Michael Jordan

by Roland Lazenby

  “In the first game he scored 49 and we won by 20,” Walton recalled. “And we said, ‘Ah, he’ll never do that again.’ So the next game he scores 63 points, fouls out the entire team, and if it wasn’t for Larry Bird going crazy then we wouldn’t have won in double overtime, 135–131.”

  Bird scored 36 points in fifty-six minutes of playing time that day, and it took scoring from Boston’s entire roster just to counter Jordan’s effort. McHale scored 27, Ainge 24, Johnson 15, Parish 13, and Walton 10.

  “We really didn’t scheme at all for him, to be truthful,” McHale remembered. “We kind of just went out there and just said, ‘Hey, well, you know we’re just going to play our normal defense. If you score on us who cares?’ No one assumed he’d get 60-some.”

  Walton recalled, “In the locker room after that second game, we said, ‘This guy’s pretty good. Why don’t we just double-team him and let’s see if Dave Corzine and the rest of the Bulls can do anything out there.”

  Facing double-teams and the sheer size of the Celtics, Jordan took just 18 shots in Game 3 in Chicago Stadium and made 8 of them. He finished with 19 points, 12 rebounds, and 9 assists as his team was swept, 122–104.

  “We double-teamed him and got the ball out of his hands,” McHale said. “We really schemed for him. People forget we swept that series. It was 3–0 and we went home.”

  The outcome of the series hardly seemed to matter. The entire NBA and its fan base were abuzz over Jordan’s performance. Four years earlier, he had captured the attention of a nationwide audience with a dramatic shot to win a national championship. The performance against Bird and his Celtics carried the Jordan legend to new heights. Coaches from across the NBA were riveted, just as fans were, by what he had done against the very best team in basketball.

  “It was marvelous,” Sidney Green said. “I know Michael. He’s the type of guy who loves for people to think that he can’t do something. And that just added more fuel to his fire, to prove not only to himself but to everybody else that he could play injured and that he was ready to play.”

  More than anything, it was a message to the management of the Chicago Bulls. “That game,” Reinsdorf admitted years later, “was when we began to realize just how great Michael could be.”

  It also marked an important moment for Jordan personally. “Up to that point, there was so many media guys saying he’s good but he’s not in the same class as Magic Johnson or Larry Bird,” Jordan said, looking back years later. “I earned Larry Bird’s respect—to me that showed me I was on the right track. Not the points that I scored, because at the end of the day we lost the game. It’s a good highlight to watch, but not too much fun because I lost. That was the biggest compliment I had at that particular time.”

  Enter Collins

  A few weeks after the season, Krause fired Stan Albeck, again angering the team’s growing fan base. Reinsdorf felt that the coach had stood in the way when they wanted to hold Jordan back from his foot injury. Furthermore, Albeck had rejected the offensive advice of Tex Winter.

  The choice of replacement came down to two men, broadcaster Doug Collins and, once again, Phil Jackson. Krause agonized a bit, then chose Collins, who had seen a lot of the league as a CBS broadcaster, though he had no coaching experience. “A TV guy? Really?” Reinsdorf had supposedly responded when Krause first posed the idea. But Collins had been a star player at Illinois State and was the top pick of the 1973 draft; he had also played a pivotal role on the ill-fated 1972 US Olympic team. Selected by the Philadelphia 76ers, Collins helped that club climb back from its disastrous 1973 season into championship contention by 1977. A three-time All-Star, Collins ultimately fell victim to the injuries that prematurely ended his career.

  “It was very uncomfortable because Collins was a broadcaster and had traveled with the team before he was hired,” recalled Cheryl Raye-Stout. “Stan Albeck would look over his shoulder, and there was Doug Collins. He served as a consultant briefly, and there was speculation that Collins was taking Stan’s job.”

  “When I hired Doug, everybody laughed at me,” Krause said. “A lot of people said, ‘What the fuck are you doing hiring a TV guy?’ ”

  “At the time, I was thirty-five,” Collins would later recall, “and there had been nine coaches in ten years in Chicago. I was the kind of guy to roll up my sleeves and make something happen.”

  Jordan wasn’t so sure about that in the beginning. In fact, he mistrusted Collins as another Krause invention. “When I first met Doug, I didn’t think he knew what he was talking about,” Jordan recalled. “I wondered when he first got the job. I mean, he was so young. But once I got to know him, I liked him a lot. He was bright, he was in control, and most of all, he was positive.”

  Not only did he bring this strength, but he added assistant coaches Johnny Bach and Gene Littles to the equation. Bach, in particular, would become a force within the team. Bach recalled of Collins, “I had coached him at the Olympics in 1972 and we had a good friendship and respect for each other. Doug called me and said, ‘I’d like you to come here and join the staff.’ It was a pleasure to go with Paul Douglas Collins. He was emotional and exciting, fired up. He really started this franchise, the Bulls, to winning again.”

  With the coaching hire completed, Krause turned again to the roster. He sent away Orlando Woolridge, Jawann Oldham, and Sidney Green and began stockpiling draft picks and cash. For the 1987 draft, he would have a store of first-round picks. But the team headed into the season with just one player on the roster who averaged double figures, and that player was coming off a major foot injury. At the time, the public had no idea just how motivated and angry Michael Jordan was. Krause had brought in a third-year guard from Portland named Steve Colter, and Jordan set upon him in training camp as if he were Krause himself. In games or at practice, it became increasingly obvious that the sensitive Colter couldn’t play alongside Jordan. Like many point guards, Colter had trouble playing effectively without the ball in his hands. But Jordan had long had a habit, indulged by each of his coaches, where he would shoo the point guard off during the inbounds, take the pass, bring the ball up, and initiate the offense himself. In time it would become obvious that John Paxson, who didn’t need the ball to be effective, was a better fit alongside Jordan. Krause would trade Colter before the season was half over and bring in the next in a long line of point guards who couldn’t gain traction in Jordan’s shadow.

  Krause hired Jim Stack that year as his right-hand man. Stack had played at Northwestern, then in the pro leagues of Europe. He showed a knack for charting plays and an eye for the game, so in addition to assisting Krause, Stack also did advance scouting for the team. The Bulls front office and the team were already separating into two distinct worlds, but Stack’s position allowed him to keep a foot in both of them. It was awkward negotiating the internal politics, Stack admitted, but when he wasn’t on the road scouting, he was in practice with the team and going over his reports in team meetings. In addition to working for Krause, Stack bonded well with the coaches. Jordan, too. Because of those working relationships, Stack became part of the glue that held the organization together through more than a decade of conflict.

  Stack had seen a lot of basketball around the world, but the most electrifying play he saw was right there in Bulls practices. “Michael was just a wrecking machine,” he recalled, looking back in 2012. “We had more talented players at times playing alongside Michael, but they just couldn’t withstand the immense prowess that he brought to the court. Poor Steve Colter. I thought he was one of the better guards when I got to the team, but Jerry ended up having to move him because he just wilted playing against Michael in practice.”

  Chapter 19

  ATTACK!

  THERE WAS SUBSTANTIAL public pressure heading into Doug Collins’s first season for the Bulls to upgrade their roster with available scorers such as Eddie Johnson in Sacramento or a big man like Golden State’s Joe Barry Carroll. Krause chose to wait, which led to fears among the
fan base that the roster had been stripped of talent. There were preseason predictions that winning thirty games again might just be out of the Bulls’ reach.

  Some observers didn’t think the Bulls could score enough to win, but those questions were answered on opening night against the Knicks in Madison Square Garden. New York featured a “Twin Towers” look with Patrick Ewing and Bill Cartwright, and used it to take a five-point lead midway through the fourth quarter. During a time-out, Jordan looked at Collins and said, “Coach, I’m not gonna let you lose your first game.”

  He scored the team’s final 18 points to drive a 108–103 win. His 50 points set a record for points scored by an opponent in the Garden, which shattered the 44-point mark shared by Rick Barry and former Bull Quintin Dailey.

  “I’ve never seen anything like Michael Jordan. Ever. Ever. Never,” Collins said after hugging each of his players.

  Afterward, as reporters listened in, Jordan told his father that the Knicks fans had goaded him into the big scoring night.

  “So you were playing on the crowd, not even on the floor?” his father asked, teasing.

  “I always play on the crowd,” he replied.

  “The excitement that came to the club from winning the opening game of the season, that was a turning point,” Reinsdorf observed, looking back. “That was the year things started to build, and Michael was unbelievable.” More specifically, it was the year that Jordan took over American basketball. His revolution ran both large and small. He entered the pro game in the age of “Daisy Duke” shorts, cut tight and short, and promptly created something better to his liking, baggy pants specially tailored 2 1/2 inches longer. Before too long, players would be taking the court in full-blown, knee-length pantaloons, easily his most enduring fashion statement.

  His play became a style rage as well, with his now routine rock-a-baby dunks. Taking it all in was new assistant coach Johnny Bach. Like Tex Winter, Bach was in his sixties, a former military man, and a veteran coach, most recently head coach of the Golden State Warriors. Bach was more than eager to assist both Collins and Jordan but also like Winter, Bach was somewhat reticent about approaching Jordan at first.

  “Assistant coaches, especially ones with some experience, sometimes you know when you should inject into a scene or when you should stay away from it,” Bach recalled in 2012. “In those days, I watched him from a distance. His play was so good you couldn’t believe it, the things he could do. I always thought the best thing was just to watch him and be of any assistance I could.”

  Bach’s first duties under Collins were doing some advance scouting for the team and breaking down what he saw about opponents in team meetings. That was where he first made a connection with Jordan. In talking about the game, Bach had a knack for “using the right phrase,” as he called it. “I used a lot of military terms because I had come from service with the Navy during the war.” Jordan was immediately drawn to his language and his tales of World War II, where Bach had lost his twin brother, an aviator, in combat. “It just seemed to catch his attention,” Bach recalled. But beyond his language, he had a sparkle in his eye, and dressed immaculately, something else that captured Jordan’s fancy.

  The older assistant coach talked often of Admiral William “Bull” Halsey, who took command of the naval war in the South Pacific, and used his words to send messages to an impressionable Jordan during games. “I would walk alongside Michael when a time-out was ending and say, ‘For godsakes, Michael, attack, attack, attack. That’s what Halsey said and that’s what I’m telling you,’ ” Bach recalled. “I’d do that if I thought there was a time he wasn’t attacking the basket. I didn’t do it often. But he remembered it. That was sort of the beginning of the thing. As an assistant coach, you can’t call a play for the guy, but I just thought I’d say, ‘I haven’t seen you out there doing the things that you can do.’ The situation, as I saw it, was, why not stimulate him with something like, ‘Hey, Michael, attack, attack, attack.’ That’s the little things I did, and our relationship was good that way.” Jordan would begin referring to Bach as his personal coach, whose message became something of a mantra over the course of the season. It was all the encouragement the young star needed to create a new math for the game.

  He would score better than 40 points on twenty-eight occasions that season. Six times, he ran up better than 50. In late November and early December, he scored more than 40 in nine straight games, six of them coming on a western road trip. Later, he would insist it was all out of necessity. “When I first came here, I had to be the igniter, to get the fire going,” he recalled. “So a lot of my individual skills had to come out.”

  Jump

  Word quickly spread among NBA circles that this version of Jordan was something new. In Phoenix, Walter Davis took note, recalled teammate Eddie Pinckney. “It was my understanding that Michael kind of idolized Walter a little bit,” Pinckney recalled. “He was one of his favorite players. Walter at the time was a marquee player.” As their first game with the Bulls approached, Pinckney noticed that Davis perked up and began preparing harder than he normally did. “That was to me a little bit strange because Walter dominated his position during his time,” Pinckney recalled. “He never really fretted about playing anyone. I didn’t know it, but a huge contingent of players would go back to North Carolina and play during the summer.”

  Walter Davis, it seemed, did not want to give Jordan anything during the NBA season that could be used for trash talk during the summer sessions back in Chapel Hill. “I sort of knew what was coming,” Pinckney said. “But Davis really knew what was coming. Michael put on a show. He actually put on a show. Those two were going at it. I mean, it wasn’t about the way in which he scored. It was more about taking over the game. At some point or another you knew it was coming, these stretches like ten in a row or twelve in a row. And the way in which he did it was like these crazy assaults to the rim. He jumped from one side to the other and reversed. All that stuff, the wild assaults at the rim.”

  Most of all, Pinckney was struck by how Jordan had affected Davis. “He’s a guy who was a really good player,” Pinckney said, “and Jordan made him completely alter his approach to the game.”

  Nonetheless, the Bulls lost that game by two, despite Jordan’s 43 points. Afterward, the team doctor lanced Jordan’s swollen toe, Jerry Krause recalled. “Pus came out all over that thing. It was ugly. If you saw it you would want to throw up.”

  The doctor ordered Jordan back to Chicago to rest the toe for ten days, Krause remembered in a 2012 interview. “Now Michael gets on Doug Collins, and I leave, and fifteen minutes later Doug comes out in the hallway and says ‘We’ve got to talk.’ And he tells me what Michael says, that he wants to go to San Antonio the next night. He won’t hurt himself and if it’s bad he won’t play, all the stuff you hear from a guy. Well, I was a little soft probably, too, so we let him go to San Antonio and if you look I think he got 52 that night.”

  Actually, it was another 43 points, another in that nine-game stretch of 40-point games for Jordan, on a bad toe. The Bulls would lose six of them, not quite as bad as it sounds seeing as eight of the nine games were on the road. Toward the end of the streak, Jordan scored 41 in Atlanta, but the Hawks’ Dominique Wilkins answered with 57.

  Jordan was getting the best of the league’s best each game. As the Celtics had learned in the previous playoffs, he had become unguardable, at least by a single defender. In Jordan’s first season, the Lakers had thrown Byron Scott and then Michael Cooper at him and held him down by denying him the ball. Those days were over, Cooper told one writer. “When people say I do a good job on Michael, or that so-and-so did the job, that’s wrong. There’s no way I stop him. I need the whole team. As soon as he touches the ball, he electrifies the intensity inside you. The alarm goes off because you don’t know what he’s going to do. He goes right, left, over you, around and under you. He twists, he turns. And you know he’s going to get the shot off. You just don’t know when and how. That
’s the most devastating thing psychologically to a defender.”

  The attacking that Bach urged upon him was so creative that Sun-Times sportswriter Rick Telander decided to ask about his leaping ability. “I’ve never had my vertical leap measured,” Jordan replied, “but sometimes I think about how high I get up.… I always spread my legs when I jump high, like on my rock-a-baby, and it seems like I’ve opened a parachute, like, that slowly brings me back to the floor. I was really up against New York in our first game. On my last dunk I think I was close to eye level with the rim. Sometimes you just hit your wrists on the rim, but this time it was my elbows and everything. I almost over-dunked the whole rim.”

  He was as enthusiastic as any fan about his hang time. “I wish I could show you a film of a dunk I had in Milwaukee,” Jordan told Telander. “It’s in slow motion, and it looks like I’m taking off, like somebody put wings on me. I get chills when I see it. I think, when does ‘jump’ become ‘flying’? I don’t have the answer yet.”

  There was no better place to show off such skills than the Slam Dunk Contest at the All-Star Game weekend. The fans cast a record 1.41 million votes that season to send the player now called “His Airness” to the All-Star Game. “I think it’s great the fans admire my style so much,” he said in response. “I’m not going to do anything to disappoint them.”

  In those days, the Dunk Contest held a special appeal for the game’s top athletes, emphasized by the fact that Jordan, less than a year after returning from a broken foot, entered the event, at Seattle’s Kingdome, where he won with a series of slams that capitalized on his particular brand of flight. (Atlanta’s Dominique Wilkins was injured.) This time there was no thought of freezing him out in the All-Star main event. Jordan’s shadow now fell across the entire league. “Even at an All-Star Game, you couldn’t take your eyes off of him,” observed Mitch Lawrence, the veteran basketball writer for the New York Daily News. “Now you could watch Magic and Bird, don’t get me wrong. But that was the thing about Michael Jordan. When you went to see him play, even in just a regular-season game, you had to watch him. There could be another superstar or two on the court. It didn’t matter. Basically 95 percent of the time you’re watching Michael Jordan. If he was getting a break, maybe you’d watch the other players, but mostly you were fixated. Now how many guys can you say that about?”