by Sam Smith
Hardly a vote of confidence. “I know what I would do if I were coach,” he added a few weeks into the season. “I’d determine our strengths and weaknesses and utilize them. And it’s pretty clear what our strength is.”
The first week of October the players started drifting back to the Multiplex, the suburban health club where the team practiced. Jordan said he was getting in shape on the golf course, as always: “I’m walking instead of using an electric cart.” But Jordan had also been to Europe on a promotional trip for Nike, and now he was talking about playing there after his Bulls contract ended in 1996, perhaps for a team he’d co-own with Nike. Jordan was mobbed everywhere he went in Europe, and his agent assured him he could earn perhaps $10 million per year there. Then he could buy his own golf course.
The Bulls had finally assembled the team that would begin the 1990–91 season. Charles Davis and Ed Nealy were gone, as was Jeff Sanders (a 1990 first-round draft choice who was a flop); the Bulls gave him to Miami with the condition that if the lowly Heat kept him, they would have to pay his salary. He would last a week. The Bulls wanted to keep free-agent forward Scott Williams from North Carolina, in part because Jackson thought he was a better athlete than Sanders, with the ability to be a backup at both the forward and center positions; Sanders, whom the players had dubbed “Sleepy” and whose languid ways had made him an object of almost constant ridicule, hadn’t even been an adequate backup power forward. Also, Jordan had wanted a North Carolina player on the team, and when Walter Davis wouldn’t come, the Bulls agreed to take Williams, whom Krause had scouted extensively before the draft and homed in on as soon as the draft was over.
So the twelve spots were filled: Jordan, Pippen, Grant, Cartwright, and Paxson, the starting five, plus holdover reserves Armstrong, King, Perdue, Hodges, and new additions, Hopson, Levingston, and Williams.
Grant had worked out almost all summer and looked strong, having put on about twenty pounds of upper-body muscle. Cartwright and Paxson, after minor surgeries, were starting to work out again, as was Hopson. Levingston was back in town, finally ready to sign a contract. And King and Armstrong, rookies in 1989–90, were thinking that they might even become starters this season.
Scottie Pippen was thinking he’d just let the Bulls see how they would do without him.
He had left Hamburg, Arkansas, about ten miles from the Louisiana border, and was heading for Memphis in his $80,000 black Mercedes, to the office of his agent and friend, Jimmy Sexton. He had been staying with his mother, Ethel; though Pippen took quickly to the fast NBA life, with new cars and clothes and plenty of night-life, he most enjoyed returning to Hamburg for the summer. His father, Preston, who had been disabled by a major stroke and confined to a wheelchair after working for years in the local paper mills, had died the previous spring during the playoffs. For Pippen, the youngest of twelve children, who had been babieid by his parents and brothers and sisters, home was a place of sweet memories.
“We were poor,” Pippen recalls, “but I always had enough. I’d do baby-sitting for my sisters or wash dishes or run errands. It seemed like there was always something for me to do.”
Pippen’s rise to the NBA is perhaps the most remarkable success story among the Bulls. Sure, Jordan didn’t even make his high school varsity as a sophomore, and John Paxson would have to stay back a grade to make his high school team; Craig Hodges couldn’t get a college scholarship in his own city, and Grant was still thinking about becoming a marine when he was in college. “Players from places like Sparta, Georgia, don’t get to play in the NBA,” Grant figured at the time.
But neither do poor kids from Hamburg, Arkansas, especially those whose collegiate goal is to be the manager of the football team. “I just liked hanging around with the guys,” Pippen explained, not at all offended at picking up the dirty uniforms. “I really preferred that, because then I could hang out, but I wouldn’t get hurt playing. I had the best job of anyone.
“You always idolize professional sports guys when you’re small. But I just liked football a lot when I was young, and I still do. I didn’t have the size to play the game, but I wanted to be around it as much as 1 could. I can’t say I had any ambition to be a pro basketball player.”
College wasn’t a high priority in the Pippen family; only one of Pippen’s eleven brothers and sisters had gone. But the family urged Scottie to go; everyone wanted the best for the youngest. Money was scarce, and he wasn’t exactly being offered scholarships. Pippen had finally made the varsity basketball team as a senior, although in Hamburg that wasn’t a major achievement. His coach, Donald Wayne, recommended Pippen as a possible walk-on candidate, to Don Dyer, the basketball coach at the University of Central Arkansas in Conway, just north of Little Rock. Wayne felt Pippen had potential, but he had accomplished so little that no scholarship offers were forthcoming, so Dyer helped Pippen obtain financial aid.
“I was glad about that,” said Pippen, “but I wasn’t really thinking about playing basketball. I was going to college to be the manager of the football team.”
In high school, Pippen played point guard, which would prove vital to his development; like Julius Erving, he learned the game as a small man who then grew, and in college he would eventually play all five positions. Pippen was a barely six-foot-one-inch, 150-pound guard in high school, so when he grew about four inches after his freshman year in college, he became an offensive force. He was that rarest of players, one who could take down the rebound at one end of the court, dribble the length of the court, and then finish strong at the other end with a slam dunk. Only a few NBA players can consistently do it.
But those thoughts had hardly entered his mind when he prepared to attend the University of Central Arkansas. Pippen had never traveled much, and life was changing fast. He had grown into a terrific athlete almost overnight. He had the coordination and talent, but was small, so he started lifting weights and working on his conditioning. He improved his diet and grew those four inches after his freshman year, when he played in twenty games but averaged just 4 shots per game, 4.3 points, and 2.9 rebounds. When he came back to school as a sophomore, he was not just better, but better than everyone else.
“I was really a nobody my freshman year,” recalls Pippen, who would grow to a muscular 6-7 and 220 pounds by the 1990–91 season. He remained wispy-looking, his long, flat nose and angular Native Indian features providing the look of an intense warrior. “But then as a sophomore, I was better than any player on the team by far, including the juniors and seniors. I had been playing all the time that summer, so I never lost my coordination as I grew.”
When he was a sophomore, his averages suddenly increased to 18.5 points and 9.2 rebounds on 56 percent shooting, most of that from dunking. Although Pippen would become a proficient three-point shooter in college, his weakness even as an NBA All-Star was his shot. Perhaps because he was so explosive to the basket and dangerous when close by, scouting reports recommended giving Pippen the outside shot. But unlike Jordan, who turned himself into the best shooting guard in the NBA after coming out of college as a suspect shooter, Pippen had a shooting style, with a floppy elbow and loose wrist, that would limit development. Still, he had enough talent to dominate his conference, where he became an NAIA all-American as a junior, when he averaged 19.8 points and 9.2 rebounds, and then again as senior, when he averaged 23.6 points and 10 rebounds.
The NBA pretty much assumes that if you’re a good player, good enough to play professional basketball, somebody has discovered you by the end of your high school career and you’ve gone to a major college. Central Arkansas didn’t fit that category, and NBA scouts always looked with suspicion at players with great statistics against inferior competition. There wasn’t much interest in Pippen. Not that he expected much; he had become something of a local celebrity in college and was pretty happy with that. But Marty Blake, the director of collegiate scouting for the NBA, checked up on Pippen and sent out a report suggesting he had potential to be
a good player. The Bulls listened.
Krause sent his top assistant, Billy McKinney, to check Pippen out, and McKinney discovered in Pippen the characteristics Krause loved in players: long arms, big hands, quickness, and jumping ability. But McKinney, who would later take a brief stint as general manager of the expansion Minnesota Timberwolves, said he couldn’t tell how good Pippen was because the competition was so bad. Maybe he was a second-round pick. Krause thought he might have a diamond in the rough and figured he’d fool everyone, but Pippen’s stock began to soar after impressive performances against some of the nation’s best players in postseason all-star games, which are attended by executives from every NBA team. Krause would eventually grow desperate in his bid to snare Pippen and would ask his agent, Jimmy Sexton, to take Pippen to Hawaii for a few weeks before the draft—the Bulls would pay all his expenses—which could make other teams think Pippen irresponsible so they wouldn’t draft him. “Thanks, Jerry, but we’ll stay here,” Sexton told him.
A player’s value rises and falls dramatically in those all-star games, and a classic Krause tale would emerge from one such gathering: In 1988, Krause had his eye on Dan Majerle, a rugged kid from small Central Michigan University, who would eventually make the Olympic team and become a first-round draft choice of the Phoenix Suns. Krause went to Majerle before the first of those games and asked him to pretend he was injured.
“Then we could get you with our third-round pick,” said Krause.
Majerle looked at Krause as if he were nuts.
“I think I might make a little more money if I were a first-round pick, Mr. Krause,” Majerle said.
Krause had not tried the same tactic with Pippen, though the proposed trip to Hawaii was close. The Bulls had the eighth and tenth picks in that draft, but Krause knew Pippen would not last until No. 8 because Sacramento, which had pick No. 6, was ready to grab him. So when Georgetown’s Reggie Williams was picked fourth by the Los Angeles Clippers, Krause worked a deal with Seattle, which had the fifth pick and had wanted Williams. The deal was an exchange of draft choices (Seattle got Chicago’s No. 8, plus its second-round pick in 1988 or ’89 and the option to exchange first-round picks in 1989). Krause had Pippen, and the Executive of the Year award, as he also came up with Grant a few picks later.
Pippen had some money coming his way for the first time in his life, although not the ability to shake his insecurity about what he had become. He was the fifth pick in the draft, behind big-time stars like David Robinson, Armon Gilliam, Williams, and Dennis Hopson. After him came all-Americans from major universities like North Carolina’s Kenny Smith and UCLA’s Reggie Miller.
So Pippen wanted, almost demanded, a long-term deal from the Bulls, six years for $5.1 million. The Bulls were agreeable, for Krause was ecstatic about Pippen. He viewed him not only as a potential All-Star but as a personal discovery, a case of outsmarting his peers, as every general manager yearns to do (but few with Krause’s intensity). And he would be right, so much so that when the Bulls later went shopping for talent, the only players they considered untradable were Jordan and Pippen.
But coming out of Hamburg, Pippen wasn’t even sure he could play in the NBA. His representative, Sexton, remembers Pippen asking how much he could get from his contract if he were released after his rookie season.
“He wanted security,” recalls Sexton. “That’s what he was most concerned with.”
Although he was a rural version of a street kid, wild, somewhat irresponsible and subject to running with people of questionable character, Pippen was intensely conservative with money. His father’s illness, which had put him out of work when Pippen was in junior high, and crippling illnesses to two brothers left Pippen obsessed with providing for the future. He never, never wanted to be without money now that he had some. When he signed a deal, he talked about an annuity before he talked about a new car, Sexton said.
“I just had my mind set on one thing after going through college,” Pippen said. “I wanted to get money to help my family. I felt this was a chance for me to give my mom some of the things I wanted her to have.”
So Pippen began sending home a regular allowance, bought his mother a new car, and built the family a sprawling ranch-style home to accommodate his father’s wheelchair needs. In later years, Pippen would always return there. “It’s real comfortable, the most comfortable house for me,” he says. “I could just sit there and know we’re all enjoying it and that made me feel good.”
But now, as his teammates were in Chicago preparing to begin the 1990–91 season, Pippen wasn’t feeling so good. He’d just left that big house in Hamburg and was driving east through Mist and Thebes on U.S. 82. He was heading into Mississippi toward Memphis, Tennessee, where he would meet with Sexton. It was the first of October, just a few days before the opening of camp, and Pippen had made a decision: “I just thought I’d sit out a few days and see what they said. Maybe I’d even sit out all of training camp.”
Pippen was outraged at the bigger salaries being paid to teammates like Stacey King, who Pippen thought was lazy and lacking spirit. He’d heard rumors all summer about Levingston, about the Bulls being willing to pay him more than $1 million per year, and he wondered: How good is this guy? Could he play my position and replace me? Is that why they wanted him?
Pippen was to earn $765,000 in 1990–91 with two unguaranteed option years to come at the club’s discretion at $1.1 million and $1.25 million. When he had signed in 1987, those were considered lucrative figures, but the impact of the NBC TV deal had thrown all previous deals out of whack. Reggie Miller was about to sign a five-year, $16 million deal with Indiana, and Reggie Lewis, picked even farther down in that 1987 draft by Boston, was about to sign a $3-million-a-year deal. And Pippen’s next two years were still unguaranteed. Pippen bought a multimillion-dollar insurance policy, but he remained frightened that it could all vanish quickly.
He’d had that fear since his rookie season, when he averaged 8 points per game in about twenty minutes on the floor. From midseason on, Pippen had experienced pain in his back and legs, but team physicians couldn’t agree on the problem. Trainer Mark Pfeil told Pippen he only needed to stretch, and the general feeling was that Pippen was a malingerer. Pippen knew otherwise, and also knew that if something wasn’t done, his career was over. Sometimes he’d have to stop two or three times during his forty-minute drive to the Stadium to walk or stretch because he couldn’t sit in the car anymore. He’d never realized how far away his feet were before; he could never seem to reach them. He could dunk a basketball more easily than he could put on his socks. But the team insisted nothing was seriously wrong. Pfeil, who’d had a long career in Chicago listening to the whining of lazy athletes, became the team’s enforcer, telling Pippen he was weak and lazy. It was something Pippen would not quickly forget.
Eventually, the team would recognize that Pippen needed disk surgery, which he had after his rookie season. And he admits that as he lay in bed, he wondered if he’d ever play again. “I was scared,” he recalls. “I thought that was the end.”
But Pippen had a full recovery and moved into the starting lineup by late December of the following season. And now he was an All-Star, yet teammates like King and Hopson and Cartwright were all making more than he was. And the Bulls could hold him to three more seasons without the kind of raise he deserved. Pippen had worked out most of the summer back in Chicago and was quicker, jumping better, even shooting better. He felt lithe and strong—and underpaid.
As he rolled north, he came up with a plan. He was going to get a room in Memphis and hide out for a few days so the Bulls couldn’t find him. He’d enjoy knowing that Krause was squirming before the local media, unable to find him. His anger, as it is for most of the Bulls during contract negotiations, was directed at Krause.
Krause had gone to Pippen when Pippen started mumbling about wanting a new deal after the 1989–90 season, and said it was team policy not to renegotiate when a player has three ye
ars left on his contract. Pippen cursed out Krause and later told Sexton he wouldn’t talk to him anymore. Krause had had the same effect on John Paxson earlier in the summer, when Ed Nealy signed with Phoenix for almost $700,000 per year. Krause knew Paxson and Nealy had become close friends, so he told Paxson not to expect that kind of money when his contract ran out. Paxson didn’t want to make a scene, but he asked his lawyer to call Reinsdorf and request that Krause no longer talk with him—about anything.
And Krause had so angered Horace Grant during talks late in the 1989–90 season that Grant demanded to be traded on the eve of the playoffs. Krause had said Grant was unworthy of a big contract, unlike A. C. Green, whom Sexton, also Grant’s agent, had brought up for comparative purposes. When Sexton told Grant what Krause had said, the sensitive Grant could think of nothing but trying to hurt Krause in return.
But Reinsdorf was shrewd. He knew Krause annoyed players and their agents. He’d offer ridiculously low contracts just to make them fume. Krause initially told Grant he’d never get more than $800,000 per year; he eventually added $6 million over three years to his contract. Krause would compare a player unfavorably with others around the league and tell him the Bulls fully intended to enforce his contract. There was no bargaining with Krause.
So Reinsdorf would enter the negotiations. He was smooth and smart. He’d assure the agent and his player things could work out, that the Bulls thought highly of him, and immediately increase any “last” offer Krause had made. He was comforting and he’d order Krause to keep quiet, often right in front of the agent. It was a tactic Reinsdorf would use again and again, even as agents came to realize what was going on.