancy free, don’t give a damn. With him it’s just, ‘Go out there and do the job, and let’s go home and have a cold one.’”
Jackson’s approach with Rodman soon worked to ease any tensions on the roster. “With Jordan and Pippen, you’re talking about two superstars who were not at all threatened by Dennis,” Haley said. “They didn’t care about his hair color. They don’t care about anything. If the man gets 20 rebounds a game and they win, that’s all they care about. What he does off the floor, they couldn’t care less about that or anything else, as long as he comes to work. And that’s what Dennis is about. ‘Leave me alone. Let me have my outside life. Let me come do my job as a player. Let my actions on the floor speak for me.’ The Bulls have been tremendous for Dennis. Again, e
veryone just gave him his space, and he just kind of slowly opened up.”
Once in 1995, when Rodman’s hair had been green for a while and was beginning to fade to black, Haley asked him, “Why don’t you just let it go black?”
Rodman told him, “I can’t let it go. My hair is part of my thing. I have to keep it colored. The fans want it. That’s what they expect.”
“He’s very well aware of what has gotten him where he is,” Haley said, “and he’s very intelligent in what it takes to make himself a star.
“He has catapulted himself through outrageous hair, tattoos, body piercing and outrageous comments and hardwork basketball, he has catapulted himself to the superstardom of a Magic Johnson or a Michael Jordan,” Haley said, “and to someone who’s never had that, it’s fun, it’s exciting. He’s one of the biggest names in the game, and he knows exactly why he’s there.”
Indeed, Rodman showed his value time and again in the 1996 playoffs, particularly when he manhandled a much larger Shaquille O’Neal and the Orlando Magic during the Eastern Conference finals. He was rewarded with a handsome boost in pay for the 1996-97 campaign but suffered through a knee injury and bouts of erratic play and misbehavior. Even so, his contributions outweighed his baggage. Thus Reinsdorf had agreed to bring him back for another run in 1997-98, but only if he behaved.
PAIR OF DICE LOST
After their win at home over New Jersey early in the 1997-98 season, the Bulls traveled to Cleveland and lost again, after which Jordan complained that they looked “like an expansion team.” Then they returned home and lost in the United Center to the Washington Wizards in a game remarkable for Jordan’s growing frustration. With Pippen out, teams could focus on him. Every basket became a fight. Normally a willing interview, he left after the game without speaking to the media.
Blood on the Horns Page 19