by Sam Smith
The Bulls were in Phoenix almost three full days before playing that Thanksgiving Eve game. That rare situation was because the Stadium was always leased to the circus the last part of November, so the NBA sent the Bulls on a long Western Conference road trip at that time. It’s why the players were never home for Thanksgiving. For a few years, the team met for a meal together, but that custom was discontinued in 1988; the players preferred not to eat together anymore. Grateful Pilgrims they were not. The Bulls had become a disparate group. Jordan rarely socialized with any of the players, although it was hard for him to go out in any case because of his celebrity. He liked to have friends in for long card games or to sneak out to a golf course. In some cities, like Oakland, where he had friends like Higgins, he could try out a nightclub they’d know. Jordan just didn’t socialize much with his teammates, and he even skipped mandatory events like the team’s preseason promotional bowling night or the Christmas party, preferring to pay a fine instead. Grant and Pippen were close, but Grant had become a TV junkie and liked to stay in his room these days. When many of the players went out to celebrate later in the season after the win over the Pistons in the playoffs, Grant went home to watch the game again with his father-in-law. He always went straight to his room after games to watch the half-hour national sportscast, and he might have dinner with Pippen. Paxson was a loner, though he had friends from his NBA days and Notre Dame connections in many cities. Cartwright, too, was a loner. He enjoyed movies and would go out to one when he’d exhausted those in his room. He also had to bathe his knees in ice, which he did several hours each day. In Phoenix, he went to a movie each night and then a quiet dinner. Hodges often would try to find a mosque to visit and he, too, went to the movies, but he and Cartwright, though friendly, could rarely agree on films to see and usually went separately. Armstrong and Hopson had become friendly and started to spend time together, and occasionally might join King. Williams tended to stay by himself and walk the malls; it was a favorite pastime of many of the players, and the team always tried to arrange for hotels within walking distance of shopping. Perdue and Helland had become close and they’d often take off somewhere for dinner after a workout, while Levingston, who liked the company of groups of people, drifted in and out of Jordan’s circle, having developed contacts throughout the league.
Those few days in Phoenix were warm, so several of the players hung around the pool, which is a favorite location for Jackson and the coaches. They’d usually meet in the mornings, then run practice, watch films afterward, and then break up for dinner and perhaps a movie. It was a relaxing if unexciting few days, unusual only for the length of time the team went without playing a game. It wasn’t what one might consider a holiday with first-class travel, but it wasn’t with kids, either.
The only thing that could have improved things was a win; the Bulls lost to the Suns by 109–107 when Kevin Johnson scooted around like a water bug and hit a running shot at the buzzer. Jackson still thought it was a good game for the team, a close loss against a championship-quality team on the road. But Krause was apoplectic afterward outside the team locker room, complaining about an illegal-defense call. He was flapping his arms like a drowning man and convulsing with anger. He was raging at reporters to question the referees about the call and demanding that the assistant coach get league operations director Rod Thom on the phone.
“Jerry,” said Suns president Jerry Colangelo, “relax, you’re going to have a heart attack.”
Colangelo wasn’t joking, as Krause’s face had turned completely red.
“Hey, you didn’t have a game stolen from you like we just had,” Krause screamed at him. “Out of my way.”
It would be the third time already, this season that Krause had called the league to complain about an official’s call.
Expectations were taking a heavy toll.
Jackson tried to lighten the mood as the Bulls flew into Los Angeles to play the Clippers. “If we don’t win a road game,” he warned, “Mr. Reinsdorf is going to take away our plane.” While his tone may have been light, he could not have hit upon a more important improvement in the Bulls’ life on the road than the team’s charter aircraft.
Jackson himself had called the plane “our flying limousine.” It was specially equipped with captain’s chairs for lounging and sleeper compartments. It made for more rested players, especially on quick trips in which they would have had to catch the first flight out of town to get to a game the next night.
The presence of the plane was one of the more puzzling contradictions of a Bulls management that seemed so determined to nickel-and-dime players in other ways. While management was doubling or tripling travel costs to ensure the players’ comfort, it was direct-depositing some paychecks a week or more after payday. On matters of money owed, like retroactive per diem money, the Bulls were one of the slowest teams in the league to make payments. These practices irritated the players, and there seemed to be little reason for them.
There would be more than a game going on in Los Angeles. There were rumors flying that the Clippers were going to make a deal for Isiah Thomas. The rumors turned out to be false, but one thing was true: The Clippers’ owner, Don Sterling, desperately sought a headline star to compete with the crosstown Lakers’ Magic Johnson. One he’d tried to acquire was wearing Bulls jersey number 23.
Sterling had called Reinsdorf during the 1987–88 season. The Bulls were about to be eliminated by the Pistons four games to one after losing nine of ten playoff games the previous three seasons with Jordan. It was already a popular theory that the Bulls would never win a title because Jordan’s style of one-on-one play eliminated the other players as contributors. But the fans loved it, and to Reinsdorf, that meant money. Reinsdorf believed he could never trade Jordan: As unpopular as he already was because of his threats to move the White Sox out of Chicago, he knew such a trade would force him right out of town. Still, there was the looming prospect of moving the White Sox to Florida, so maybe he’d have to move anyway. Collins had always told him the Bulls couldn’t win with Jordan, and Reinsdorf had always told friends he knew only two things about basketball: “You win with defense and team play.” He could have one, he knew, but perhaps not the other as long as Jordan dominated the scoring.
Sterling offered any combination of five players or draft choices. The Clippers didn’t have many players the Bulls desired, but they had two of the first six picks in the upcoming draft, and Krause loved 7-4 Rik Smits, a top prospect that year. And with another high pick, the Bulls could select Kansas State guard Mitch Richmond, whom Jordan later would compare favorably with himself. That would give the Bulls Smits and Oakley, Scottie Pippen and Horace Grant, and still allow them to select a point guard, perhaps De Paul’s Rod Strickland, or trade for a point guard now that they had depth and draft choices. Krause had always wanted Kevin Johnson, and he thought he might get Johnson (then with Cleveland) for Oakley or Grant, leaving the Bulls a starting five of Johnson, Richmond, Pippen, Grant or Oakley, and Smits.
The Bulls thought about it long and hard; they were almost sure the deal could get them to a title faster than staying with Jordan. But in the end, Reinsdorf held firm: Michael Jordan was untradable. Period.
The Bulls beat the Clippers easily with perhaps their best effort of the season. Paxson hit for 26 and Pippen scored a triple double. Six players were in double figures, including Jordan with 14 points on 12 shots. Jackson was feeling pretty good. Perhaps it was finally working. Perhaps Jordan was going to go along. Several players said it was the best game the team had played in years.
But the next night, before the Bulls played the Denver Nuggets in the final game of the trip, Jackson noted something unusual. Jordan was on the floor long before the game, shooting. Jordan never engaged in pregame shooting drills. He liked to relax before the game, sorting out tickets for friends, chatting with out-of-town reporters. But since the other players were required to shoot before games, the Bulls offered a flimsy excuse, saying
that the crowds around Jordan would be too disruptive. That didn’t fool the other players, for they knew fans weren’t even allowed in the arena during pregame shooting drills. And it wasn’t long before Pippen, whom assistant coach Winter called “the imitator,” had taken to skipping pregame shooting drills too.
But because he didn’t shoot before the games, Jordan never felt comfortable shooting when games opened, so he usually surveyed the defense, examining where the double-team was coming from and how the overall defense was reacting, and passed the ball at the start, which is what Jackson wanted anyhow.
As he watched Jordan warming up on the court, Jackson thought about the predictions that Jordan would perhaps score 100 points against the Nuggets’ new style, which employed little defense and was creating talk of 200-point games. Jordan knew Jackson would never allow it to happen; Jackson was almost insulted by the thought. “That’s not basketball,” he’d say.
Jordan had 18 by halftime on the way to 38 points, and the Bulls won, 151–145.
But when the team returned home, Jackson noticed that Jordan had continued his pregame shooting routine. Suddenly he was taking shots early in the game as never before, scoring 15 in the first quarter of an easy win over the Bullets, then 20 in the first quarter in another easy win over the Pacers to end November. Jordan would score 13 in the first quarter the next night in Cleveland, then 15 and 16 in the first quarter the next week in games against the Knicks and Trail Blazers. Jordan was averaging more points in the first quarter than anyone else on the team was averaging the entire game. Jackson thought he’d come up with the rules the team needed to go all the way; Jordan was rewriting the rules.
His rebellion was becoming clear to his teammates and coaches. Jordan realized he wasn’t going to get as many minutes as before, and in the current offense he was not going to get as many opportunities. He was desperately unhappy, and completely at odds with the rest of the team. Several players felt Jordan cared only about winning the scoring title, while Jordan believed he was uniquely responsible for the team’s success: If he didn’t do it, who would? It remained the Bulls’ classic chicken-and-egg problem.
“I can’t go out and win games at the end if I’m not in the flow,” Jordan had told assistant coach Bach in explaining his opening offensive assaults. “I can’t just take twelve shots a game and then hit the winning shot.”
Bach, usually a loyal soldier to Jackson, had somehow come between the coach and the player, encouraging Jordan to be aggressive with his shots early in games, which was contrary to Jackson’s game plan. This was fine with Jordan, who called Bach his personal coach. “When I’m having trouble, I go to coach Bach and ask him if he has any suggestions,” Jordan once said.
Jordan, meanwhile, told reporters it was a new team strategy to come out more aggressively, although he did belie his motives in accompanying statements.
“I always could count on playing forty minutes before, but I can’t anymore,” he explained. “So in the past I could start out slow and then come on strong, but now I’m not out there as much. I found my minutes and opportunities going down, so I decided I needed to get more production out of the minutes I was playing.”
Jackson had long studied philosophy and he knew you get the chicken by hatching the egg, not smashing it. So when he was asked about Jordan’s theory, Jackson offered a narrow smile. “I find as I get older I become more patient,” he said.
December 1990
12/1 at Cleveland; 12/4 v. Phoenix; 12/7 v. New York; 12/8 v. Portland; 12/11 at Milwaukee; 12/14 v. L.A. Clippers; 12/15 v. Cleveland; 12/18 v. Miami; 12/19 at Detroit; 12/21 v. L.A. Lakers; 12/22 v. Indiana; 12/25 v. Detroit; 12/27 v. Golden State; 12/29 v. Seattle
THE BULLS WERE HEADING INTO THE CALMEST PART OF THEIR schedule. December would bring only three road games out of fourteen, and the first one was against the Cavaliers, who were about to learn that night that their star guard, Mark Price, would be out for the season. The Cavaliers were forced to start guards John Morton, the worst shooter in the league the previous season, and Gerald Paddio, a free agent from the CBA who had failed with several teams.
The game was a quick rout, with the Bulls bolting away by 17 in the first quarter and leading by 30 before the third period was half over. Fewer and fewer NBA games were being decided in the last two minutes since expansion hit; the dilution of talent had weakened many teams and created so many have-nots that a team with talent, like the Bulls, would have an easy time many nights.
Jordan was enjoying himself on the ride home after the game, joking about the Cavaliers, against whom he’d enjoyed so much success. Stretching out a stat sheet, Jordan, with 32 points in thirty minutes, had some lighthearted instruction for the younger players: “That’s the kind of game where you get your points and get out of there,” he told Armstrong.
Horace Grant shook his head.
He and Jordan had become antagonists a few years back when he became the first Bulls player ever to challenge Jordan, although not publicly. It was on a plane ride home from a playoff loss against Detroit, and tensions were high. Jordan had scored 18 points and wasn’t too happy about it, and he had taken a beating. Grant, the Bulls’ power forward, had just 1 rebound, and had supplied little protection for Jordan. Jordan enjoyed taunting Grant, whom he felt was not very bright, but Grant, who could be as sensitive as an open wound, finally tired of the kidding.
“Screw you, M.J.,” Grant shot back. “All you care about is your points and everyone knows it. You don’t care about anything but yourself.”
“You’re an idiot,” Jordan screamed at Grant. “You’ve screwed up every play we ever ran. You’re too stupid to even remember the plays. We ought to get rid of you.”
The rest of the players sat stunned as the verbal assaults continued back and forth, Jordan being derisive and Grant warily fending off the arrows, until the two were finally separated. And after the season, Jordan tried to get management to trade Grant for Buck Williams.
But Grant had bigger concerns than Jordan as the season headed into its second month. In the rout against Cleveland he played just twenty minutes, far fewer than any of the other starters, and he was taking it as an ominous sign. His playing time, PT in the players’ vernacular, was diminishing, and he saw the team trying to move King in as a starter to justify the high pick in the draft. Jackson had outlined an expanded role for Grant when he became head coach because of Grant’s speed; he’s the fastest runner on the team, and Jackson envisioned getting Grant open downcourt ahead of the opposing power forward for easy baskets. But Grant was also the Bulls’ best rebounder, so he had to stay back to rebound. Meanwhile, he was invariably assigned to guard the best offensive forward, making it difficult for him to break quickly downcourt. And even when he could, it really didn’t matter, given Jordan’s demands for the ball and his feelings about Grant.
“I have a dream,” Grant would sing one day later in the season on the team bus after a few players had gone to the Martin Luther King, Jr., Center in Atlanta. “I’m going to get the ball.”
But it didn’t stop him from trying. Grant had become perhaps the hardest-working player on the team, spending every day in the off-season working out with strength coach Al Vermeil, brother of former Philadelphia Eagles coach Dick Vermeil. Grant could now lift weights with the strength of a football defensive lineman. When Grant came to the Bulls as the tenth pick in the 1987 draft, he was known in coaches’ talk as a three and a half: He had the height of a big forward (a four), but without the power and strength to play the position, and he wasn’t deft enough offensively to handle the scoring at the small-forward position (a three). But eventually Grant would build up to nearly 230 muscular pounds from less than 210, his rookie weight.
The adjustment to the NBA had been hard for Grant. He was from a rural Georgia town and had been raised by a single parent. When he was young, his ambition was to be a marine. “I’d watch the commercials on TV about how they wanted a few good men and I wa
s fascinated by the nice suits and the swords and everything,” Grant recalled. He was not a good student, but he started to develop as a basketball player, earning himself and twin brother, Harvey, scholarships at Clemson. “We were a package deal,” Horace remembered. But Horace always was a little ahead of Harvey, and when Harvey didn’t make the varsity team as a freshman he started missing class and eventually transferred to Oklahoma, where he was a teammate of Stacey King’s.
Harvey would eventually come to add to Horace’s frustration, although unintentionally. Every year they played together, Horace was dominant—in high school, in college, and even in the NBA during Harvey’s first two seasons with the Washington Bullets. Horace always averaged more points and was the bigger star. And the joke between the twins was that Horace flaunted it. “He’s nine seconds older,” Harvey once explained, “so he thinks he can boss me around.” But with the lack of talent in Washington, Harvey became a featured player—he averaged nearly 20 points per game and was touted as the league’s most improved player in 1990–91. “I’d just once like to get that many shots,” Horace would say, “just to see what would happen.” Horace averaged about 8 shots per game for the Bulls, about a third of Jordan’s total, while Harvey was getting 16 to 18 per game in Washington. “I know I’ll never get the chance to find out what kind of player I can be here,” said Grant.