The Bulls’ blowout win in Game 3 had left the Hornets in tatters with Anthony Mason on the bench at the end of the game screaming profanities at coach Dave Cowens. That, in turn, set the stage for the Bulls to breeze in Game 4, 94-80, followed by a tighter win in Game 5 back in Chicago to close out the series.
In Chicago’s 93-84 win in Game 5, Jordan finished with 33 points while Rodman, playing on his 37th birthday, had 21 rebounds. Jordan scored 11 of his points in the fourth-quarter. With less than a minute left, the crowd at the United Center began chanting “MVP, MVP.”
Indeed, word had already begun circulating that he had outpolled Utah’s Karl Malone in the balloting for the award.
That same week, Fortune magazine reported that Jordan had the most earnings of any sports endorser in 1997 with $ 47 million dollars, almost twice as much as the $24 million earned by golfer Tiger Woods. And another poll of advertising executives found that far and away Jordan continued to be the sports celebrity most coveted as a product pitchman.
FILM CLIPS
As usual, Jackson had prepared his team for the playoffs by splicing pieces of a popular film around cuts from the game tapes. That way he kept them from being bored by all the basketball while exposing them to a new or overlooked feature film. Each year during the Bulls’ run of championships he had come up with something unique. One year it was “Apocalypse Now.” In 1996, he had used “Pulp Fiction,” and in 1997 the selection was “Silverado.”
For the Indiana and Utah series in the 1998 playoffs, Jackson used “The Devil’s Advocate,” a dark Taylor Hackford film starring Al Pacino and Keanu Reeves. Pacino was literally the devil, disguised as a New York law firm executive who specialized in finding and recruiting the best talent.
Asked if the central antagonist in the film was a thinly disguised reference to Krause, Jud Buechler laughed and said, “Don’t go there. Don’t even go there.”
“It’s a little far out,” Tex Winter said of Jackson’s decision to select a film in which the devil was a talent-scouting executive.
It wasn’t a message lost on the players.
“Who is the Devil?” forward Dickey Simpkins said with a smile. “I can’t answer that question. That might be trouble. I got to wait until after I sign another contract before I answer that.”
The film also had ties to Jackson’s circumstances. Reeves played a young Florida lawyer who had been raised in a fundamentalist home and was later recruited by the devil’s New York firm because he had never lost a case. In fact, Reeves was so intent on winning that he seemed willing to sacrifice his marriage in the name of competition. Jackson had made it no secret that his own marriage to wife June had suffered because of his intense commitment to the Bulls.
“It’s a very disturbing movie,” Buechler said. “I don’ know. Phil usually has a hidden meaning in all those things, but this year I’m not quite sure what the meaning is. It involves the devil, some pretty gory stuff in there, that’s for sure.”
Buechler, whose wife was pregnant and about to deliver during the playoffs, said he had to cover his eyes during disturbing scenes involving birth issues.
Jackson said the film had many applications, including several for Rodman. In the film, Reeves’ wife kept changing hair colors trying to find her identity as she sank deeper and deeper into madness. “It has applications where needed,” Jackson said, “and I try not to make a big distinction about who the applications are for. There are some things that are obviously for Dennis in ‘The Devil’s Advocate,’ dealing with the darker side of life. He loves movies so much. There are just some basic statements about free will and about self determination, that, regardless of what you believe, you are a determinator of your own life. There’s other things that are about being possessed or losing control of your own life. It makes some sense to me that can be played around with.”
Played around with indeed. In some scenes, certain characters’ faces turn grotesquely ugly, and in another, Reeves’ wife uses a broken window pane to cut her own throat while in a mental hospital. Jackson spliced these scenes into sections of game tape that showed bouts of ugly play by the Bulls. “We had a couple of cuts of the guy’s wife when she looked in the mirror and turned real ugly,” Winter said. “He had that in at a time when we had a couple of real ugly plays. Finally, when we did something really bad, it showed her slitting her throat. Committed suicide. The thing of it is, this devil’s advocate makes them do all these things, causes it all.”
These scenes were particularly useful to Jackson if Jordan seemed too intent on one-on-one play, Winter explained. “Sometimes when there was too much one on one, he’d maybe get the ugly scene in there, or he’d suggest we’re cutting our own throat. You know?”
Jordan and his teammates laughed at the ways Jackson presented these notions to them, Winter said. “It’s a good way to get across points without your having to say much.”
Winter saw it as Jackson’s special way of speaking to Jordan, of reminding the superstar about the need to include teammates and to avoid trying to win games by himself. “These guys, Michael and Scottie in particular, these guys have been with Phil just that long,” Winter said. “They’ve begun to interpret a lot of things now that they didn’t understand at all at first. But they’ve been there so long they can practically read his mind on it now.”
“Phil does a lot of stuff that if you just let it pass, you don’t really understand,” Bill Wennington said. “But if you think about it, he’s trying to get us motivated or thinking at a deeper level. Sometimes we catch on, and sometimes we don’t. I think Phil’s and Michael’s relationship is very special. They communicate in their own way on their own level, and they do so very well. There are a lot of times when things aren’t going well and we need to move the ball around, and it’s in Michael’s hands a lot. Phil relates that to Michael by saying, ‘Hey, you know, we gotta move the ball around a little bit,’ without demeaning him or saying, ‘You did it wrong.’”
The other members of the Bulls sensed that Jackson could say those things to Jordan while maybe no other coach could, Wennington said.
Asked if the film could be applied to the larger issues that the Bulls faced this season, Jackson said, “A lot of it is. The thing about being strangers in a strange land. And little stuff, like there’s a statement, ‘Behold. I send you as a sheep before the wolves.’ I’ve got the crowd in Indiana and Utah (Chicago’s final foes of the season) both and the referees’ calls, and all those kind of little distractions that go on when you’re out there playing on the road. Both of those teams are involved in this movie, how you have to be self-reliant as a basketball team.”
Each game’s scouting tape brought another group of segments from the film. Asked what he drew from the viewing, Steve Kerr answered quickly, “Nothing, except that it’s a sick movie. That’s all. Phil told us there’s no redeeming value. He’s just doing it for entertainment.”
It was easily the strangest movie Jackson had shown the team, Buechler said. “It’s been his worst selection out of all the selections he’s made. I think maybe Phil would agree to that.”
“I’m not sure what the message is supposed to be,” Tex Winter said. “But there’s scenes in there that are very disturbing.”
HOOSIERS
The Indiana Pacers, coached by Larry Bird, stepped up as the Bulls’ foes in the Eastern Conference finals, but in the first two games Chicago promptly smothered the Pacers in pressure. Scottie Pippen, in particular, so hounded and harassed Pacer point guard Mark Jackson that he had Bird pleading for the officials to bring some relief. Harper, too, played his role by shutting down Reggie Miller.
The Pacers’ pain was measured in their 26 turnovers in Game 1.
“Pippen was hyped up and they let him hang on Mark to bring the ball up,” Bird fussed.
In the midst of it all, Bird still had to pause and pay homage to Jo
rdan. “No question since I’ve been round, he and Magic are the best I’ve seen,” the Indiana coach told reporters. “Believe it or not, every year in this league you learn a little bit more. He might not have the skills like he did when he was young. He might not shoot as high a percentage. But you become a better player as you get older.”
The league acknowledged as much by naming Jordan the MVP before Game 2 of the series, making him, at 35, the oldest to claim the award. It was his fifth time to earn the honor.
“It’s a cheap 35,” Jordan said. “I didn’t play much of my second year (foot injury) and I sat out 18 months (retirement and baseball). I don’t really have the time on the court a normal 35 would have if they played each and every game. To win it at this age means I made the right choice to still play the game because I can still play it at the highest level.”
The day before Game 2, Bill Russell had presented Jordan the award, followed by a second ceremony right before tipoff featuring commissioner David Stern and a 40-second standing ovation from the United Center crowd. Afterward, Jordan was confronted with the need to prove he deserved it. “I’ve always said that getting that type of trophy is added pressure—you have to go out and live up to it at some particular time,” he told reporters. “Tonight was no different—I felt pressure to go out and prove that you guys didn’t make any mistakes in your voting.”
Clearly there was no mistake.
The Bulls were up 98-91 late in the fourth when Indiana scored four points in less than 10 seconds to pull to 98-95. When Jordan answered with a drive, he slipped but somehow managed to keep his dribble, get back up and cut his way through a scrum of defenders to hit a runner that bounced around and in.
Next he nailed a 14-foot fallaway on the baseline to kill the Pacer resurgence. He finished with 41 points, the 35th postseason game of his career in which he had scored 40 or more points. He shot 13-for-22 from the field and 15-for-18 from the line with five assists, four of Chicago’s 15 steals and four rebounds.
Rodman, on the other hand, had only two points and six rebounds in 24 minutes after being held out of the starting lineup for the second straight game. He had spent a good portion of the night in the locker room riding an exercise bike. When Jackson wanted to insert him into the game, an assistant trainer had to fetch him. “It was irritating having to send for him,” Jackson admitted. “I will have a talk with him in the next couple days to see if we can set him straight.”
Jordan’s main help came from Pippen, who had 21 points, six rebounds, five steals, five assists and three blocked shots, and Toni Kukoc, who scored 16 points.
For some reason, Krause chose Game 2 as the time to approach Jordan in his private room in the Bulls’ locker room to discuss the star’s comments critical of team management in a recent New Yorker article. The result was a heated exchange between the star and GM. “For some reason Jerry wanted to do this,” a team employee revealed. “Jerry was representing Reinsdorf in saying they were really upset about what Michael said. Jerry tried to reason with him about the New Yorker article. Apparently Michael went right back in his face, saying, ‘Don’t you dare try to challenge me about it, not with all the manipulating of the press you guys do.’ He’s not putting up with any of that shit.”
Another team official heard about the incident and remarked, “Oh, gee, that’s real smart, Jerry trying to go in there and smooth things over. He’s the wrong person to do that.”
Jordan emerged from the exchange on his way to the postgame media interview session. He looked at a team employee and said, “Fuck your two bosses.”
“I don’t think Michael and I raised our voices,” Krause said of the incident. “There was something in the New Yorker article that had pissed Jerry off, something that made Jerry very mad.”
Reinsdorf was angry because Jordan had told writer Henry Louis Gates, Jr., about the team chairman’s comment that he would “live to regret” giving Jordan the $30 million contract in 1996. Actually, during their 1997 contract negotiations in Las Vegas, Reinsdorf raised the issue, telling Jordan that he had heard the star was upset by something he had said during the 1996 negotiations. He and Jordan discussed the issue, Reinsdorf said, and they made up and agreed to put it behind them. Or so the chairman thought until he read Jordan’s angry words published in the June 1 issue of the New Yorker. “I went to Michael myself,” Reinsdorf said of his anger. “I went down after a game we won in the Indian series, I said, ‘What’s this shit in the New Yorker? I thought we had put this behind us.’ He said, ‘I gave that interview out a year ago. That interview is a year old!’”
Reinsdorf then recalled that the article indicated Jordan was interviewed in Michael Jordan’s Restaurant in Chicago, and suddenly Jordan’s explanation made sense. “Michael hasn’t been in that restaurant in a year,” the team chairman said. “He got in a fight with his partners. They’re in litigation. So I realized he was right. The New Yorker interview was done in June 1997 before we cleared the air in Las Vegas.”
It almost seemed as if some media grinch was conspiring to deepen the Bulls’ woes, as if the team’s key figures weren’t struggling enough in their relationships. A huge part of the problem was the lack of personal communication between the key parties, which left them hanging on every media message, sometimes taking humbrage even at the turn of phrase.
The media, unaware of the New Yorker confrontation, focused instead on Rodman’s behavior during Game 2. “Dennis is fine, he don’t have no problem with anybody,” Harper told reporters. “He was late to a game. He’s late to every game. Who cares? We know Dennis as a team, and the guys let him do what he wants to do as long as he steps on the basketball court and plays basketball.”
“I think Dennis has had to compromise his principles more than I have had to compromise mine,” Jackson joked, adding, “Dennis has given up his whole life—wrestling, movies, MTV. Think of the things he’s had to give up to play basketball.”
Yes, Jackson told reporters, Rodman came late to games and was tardy for virtually every practice. “He doesn’t like his money. We take it from him and find ways to give it back to him,” the coach quipped.
Following Game 2, Bird was even more incensed about the free rein officials had given Pippen on defense. “I’d like to see Scottie Pippen guard Michael Jordan fullcourt like Scottie guards Mark Jackson and see how long he stays in the game,” Bird said. “I tell my guys, ‘You’re not going to get the calls in this series. You’ve just got to try to play through it,’ which they have been. I thought Scottie got away with a lot more than he did the other night.”
The comment brought a smile from Jordan and this reply: “Scottie and I have had some great battles in practice, and he didn’t get those calls, either.”
On Thursday, before heading to Indiana, the Bulls players had declined to speak with the media, which netted a $50,000 fine for the team from the NBA. In playoffs past, the players had sometimes made such refusals, and the team quietly paid the fine. But this time, Krause was incensed and lit into Jackson on the team plane in front of the players. “It’s your fault,” the GM yelled.
Later, on the tarmac at the Indiana airport, the two exchanged angry words as the players and support personnel watched from a waiting bus, unable to hear exactly what they were saying to each other.
“We got fine $50,000 for not showing up at the media session,” Krause said, adding that in the past he’d gotten information that “our coach said, ‘Hey, guys, let’s fuck management. Don’t show up at the media session.’” Krause’s allegation seemed to support Jackson’s concerns that the general manager had a spy among the players who would pass information to management. That was nonsense, Krause said, adding that Jackson “had his own spies.”
In fact, Krause said, he had been forced to downplay his friendship with Toni Kukoc because of Jackson’s paranoia. “We couldn’t be friends because of Phil’s craziness, becaus
e Phil takes it out on Toni,” the GM said. “I never even talked to Toni about basketball.”
Krause also questioned the accuracy of a Kukoc quote in which the Croatian forward claimed to be closer to Jackson than to Krause (the quote was tape recorded in a private locker room interview in Toronto in March). As for the confrontation on the plane and on the tarmac in Indianapolis, Krause said, “I was really mad. When I left the airplane Phil was waiting for me at the bottom of the steps. He said, ‘Why couldn’t you have done that in private?’”
Some staff members figured Krause was simply using the opportunity to vent his frustrations with Jackson. Asked about it later, Jackson said, “I did approach him in a private moment, because I thought in a private moment we could address it. I said, ‘There was a better way to handle this than that (berating him in front of the team).’ And he didn’t want to hear it. He just wanted to go ahead and proceed down the same path he had chosen, which has the tendency to make me rigid. Especially when I had come over to try and get him back on the right page.
“I realize Jerry’s a…” Jackson said, then hesitated. “I don’t want to get into ethnic slander, but from what I’ve known of all my encounters living with Jewish society most of my life, when the kaddish is said, that person becomes a nonentity. And Jerry basically said the kaddish (a Hebrew death prayer) over me. And the funeral was said, and I’ve become a nonentity to him in his life. So it had become very difficult for him to talk to me, to address me personally, and I understood that. He is not going to address me personally again. That’s basically his feeling about it in some form or fashion. I’ve recognized that for the last couple of months. So I understood a little bit about his mentality, because he couldn’t really look me in the face when he was trying to get his piece said. I understood that he was doing something he felt he had to do. He didn’t want to have a personal contact with me. He still had to do this on some organizational level.”
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