by Sam Smith
So I decided I’d cover the team just as I always had. I got my book advance. I had my computer and babysitting money. I’d travel and go to games and write all the daily stories and Sunday features and league notebooks. Then I’d set up a lunch after practice or dinner on the road with a player or coach, say it was to gather book material and discuss things that went on over a period of time. I started gathering the book information about a month after the season began, in December, and started writing the book in January.
My son, Connor, was about 18 months at the time, and I didn’t want to miss any more of those important times than I had to. So I’d get home from a practice on the off day, write my story for the newspaper, mess around with him until he went to sleep and then write at night. I was usually about two months behind on information, meaning in February I’d be working on material from December. It usually took several weeks of going to different players and coaches to find out what happened at a certain time. I’d take about four nights a week, usually from about 10 p.m. until about 4 a.m., and write. I did virtually all the writing for the book at those hours. I’ve never been able to wake early. My first newspaper job in Ft. Wayne, Indiana was for an afternoon newspaper that came out around 3 p.m., which meant you did a lot of your reporting in the morning. The news final deadline was about 1:30 p.m. So you’d have to be in the office by 7 a.m. I was at that job for almost four years and never felt rested. For the book, I’d write until maybe 4 a.m., then sleep until noon (my wife had the early shift and I’d take care of my son if he got up before 4 a.m. or 5 a.m.), and get ready for the game.
How did I decide what to put in the book? Well, there were several other beat writers with the team. So it was obvious what was being reported daily. My job as an author was to create more depth for the book, expanding on what everyone knew or thought they knew. The depth basically came from the follow-up meetings and storylines I pursued and things I’d find out months later. So that’s what happened? It was often made clear from players and coaches there were things they were okay with in a book they did not want to see in a newspaper. Something in the newspaper meant a cascade of immediate questions and perhaps a distraction for the team. So many times players and coaches would tell me I could write something but not for the newspaper, and we’d do the interview on those grounds. Certain things were vital for history if not necessarily for immediacy.
***
The Jordan Rules wasn’t a difficult story to get if you looked. For several years, players would tell me something about how Jordan had held someone up to ridicule, or skipped a mandatory workout of some sort. Phil had explained publicly, which was part of his brilliance, that the pretty girl gets kissed. In other words, some people just get better treatment because society sees them as more special than others. For instance, it was mandatory for everyone to listen to Phil’s pregame talk. Michael never did. His pregame habit, or at least one of them, was to have a bowel movement while Phil was making his pregame remarks. I don’t believe Michael was making any sort of editorial statement. But it became a habit, and fortunately for him he was very regular. Players would tell me to write about it. I would tell them to say it and I’d quote them. They couldn’t do that, of course. So players were only too happy to fill me in on intimate details about the team. For example, as told in the book, Michael was brutal with Dennis Hopson. It was nothing personal, sort of like his and Pippen’s stupidity toward Toni Kukoc during the 1992 Olympics, brutalizing him only because Krause was so committed to recruiting Kukoc. Hopson wasn’t open to discussing the situation, but teammates and friends were anxious to talk about how he was treated.
Michael regularly picked on Horace Grant to the point of embarrassment, and Horace was happily anxious to talk about it. I’ve been friendly with Horace and many have suggested he was the main source for the book, and certainly the source of certain information. But any reading of the book shows so much he could never have known about. Scottie would hang out with Michael, but then Michael would tell Scottie to fetch something for him and Scottie would be furious and quite open about it. He’d invite me back to his home and fill me in. For Michael, it was just fun, and often I thought the players took the joking too seriously. But it’s not easy spending so much time together, especially with someone so celebrated when you’re used to being a star athlete your whole life. For all of Michael’s teammates, that ended as they were pushed out of the way, literally, as people tried to get at Jordan. Fans would ask Pippen and Grant to get Jordan’s autograph for them.
Michael had been marketed as perfect. And he looked the part with that magnificent smile and spectacular game. I always figured The Jordan Rules took some pressure off him by showing he wasn’t perfect and didn’t have to be, and that the fans would still love him. Not that the book did him any great favors. But he always worried about being unloved and unpopular, and here I was writing about him being a real guy, hardly a criminal but difficult at times. How dare me! And you know what, they still loved him. Maybe even more.
I did see in Michael the elements of sporting genius. I wrote in the book about how B.J. Armstrong went to the library (they had to use those back then) to check out books on genius to help understand Jordan better. I loved that and knew B.J. would have a special career after basketball; he is now a highly regarded agent. It’s the genius of guys like Kobe, as well. Really, most of them, like Kareem, Oscar, Isiah. You didn’t mess around with Larry Bird. If you wanted to have fun, Kevin McHale was the good time guy, not Larry. Brilliance rarely includes kindness. The really great ones have this streak in them that manifests itself in different ways. Kobe’s competitiveness is much like Jordan’s, and like Jordan, he’s tough on teammates. But Jordan was more comfortable with people and outgoing in a way Kobe never understood how to be. With Jordan, there generally was a good reason why he said or did something, and I always tried to explain what it was.
One of the more controversial pages of the book included a joking comment attributed to Jordan by two sources about someday owning a golf club and omitting Jews. I never noticed the slightest bit of racism, anti-Semitism or any bias toward any group or individual by Jordan. He had been playing golf at a local club with primarily Jewish membership and said he wanted to join. They said he could play anytime he wanted, but membership was closed. His joke was in response to that. I was writing about how even great stars and celebrities had doors closed to them, sometimes because of race, and Jordan’s comment was a throwaway line; in no way did anyone involved take it seriously. But when the book was released, that was one of those “out of context” lines that stung.
As the season progressed, the story was telling itself. There was the tough start, and Phil’s statement after the December loss in Detroit that the team might have to be broken up. The Gulf War started during a road trip to Atlanta, as I recall, and everyone was a little uptight even though we didn’t think there was going to be an attack on us. There was the All-Star break win in Detroit that everyone felt was a turning point. At the time I didn’t agree. But then there was the amazing post All-Star break run to the playoffs when it seemed they’d never lose.
It was becoming surreal. The season had only been all about beating Detroit. I remember talking with managing partner Jerry Reinsdorf in the fall and we agreed it was Portland’s year with their fast start and previous loss in the Finals. Everyone just wanted to shut down the Pistons. People remember that final game in Detroit when the Pistons walked off the floor in the waning seconds of their famous loss to the Bulls, but not everyone recalls that Jordan had provoked it the day before with comments about how, despite winning two titles, the Pistons weren’t true or deserving champions because of their style of play. In those pre-Internet days, the Pistons’ players saw the comments just before the game and were fuming. Jordan had distracted them, exactly as he’d planned, even though it was almost unprecedented to talk that way about a team that was close to winning three titles. That was Michael.
And then the Bulls
stunningly blew through the Lakers in the Finals and that post-game locker room was the best I’ve felt for any sports team I’ve been around, primarily because I knew them so well, and because I knew how much they wanted it and how much disappointment they’d all gone through. And perhaps more than anyone outside that locker room, I knew how difficult it could be.
And then a few months later there were accusations that one person was trying to destroy what could be a sports dynasty for Chicago, the only one of its kind, and the reason for its disintegration would be Sam Smith.
***
When you cover a team that goes all the way, it’s both exhilarating and exhausting. The newspaper becomes a beast and all those stories you slaved over that were cut and trimmed, well, now they can’t get enough. Keep feeding the beast, reporters like to say.
I finished up the post-season basketball stuff for the newspaper, and then went back to putting the final chapters of the book together. Phil Jackson was terrific in walking me through some things I never could have known. He understood the difference between a book and newspaper: that the newspaper was “history in a hurry” and the book was for posterity. He told me about that last famous timeout when he asked Michael who was open. It was the perfect ending I was thinking about. How did Michael finally get it and get there? I thought I’d end the book that way, but the editor asked for a bit of the parade and rally. I was only too happy to be done with the editing process as well.
I preferred the daily newspaper for the immediacy and opportunity to move onto the next story quickly. It was difficult reading and rereading and editing, and by the summer I couldn’t bear to look at the book again. I sent in probably 100 pages more than they wanted and said they could edit it. I’d read that book enough times. That was in July, and after a few months off I was ready for the next season. I didn’t think much about the book. Really. I’d thought it would come out, get a few mentions and be forgotten. I guess I really was too close to it.
***
First came the White House. Later we’d all learn that Jordan skipped the team trip to the White House so he could go on a gambling weekend with some shady characters. Ultimately his gambling issues would become the stuff of potential scandal but no, the league didn’t banish him in 1993, according to the NBA urban legend that is rivaled only by the myth of NBA lottery fixes, spontaneous combustion, Sasquatch and someone actually committing a charge against Vlade Divac.
Initially, the Bulls players scattered quickly after the championship, and the organization didn’t have time to schedule the White House trip. The timing wasn’t right once training camp started, so the team asked the players to come in a few days early to go to see the president. Jordan declined, saying he had a family obligation and not even the president was more important than your family. Heck, Michael could have driven over the president after winning a title for Chicago and everyone would have condemned the president for not moving. Of course, the issues that resonated in The Jordan Rules—the internal feuds on the team and Jordan sometimes stretching his advantage—became evident. Horace Grant and Scottie Pippen said if Michael wasn’t going they weren’t going either. They didn’t have anywhere else to be, but that wasn’t the point. Eventually, the team leaned on Pippen and Grant to go, but there was no negotiating with Jordan.
It became a media issue and Jordan addressed it in a press conference as training camp began. The book was still weeks from coming out. I’d asked a few questions at a basically supportive press conference, and Jordan answered me unusually harshly. I wasn’t sure what that was about, but as he walked off I made a small talk comment and he returned a curse and insult. I later learned Jordan had heard details about the book from Sports Illustrated, which had some excerpts the publisher was trying to sell. Sports Illustrated would turn them down as they were trying to persuade Jordan to do a Sportsman of the Year interview and didn’t think running the excerpts would help. As Jordan has carried on a boycott of Sports Illustrated for more than a decade over coverage critical of his baseball playing, I’d say they were right. The excerpts appeared in the Tribune instead.
And then all heck broke out. There weren’t galleys or review copies of the book since the publisher skipped a step to bring it out more quickly. So no one had it. Jay Mariotti, then a columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times and a preeminent provocateur, put together a column suggesting he’d seen the book. He hadn’t, and his page one column in the Sun-Times contained some huge factual errors, such as suggesting the book detailed the nightlife activities of the players. There wasn’t one such word, but now the media around the country was picking that up and calling for my firing for writing such a nasty tell-all.
Mariotti went hardest where it would hurt Chicago. He said the book was an attack on the team that would divide it forever, and that as a result, there was no way the Bulls would ever win again. It was the beginning of a chaos that I never saw coming and never could have imagined.
The Sun-Times was a big time competitor of the Tribune then, and apparently saw a way to undermine the Tribune as well. When the book did come out, they rushed to get copies and pulled out sections wildly out of context. Getting tipped off about one such story, I called a Sun-Times editor to say I’d add the context. He said they had what they needed and it wasn’t about being fair or accurate. It was journalistic mayhem.
By the time the book came out, I was no longer the full-time beat writer; the Tribune had created an NBA column for me that allowed me to do national stuff along with some Bulls coverage. As a result, I wasn’t on that season’s first annual long road trip, I was in Chicago in the middle of the firestorm. The Bulls were in the midst of sweeping the road trip in a 14-game winning streak that gave them a 15-2 start. It took a bit of the end-of-the-world pressure off me, but not much. The publisher was delirious. You can’t buy publicity like this, they were saying. But they weren’t in the middle of it. Mariotti had even managed to work me into a column about the Cubs and Don Zimmer, condemning me in a tortured way for the Cubs’ problems.
A reporter prides himself on not being part of the story. Now I was a big, big part of the story. I stopped answering the phone, and the newspaper told me to stay away for a week until things cooled down. A wire service put out a story of “author missing.” My friend from the Daily Herald, Mike Imrem, began calling me Salman Rushdie after the British novelist who went into hiding after the Ayatollah Khomeini issued a warrant for his death. He survived, and Imrem still calls me Salman. My wife was a wreck. My son was two at the time and I decided to spend time with him roaming a mall. I’d overhear people saying they’d get that Sam Smith if they ever saw him. Fortunately, I was shorter in person and widely unrecognized.
A local TV reporter doing one of those goofy walking reports was kicking the book down a sewer. Someone told me they’d seen it being burned on TV. But there were uplifting moments as well. Mike Royko, who was a hero for so many writers, never talked to many of us at the Tribune. But he sent me a great note saying to tell the Sun-Times to shove it, or something similarly colorful. Bill Cartwright called and said not to worry, that these things always pass.
***
My principal mentor in journalism was my first editor at my first newspaper job at the Ft. Wayne, Ind. News Sentinel, Ernie Williams. I’d been an accounting student in college and then worked for a CPA firm for a few years before going to grad school to get a Master’s in journalism. I was a late starter in finding myself, never having much support at home or in the New York City public school system, where our class sizes were generally 45 to 50 in grade school and high school and the teachers were generally in their 50’s or 60’s and anxious to get that pension that has bankrupted our municipalities. So about three quarters of the way through my accounting degree at Pace U. in New York City, I took a job as sports editor of the college newspaper. We didn’t have journalism classes. This was the era of civil rights and Vietnam and nobody much cared about sports at the university. The job paid. I needed money, a
nd, after all, how hard could it be? I’d read the sports pages of seven daily newspapers since I was about eight. I could write a column. It wasn’t exactly classic journalism, but I was playing for the college baseball team, and I was on the bowling team, and I was substituting at times on the golf and fencing teams. So I pretty much knew all the players. It was more like your tree house club newspaper. Since we had no journalism department, the newspaper hired a professor from Columbia, Melvin Mencher, to critique the paper, and for the first time ever in my academic life someone liked something I did. Hey, I finally had a calling.
I’d later gotten caught up in Watergate and Nixon and politics by the time I got to Ft. Wayne, where I was hired to be an investigative reporter. I’d been an accountant, and so a city budget wasn’t hieroglyphics to me. There’s a general rule about politics, that the lower the level the uglier it gets. I did investigative work when I went to Washington for a regional wire, States News. I wrote about congressional misdeeds and outrages. But Ernie taught me the greatest rule, not only for investigative reporting, but for all reporting. I did some major exposes that had people facing jail and ruin. The day those stories ran he always made me go see the person I had written about. This is how you stand behind your work, he told me. So you’d better have it right and better be able to defend it.
So the Bulls came back home from that Western Conference road trip with a 13-2 record, and with The Jordan Rules still reverberating, I walked into the Bulls locker room, went over to Jordan who was sitting at his locker idling through those ticket requests, and said, “If you have any issues with me, I’m here and you can let me know.”