The Jordan Rules

by Sam Smith

  Paxson made his two free throws, then hit three straight jumpers with two more free throws in between for 10 consecutive Bulls points, 12 in all in the quarter, and a 32–26 Bulls lead after one. “The question was not whether his shot was going in,” said Cartwright. “It was whether he was getting the ball.”

  The Pistons would never get closer than 5 the rest of the way before the game turned into a rout for the Bulls in the third quarter. But before then, the Pistons would give their critics plenty of ammunition.

  Midway through the second quarter, Rodman shoved Pippen hard out of bounds and into the stands; Pippen slammed into the floor behind the basket and suffered a gash in his chin that would take six stitches to close. The Bulls’ bench exploded and moved toward midcourt as a flagrant foul was called. Assistant coach Jim Cleamons engaged in a colorful screaming match with a fan who began making obscene gestures. Pippen moved hazily into a sitting position.

  Watching at home, owner Reinsdorf was both incensed and worried.

  “That’s good, Scottie, relax, relax,” he said to the TV screen. “Don’t retaliate. You’re behaving like a man.”

  Pippen would later tell Reinsdorf that he didn’t retaliate because he couldn’t remember where he was.

  “You play, you play, we don’t get involved in that stuff,” Grant instructed Pippen as Pippen rose unsteadily to his feet.

  But Rodman wasn’t done. He had let himself loose into that hysterical world that Pippen had wondered about, even if Pippen was in no condition to hear.

  “You think that’s something, I’ll do it again,” he screamed at the referees. “Makes no difference to me. We don’t want no fags out here and he’s a fag. I’ll get him again. He’s going down. He’s going down harder this time and see if I care. We don’t put up with none of that fag-ass shit out here.”

  Detroit was a beaten team. These guys were done. Jordan, with 29, and Pippen with 23 points and 10 rebounds, took over from Paxson after the first quarter, and the Bulls led by 17 after three. The final would be 115–94.

  The only surprises would come at the end. The fans began to chant for the Lakers in the Finals; this series had become so bitter and Jordan’s comments were so stinging that the fans of the tough guys came to favor tofu. And with a few seconds left, several Pistons players marched off the court over Daly’s objections, directly in front of the Bulls bench and out to the locker room, without offering any congratulations to their conquerors. This gesture would set off a storm of protest within days as columnists called for Daly to be removed as 1992 Olympic coach and writers around the country castigated the Pistons for their boorish exit.

  For the Bulls, there was almost a stunned kind of relief in the locker room immediately after the game.

  “We didn’t come this far just to get here,” Jackson told the team. “No one remembers who finishes second in the Finals.”

  A somber note modulated the players’ joy. Dennis Hopson began crying as soon as he sat down in front of his locker. He’d played three minutes at the end of the game, when the Bulls led by 25, his first playing time against Detroit. He’d played the least of anyone on the team, getting token appearances at the end of blowouts in four of the twelve playoff games. It wouldn’t change in the Finals.

  “I’d never cried before at a game or after or any time, and never in front of guys,” Hopson would say afterward. “But I couldn’t help myself. I wasn’t a part of this team and I knew it. My own team didn’t need me and it hurt.”

  So Hopson, a likable, quiet man, sat and couldn’t control himself. Paxson patted him on the back and assured him he was a part of the team. Cartwright also tried to console him, as did his close friend Armstrong. But Hopson couldn’t stop. Tears rolled down his cheeks and he could barely catch his breath. He was gasping for air. Several of the players looked on and all could understand. Hopson had been the king before, in college and as the leading scorer with the lowly Nets. Now all he could be was a cheerleader while those around him shared in the glory they would never forget.

  He called his mother and told her. She was quiet for a long while. There was nothing to say.

  The plane ride home took on a more lively tone. Jordan sipped from a bottle of champagne. “All I ever asked for is one shot,” he said. “One shot. This ain’t the time to come in second.”

  Krause, the portly and unpopular general manager, began dancing in the aisle.

  “Who said I can’t shake my booty?” he started to chant. “Watch this, watch me shake my booty.”

  The players became hysterical.

  “I know the pilot’s up there calling the tower going, ‘Problem up here. Someone seems to be shaking the plane,’” Perdue said to Cartwright.

  “Shake it, Jerry, shake it,” yelled Pippen as he got up to do a mock dance with Krause.

  “You guys made me look good,” Krause gushed in trying to put his arms around Cartwright and Perdue, who were sitting together.

  “Nobody could do that,” said Perdue.

  It was a happy team that stepped off the charter at O’Hare. Rookie Scott Williams would prove to be the only casualty; his troublesome left shoulder would pop out again on the way home when he saluted his teammates with his arm thrust out his car window as they drove by. He had to pull over and flag down Horace Grant to help him pop his shoulder back in.

  June Jackson came to the airport to pick up Phil. She rarely did it, but this was a special night. And Phil wasn’t that great a driver, anyway. His family always questioned whether he could drive a car safely because when driving he tended to lose concentration. June could remember him making dozens of snap decisions in a basketball game and then leaving and driving around a parking lot for thirty minutes until he decided what parking spot he wanted. Phil talked about the pleasure of sweeping the Pistons, about the emotion of the game, about Hopson and about the coming Finals. As June wheeled the car into the family’s north suburban Chicago home, Jackson smiled.

  His children had encircled his car with dozens of brooms.

  Glory Time

  6/2 v. Los Angeles; 6/5 v. Los Angeles; 6/7 at Los Angeles; 6/9 at Los Angeles; 6/12 at Los Angeles*; 6/14 v. Los Angeles*; 6/16 v. Los Angeles*

  *lf necessary.

  MICHAEL VERSUS MAGIC. THAT’S THE WAY THEY SAW IT IN Chicago. Magic versus Michael. That’s the way they saw it in Los Angeles. Dollar signs. That’s the way NBC and the NBA saw it, for this NBA Finals between the Bulls and Lakers was going to be big. No last names, please; Elvis against John, Paul, George, and Ringo couldn’t have been much bigger. This was more than just hero worship, it was idol gossip. Michael Jordan, the greatest individual player in sports history, was meeting Magic Johnson, perhaps the greatest team player. It was Jordan going for his elusive first title and Johnson probably going for his last. Scorer against playmaker. Coke against Pepsi. Nike against Converse. McDonald’s against Kentucky Fried Chicken. If Jordan was the most popular and well-known player in the NBA, Johnson was Hollywood. It was a dream matchup, but the relationship between the two had long been a nightmare for both and still had its bad days.

  Jordan and Johnson had pretty much reconciled their differences at the 1988 All-Star game in Chicago, but they still cast eyes warily at one another from across the NBA landscape.

  When Johnson won his NBA MVP award in 1990, Jordan congratulated him, even though he had campaigned hard during the season for Charles Barkley. But privately, his thoughts were much harsher. “It’s not so bad that I didn’t get it,” Jordan would remark afterward. “But I just hate that he got it.”

  Bulls owner and managing partner Jerry Reinsdorf would tell friends that he rooted for Johnson to remain an active player in the NBA because Jordan had said he intended to play for one year after Magic retired to get one time around the league without Magic’s shadow.

  “Magic always has been the guy Michael’s measured himself against,” explained Jackson. “Magic has the rings and the MVP awards.”

&nbs
p; And for a long time, he had Jordan’s ire. It developed mostly from that alleged “freeze-out” of Jordan at the 1985 All-Star game. It really was unclear that such a freeze-out ever occurred; Jordan was 2 for 9 for 7 points, but many stars had not done well in their first All-Star games. Jordan’s retinue said something had to be wrong for Jordan to do so poorly, and an associate of Johnson’s and Isiah Thomas’s told reporters that several players had conspired to make Jordan look bad because they felt he had tried to show them up by appearing at the slam-dunk contest in his Nike outfit when everyone was told to avoid commercial apparel for the All-Star weekend.

  Jordan also saw Johnson’s heavy hand involved in an effort to get Jordan’s former teammate, James Worthy, traded to Dallas a few years back for Johnson’s friend Mark Aguirre. Jordan saw Johnson as a man without the proper respect for people. Johnson saw Jordan as a brash hot dog promoting himself at the expense of others. Each resented the other’s stardom. Egos at twenty paces.

  “I guess it was jealousy,” Jordan said on the eve of the Finals about his once-rocky relationship with Johnson. “All of the things happening to me, like my [multimillion-dollar] shoe contract, were things that should have been happening to him, but they weren’t. And I got a lot of notoriety when I came into the league and I guess he didn’t feel—I guess a lot of players didn’t feel—that I deserved it. But I didn’t have control over that.”

  So for years they both burned, Johnson over Jordan’s commercial success and Jordan over Johnson’s athletic success and acclaim as the game’s most valuable player. But the game has increasingly become a business for both of them, and businessmen can forget their personal differences when money is involved. After all, nations usually resume trade even after wars. They needed each other for their All-Star games and charity fund-raisers. So a truce was worked out at the 1988 All-Star game and they agreed to attend each other’s games and summer basketball camps. And they smiled and shook hands. No kissing, though.

  Jordan even began to enjoy some of the time he spent with Johnson. And he especially enjoyed becoming a wedge between Johnson and Isiah Thomas.

  Jordan agreed to play in Johnson’s All-Star game in the summer of 1990, but he didn’t want to miss a day of golf if he could help it. He went to Los Angeles, but played thirty-six holes the day of the game and was running late. Johnson decided to hold up the start to accommodate Jordan. Thomas fumed and finally went to Johnson and angrily demanded they not wait for Jordan. Johnson ignored his pleas. Jordan loved hearing the story.

  But now Jordan had the chance he long craved. Everyone was looking at the Finals as his battle with Magic and that was fine with him. Jordan was certain he’d triumph this time.

  Phil Jackson didn’t realize how crazy the NBA Finals were going to get until a Bulls time-out late in the first half of Game 1. He’d been to the Finals (back before they were trademarked and capitalized) a few times as a player with the Knicks in the early 1970s, but the media attention had grown exponentially since then. Jackson told the players before the Finals that they’d have to practice in Chicago at the Stadium to accommodate the national media instead of at the Multiplex near their homes in the north suburbs. That would mean an extra two hours’ drive each day. The team hired a bus, but the players preferred to drive themselves.

  “That makes it only twenty minutes for Jordan,” some of the Bulls joked. Jordan had become famous for driving on the shoulder of the Kennedy Expressway into Chicago on his way to games. And he always kept a few basketballs and game tickets in the car for overaggressive police officers.

  Jackson had also warned the team about family distractions, which were already mounting. Several of Scottie Pippen’s eleven brothers and sisters were staying at his North Shore home. Reinsdorf said he would hire a plane and get rooms in Los Angeles for the families of all the players and staff, but he couldn’t provide enough extra tickets. When asked on the eve of Game 1 what his biggest concern about the series was, Jackson said, “Getting tickets in L.A.”

  The distractions would be enormous and the demands incredible. An old friend of Bach’s had called. Could he get tickets for Bach and then get a picture of his son with Michael Jordan? Jackson’s friends were calling for tickets every day. The coaches told the players how Buck Williams had to make three trips to the airport on the day of one of the games in Portland in the 1990 Finals to pick up friends and relatives. It was getting big. And the city was going Bulls crazy.

  So was the Bulls marketing department. Not content with the usual assortment of light displays, dribbling races, and ear-shattering music, the marketing department came up with something special that left the coaching staff dumbfounded.

  “Tell me,” Jackson said to the players forming a semicircle around him while he had his back to the court during that time-out, “that I didn’t just see what I thought I saw.”

  Dwarfs. Trying to shoot baskets. Unable to get the ball closer than a few feet from the basket.

  The stunt threw John Bach into a rage. “They’re making a mockery of the game,” he began to shout. The coaches tried to calm him for nearly the entire time-out. Tex Winter actually found it pretty funny. He hadn’t seen Bach this way since the guy had whistled the national anthem. “It’s a really big shew, a really big shew,” trainer Chip Schaefer joked in an Ed Sullivan voice.

  Finally, Jackson gathered the team and quickly went through the next play call. But he continued to shake his head and mutter, “I don’t believe this.”

  The game, too, was becoming a problem, and one Jackson had worried about. How would Jordan react in his first Finals? They had talked about it again a few days earlier and Jordan agreed it was best for him to take a backseat at the start, that for the team to succeed either Cartwright or Grant had to get going early.

  But Jordan wouldn’t have too much patience. Grant threw a bad pass to Pippen for a turnover and then missed a lay-up as the Lakers moved ahead 10–5. Cartwright missed a turnaround jumper.

  “Uh-oh, here we go again,” Jordan thought to himself. “These guys are uptight, they’re nervous. They’re not going to be able to do it at this level. I’m gonna have to take over.”

  Jordan drove and slammed, and on the next Bulls possession, drove and was fouled. Then he twisted around two defenders and slammed again. Then he drove and missed, but put in his own miss. Then he got caught in the middle and passed to Pippen for a slam dunk. Then after Paxson slipped in a pair of jumpers, Jordan drove and slammed again and finished the quarter with a jumper and a bank shot for 15 points. The Bulls had pulled ahead 30–29 after one quarter. The Stadium crowd was delirious. Everyone among the Bulls knew there was trouble.

  “When M.J. goes off like that,” Pippen would say afterward, “it messes up the other guys. I’m gonna get my points, but the others can’t.”

  Pippen would score 19 in that game, the only other Bull besides Jordan in double figures. Jordan would score 36 and the signs on the floor were troublesome. Once, when Perdue had the smaller Terry Teagle guarding him, Jordan waved Perdue out of the post so he could go against Byron Scott, screaming, “I’ve got the advantage, I’ve got the advantage.”

  But the Bulls couldn’t control Sam Perkins. He hit a pair of three-point field goals in the first quarter, and by halftime both he and James Worthy had 14. Jackson switched Cartwright onto Perkins because the Bulls didn’t feel Grant could deny the stronger Perkins his position in the post-up game. But Worthy was moving well despite an ankle injury, and the Lakers were having their way inside. It had become their game.

  The days of the Showtime express were gone. The Lakers had become a walk-it-up team with Magic Johnson drawing the double-team and then finding an open man. Worthy was a particularly good passer out of the post, so the Lakers were able to slice up teams in the halfcourt game now. New coach Mike Dunleavy, having seen how the aging Lakers were run out of the playoffs by Phoenix in 1990, had changed the team’s style, and despite a rocky start in November the Lakers came to
the Finals with a good chance to win.

  But a fatal flaw would be revealed early. The Lakers moved out to a 41 – 34 lead against the Bulls’ bench to open the second quarter, but when Johnson left the game five minutes into the second quarter the Bulls went on a 10–0 run. It would happen again early in the fourth quarter with Johnson on the bench. Jackson saw that the Lakers lost too much when Johnson left the floor. And Johnson clearly was tired after a rough series against Portland. It was at this point, despite the outcome of Game 1, that Jackson realized the Bulls would win.

  “I think we have more answers for them when Michael is out than they have for us when Magic is out,” he would say somewhat diplomatically later.

  The Bulls still held on to a narrow 53–51 lead at halftime. Jordan and Pippen had combined for 29 points, the other three starters, 10. And when Jordan and Pippen began pulling up for jumper after jumper in the third quarter, the Lakers inched ahead 61–59. Jackson called for a time-out.

  “What the hell is this one-on-one shit?” Jackson demanded. He’d often raise his voice in the team huddles, but rarely singled out either Jordan or Pippen. He didn’t this time either, but the targets were unmistakable. “Let’s run the offense,” he continued. “We’re not doing anything. What the hell is going on out there?”

  Late in the third quarter, a quarter in which the Bulls scored 15 points while falling behind 75–68, Jordan would ask out of the game. He was tired. The coaches could not remember Jordan asking out of a game so early or for so long. There were clearly a lot of jangled nerves among the Bulls, including Jordan, who had worn himself out expending so much nervous energy early.

  And he was hardly alone. Grant, for one, hadn’t slept much the previous night and was at the Stadium three hours before game time, out on the floor shooting. Normally, players arrived ninety minutes to two hours before a game. Levingston said he felt fine when he got up. Then he threw up three times. Cartwright had told a friend staying with him, “It’s just another game.” The friend knew that meant Cartwright was nervous. “He only says that when he’s uptight,” the friend said. Jordan, too, would admit some nervousness before the game, but claimed he’d rid himself of it after the first few minutes. He was clearly exhausted midway through the third quarter, however, something nobody could remember seeing before.