Kersey turned to a crushed Thomas.
“Now do you want a time-out?” the referee asked.
In the aftermath there was no good means to measure the depth of despair for Thomas and his teammates. They had also been deflated by Jordan scoring those 61 points to beat them in the Pontiac Silverdome. Detroit’s coaches knew they would have to come up with a special effort to stop him in 1988. The Pistons were a team bent on breaking through. The Bulls and Jordan were clearly becoming a greater threat in the Central Division. Detroit coach Chuck Daly and his assistants began searching for a means to counter Jordan, and guard Joe Dumars was now at the center of their plans.
Dumars, in turn, was fairly obsessed with the challenge. “More than anybody else, that was the game I looked forward to,” he said of playing the Bulls. “Chicago, I looked forward to that game, because he was so great that whatever greatness I had in me was going to have to be there that night.”
Jordan and Dumars had much in common. “Southern, respectful,” said Dumars in a 2012 interview. “These people, both families, taught the same thing. Respect people, carry yourself with some dignity, with some class and some character, and you stand on that. You don’t waver.”
Where Jordan idolized his great-grandfather Dawson, Dumars worshiped his father, Big Joe, who had served in General George Patton’s army in World War II. Like Jordan, Dumars grew up playing on a court built by his old man, across the street from the largest liquor store in Natchitoches, Louisiana. The store had giant floodlights that used to shine on the Dumars’s backyard, illuminating the goal. Joe would often shoot alone until late at night when his father got home from his long workdays as a truck driver.
Dumars, too, was at first overlooked by basketball scouts. He wound up at McNeese State, a small liberal arts school in Lake Charles, Louisiana, in the midst of Cajun country. Also a starter from his freshman year, Dumars averaged 26.4 points his junior season, 1983–84, enough to finish sixth in the NCAA Division I scoring race. Like Jordan, Dumars broke a metatarsal bone in his foot, and like Jordan he took charge of his own rehab and began playing, contrary to medical advice. The same age as Jordan, Dumars stayed a year longer in college but followed Jordan’s career intently, first at North Carolina, then as a rookie for the Bulls.
Jordan’s foot injury meant that he was out much of Dumars’s rookie season, so they had only a brief encounter that spring of 1986. “I was really interested to see how good this guy really is,” Dumars recalled. “I think he had 33 points, and I remember this explosion, this athleticism, and you just go, ‘Wow.’ ”
By the time they began competing head-to-head in the fall of ’87, their similarities had lessened. After all, Jordan had blown up into a household name, and Dumars was still one of the best-kept secrets in the NBA. He played in the shadow of Isiah Thomas in the backcourt of the Pistons, and was known as an exceptional defender. He could score as much as his team needed and was a fine ball handler. Mostly, he went about his business quietly, which was remarkable considering the Pistons were the Bad Boys, a rough, profane club that had used a very physical style to push their way up the standings.
Dumars recalled that Isiah Thomas’s focus on Chicago only added to the intensity they all felt. Thomas had grown up in the Windy City, on the hard streets of the West Side. “It was always about going back to Chicago,” Dumars said of Thomas’s mind-set before each game against the Bulls. “He was like, ‘That’s my hometown. I don’t want to lose going back to Chicago.’ And then having that kind of superstar in there in Michael, Isiah was focused.”
Center James Edwards, who was a teammate of both Jordan and Thomas over his long career, said that for all their differences, the two men shared something essential: “They both were very driven to be the best they could be. Isiah was fired up everywhere, but of course he was fired up when he went home. It didn’t take much to get him going. He was always on fire, no matter where we played.”
With the hard feelings from the freeze-out at the 1985 All-Star Game fresh in Jordan’s memory, the confrontations between the Bulls and Pistons always threatened to boil over. “Those games were intense, emotional,” Dumars said. “It could be the middle of January, but it was always like the playoffs. Incredible intensity. Everybody was emotional in those games. Nobody wanted to lose. And we would sit there with tears in our eyes when we didn’t win. I’m fortunate and blessed that I played in that kind of atmosphere.”
In another subplot, Brendan Malone, Jordan’s Five-Star coach, joined the Pistons staff. Off the court, Malone would spend time with Jordan and his parents at retreats hosted by Nike. By the time he went to work for the Pistons, Malone had spent a couple of years in the league scouting Jordan closely. “I’d go to the old Chicago Stadium and watch the games,” he said. “And I knew the last eight minutes was Jordan Time. If he had 30 after the third quarter, I knew he was going to have 50. If he had 20 points after the third quarter, he was going to have 40. He took over in the last eight minutes of the game. What’s so remarkable about Michael Jordan, and I’ve watched a lot of games, he never took a game off, he never took a possession off, he always played hard.”
Especially against the Pistons. Both teams knew they were headed for a showdown in 1988. Chicago jumped out to a 10–3 start, which earned Collins coach-of-the-month honors for November and lifted Jordan’s spirits. The feeling spread across the roster and breathed early life into what would come to be known as the Jordan swagger.
Ping-Pong
In the early days, he practiced that “swag” on Lacy Banks. Their game of choice was table tennis. Jordan had taken up the indoor game early in his Chicago days in a fit of competition with Rod Higgins. Banks was older and heavyset, and sweated profusely when they played. The competition had gotten going one day at the Deerfield Multiplex, where the Bulls practiced, when Banks mentioned that he was good at the game.
“You can’t play Ping-Pong,” Jordan told him.
They picked up the paddles to play, and Jordan said, “Let’s make this interesting, twenty-five a game.”
Banks won the first seven games and ran up some healthy winnings. He immediately noticed Jordan was reluctant to pay up, saying instead they’d keep playing and run a tab. “He never really paid me,” Banks recalled. “Michael is a welsher. He bought a table and started practicing.”
Soon they were playing before a varied audience at the Multiplex. Banks had also begun betting with Jordan when the team went on the road. On one occasion, the reporter lost a hundred dollars to the rich young star by cutting cards on the plane for twenty bucks a turn. Banks arrived back at the airport in Chicago and had to borrow his losses back from Jordan just to get his car out of the parking garage.
The sportswriter’s plan was to dig out of debt with Ping-Pong one day after Bulls practice at the Multiplex. Things looked good for the reporter when he won the first six games, but typical of his scouting report, Jordan wanted to keep playing as a small crowd gathered.
Banks agreed, and like that, Jordan won two quick games and started talking. “Don’t ever think you can dominate me,” he said. “Never! I done figured you out, Lacy.”
The more he won, the more he poured on the trash talk. “Chase that ball, Lacy. Run, run… Get it, Lacy! I got you now.”
The very last time they played, Jordan won all seven games, Banks recalled. “He chalked me up as another conquest. I said, ‘Let’s play for fun.’ He wouldn’t do it.”
“Michael Jordan and the Reverend were unlikely sparring partners, playing Ping-Pong at the old Multiplex, sometimes playing cards, arguing often,” noted Trib basketball writer Sam Smith. “Jordan was famous, hedonistic, rich beyond belief. Banks was spiritual, middle-class, humble. And to the very end, the Reverend asked Jordan questions in news conferences that made MJ squirm.”
“He had a gusto for living,” Banks said in 2011 of the young Jordan. “He had this tremendous personality of energy, of humor, the energy of competition and the energy of daring. Certainly
it was unlike any I had ever seen. When I was covering Ali—and I covered Ali before I covered Jordan—Ali was an oddity, a freak of nature as it were, a guy that big who could dance like a ballerina and could hit like a blacksmith. Even with covering a guy like Ali, I had never seen anybody with that inhuman amount of energy like Michael had.”
It was taking every ounce of that energy to turn the Bulls around. A five-game losing streak in late December dipped them back toward .500, as their faith in Gilmore evaporated. The team released him before Christmas. January brought a colossal fistfight with the Pistons in Chicago Stadium and a rare win in the series for the Bulls. The melee erupted in the third quarter after Jordan grabbed an offensive rebound and faked Detroit’s Rick Mahorn and Adrian Dantley on the putback. “Mahorn hooked Jordan around the neck and threw him to the ground,” the Associated Press reported, “after which Jordan and teammate Charles Oakley went after Mahorn, with both benches clearing onto the floor.”
Collins tried to intervene as Mahorn landed two rights to Oakley’s face. Mahorn then turned on Collins, Bulls trainer Mark Pfeil recalled. “There was a tussle in front of our bench, and Doug Collins tried to grab Ricky Mahorn. Hell, Ricky threw Doug down twice. Threw him down on the floor. Doug jumped back up, and Ricky threw him over the scorer’s table. Those were the things that always stood out in our minds. The Pistons were constantly doing those kinds of things. They just constantly beat and battered you.”
“There is no doubt in my mind that both Mahorn and Dantley were attempting to injure me, not just prevent me from scoring, and that’s what infuriated me,” Jordan told reporters afterward. “But Detroit thinks they can intimidate us. And while Mahorn and Dantley had every right to prevent me from getting an easy 2 points, it did not give them the right to purposely try to injure me and knock me out of the game.”
Oakley and Mahorn were ejected, but Chicago had stood up to the intimidation. “The Bulls always seemed a little intimidated by the Pistons, except for Michael,” Pfeil said. “And he was always trying to get it across to the guys that this is the team we have to bridge ourselves over to get to the next level. Sometimes it took some yelling to get his point across. But against the Pistons, I think that’s when Michael started stepping up as a leader. But in the backs of their minds, our guys were always thinking that something dirty would happen against the Pistons. Detroit would intimidate you every time they came in your building.”
The Bulls zoomed off again from there on their way to a 50–32 record, the team’s first fifty-win season in thirteen years. Jordan’s mood improved, allowing for some bonding with his younger teammates. His expectations never made it easy, especially in practices, where he constantly raised the stakes. He had to push them, and at the same time find little ways to help bring them along. At the end of the day, however, he remained Air Jordan.
“I wouldn’t say he was aloof or anything,” Jim Stack recalled. “He just had his group of guys who had been in town since day one. Those guys just sort of followed him around like an entourage. He sort of insulated himself that way. It was interesting how he handled himself off the floor. He was still gregarious with his teammates. He just had those personal friends, and Michael was an extremely loyal guy. He had those guys with him all the time.”
Even so, he still made time for his teammates. “It was in Phoenix in his hotel room,” Lacy Banks said, recalling one such occasion, “and it was Mike Brown, Scottie Pippen, Charles Oakley, and Horace Grant. Michael had a suite and they were in there wrestling like kids and throwing each other over sofas. I was thinking, ‘This is for members only.’ This was Michael’s inner circle and very few players were allowed to ascend into the inner circle, that sanctum of Michael’s. They were saying things like kids would say, like, ‘You can’t beat me.’ Corny stuff. They had the wrestler’s stance and they would attack like sumo wrestlers. It was a test of strength, a rite of passage.”
But a passage to what? Jordan still seemed committed to winning games by himself. Where they were headed and how they were going to get there was still vague. Chicago hosted the All-Star Game in February, which brought another milestone. Always meant to be a showcase for the league’s talent, the event put Jordan front and center more than ever. He claimed his second Slam Dunk title in a narrow win over Atlanta’s Dominique Wilkins, with a perfect score of 50 on his final dunk. Some observers, such as New York Daily News basketball writer Mitch Lawrence, smelled a little Chicago home cooking. “I remember sitting there saying to myself, ‘There’s just no way Dominique can win this. We’re in Cook County where they steal elections,’ ” Lawrence recalled with a chuckle. “But I mean Jordan deserved it obviously and even Dominique admitted that, as great as he was that day. I still think Dominique had as good of a performance as you could have. The problem was the game was in Chicago, All-Star Saturday. By then I mean Michael had just grown in stature anyway.”
Sports Illustrated photographer Walter Iooss had shot the 1987 dunk contest in Seattle and had come away disappointed with the images. He realized he needed different lighting and positioning to capture the faces of the competitors. He was in Chicago Stadium three hours before the start, and approached Jordan, asking if he could tell him how and where he was going to approach the goal during each dunk. “Sure,” Jordan replied. “I can tell you which way I’m going.”
He offered to put his finger on his knee before each dunk to indicate from which side he would approach the goal. Iooss was dubious that Jordan would remember to signal him, but sure enough Jordan cooperated. For the next-to-last dunk, Iooss positioned himself immediately under the basket stanchion and Jordan literally “fell into my arms,” the photographer recalled years later.
On Jordan’s final dunk, Iooss again stood under the basket as Jordan was set to take off from the far end of the floor. Jordan looked down the court at him and motioned with his fingers for Iooss to move slightly to the right. Jordan then took off, running the length of the floor to launch at the foul line for the perfect dunk, just as Iooss captured the iconic photo of Jordan flying, the ball poised to strike, his face pressed with a g-force of determination, and looming over his shoulders the Chicago Stadium scoreboard flashing with ads for Gatorade, Coca-Cola, and Winston cigarettes. The timing was indeed perfect.
The next night Jordan scored a record 40 points to earn the MVP honors in the All-Star Game, and the media noted that Isiah Thomas made a pronounced effort to get the ball to His Airness. Jordan’s final points came on an alley-oop slam dunk from Thomas. They paused afterward and pointed at each other, which proved to be little more than heavyweight contenders touching gloves before punching at the bell.
The Quiet War
Nothing made Jordan see red quite like Isiah Thomas walking onto the court before a tip-off. He emphasized that once again on national television early that April of 1988, by scoring 59 points in a 112–110 Bulls victory. His point totals against Detroit over the season had reverberated like a taunt—49, 47, 61, and 49—against a team that prided itself on its defense. “We made up our minds right then and there that Michael Jordan was not going to beat us by himself again,” Chuck Daly said. “We had to commit to a total team concept to get it done.”
The Pistons coaching staff determined to find a way to limit the Bulls’ star during the fourth quarter. Detroit’s strategy had always involved being physical. “Isiah and Laimbeer, they wanted me to let him drive,” Joe Dumars recalled. “It was like, ‘Let him drive.’ As you know, it was a much more physical game back then, and they wanted to be physical and tough and nasty. And that’s how they wanted to stop Michael.”
“We were a very physical team with Isiah, Rick Mahorn, and Laimbeer,” Brendan Malone agreed. “When Michael went to the basket and tried to score a layup, he was knocked down. They put him on the floor.”
“He never gave an inch, no matter how battered he was,” former Piston James Edwards recalled in 2012. “We used to put some wood on him, with Laimbeer and Mahorn out there. We used to punish
him. He never faltered an inch. He kept going to the basket. He never stopped. He wasn’t afraid of anything you did to him.”
The Bad Boys of Detroit were known to stretch the rules, which only intensified Jordan’s ire. In short time, he had come to hate the Pistons and their style of play. Yet, strangely, in his competitive relationship with Dumars, he took a different approach. “When he came on the court, we shook hands,” Dumars recalled. “It was, ‘Hey Mike, how’s it goin’?’ Never once in my fourteen years did he ever talk trash or anything with me. It was interesting because I would see him on television with other guys and there would be a whole lot of trash talking. I’m like, ‘That’s not the guy I play against.’ Never once did he trash talk or say anything derogatory to me, ever. Not one time. I knew he could get tough with those guys on the other teams. I respected that about him, too. He knew this was just going to be a quiet war here with me.”
Jordan always tested those guarding him, but Dumars remained expressionless.
Jordan also had to have a plan for playing Dumars. He knew that if the Detroit guard hit his first few shots, he could have a big offensive night. Whereas Jordan tended to hang back early, especially in big games, he took a different approach with Dumars and sought to be aggressive from the start, to keep him so busy defensively that he didn’t have time to get his offensive game going.
Jordan let it be known that nobody in the league defended him better than Dumars, and the respect between the two men would eventually grow into friendship. “He’s a down-to-earth guy, not that bad-boy image,” Jordan once explained. “He loves competing. He’s behind the scenes, not vocal. He didn’t go out searching for stardom or notoriety. It found him.”
The Detroit coaches, however, weren’t much interested in friendship. They wanted to find a stronger defensive focus. To make sure there were no more outbursts against them, Chuck Daly and his assistant Ron Rothstein devised what would come to be hyped as the “Jordan Rules.”
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