Michael Jordan

by Roland Lazenby

  Plenty of readers took notice, he recalled, as did Jordan, who was angry. Obviously the disclosing of the situation was not ideal for Jordan’s immaculate image. But basketball’s young star was proving quite human indeed, something that would become harder and harder to keep from his public.

  Once the smoke of the 1989 playoffs had cleared, Jordan made his way through another summer of golfing and questionable living while trying to sort out the big issues of his life. In late August, he met Richard Esquinas, the part-owner, president, and general manager of the San Diego Sports Arena, at a fund-raiser there. They would begin a high-stakes golf relationship that helped feed Jordan’s growing taste for golf and gambling—a relationship that later would blow up into scandal. For the time being, though, it was just another pot quietly simmering on the stove in his busy world.

  Shortly after meeting Esquinas in San Diego, Jordan and a small entourage slipped over to Las Vegas, where Sonny Vaccaro introduced him to resort and casino magnate Steve Wynn. Vaccaro’s brother worked for Wynn, who turned on the hospitality for Jordan and Juanita. While in town, the couple rode over to the Little White Wedding Chapel, famous for its drive-through matrimonial tunnel and its quickie celebrity weddings.

  It had been an on-again, off-again betrothal since Jordan had first proposed at Nick’s Fishmarket on New Year’s Eve 1986. “He just wanted to get it over with,” Sonny Vaccaro remembered. “There was nobody there.”

  Well, actually, Vaccaro and his wife, Pam, were there. And Fred Whitfield. But not many more.

  “It was a well-timed decision to settle down and get married,” Jordan said later. “It was like walking into another unknown situation. But I was ready to learn what marriage was all about. Every day you learn something. To live with another person for the rest of your life, that’s something you have to work at. You’re going to have some good times, some bad times. As a couple, as a unit, as a family, you gotta fight your way through it.”

  It had taken him a while to set aside his parents’ concerns. He still relied on them heavily for advice and support. He hadn’t wanted to displease them, but with his first child almost a year old, events had finally forced his hand. There was still no peace in the family over the move, Vaccaro said. “His parents didn’t want him to be married in the first place. There were other problems when they got married. They didn’t like his wife to begin with. But she’s a great person. She got him through. I think if it had been a lesser person, if she wasn’t as stable, wasn’t as educated as she was, he would have been married three times. He’d have had problems with women, not that he didn’t. But even more problems. Juanita should get much of the credit for making his life as stable as possible with all the demands that were on him.”

  Vanoy was “just a very classy lady,” Vaccaro observed, not the type of woman who had to make things “all about herself.” She was giving and patient, and their ability to converse seemed a key to Jordan’s understanding himself and all that was happening to him, Vaccaro added, pointing out that celebrities like Jordan don’t often encounter down-to-earth women like Vanoy. His marriage could be added high on the list of Jordan’s immense good fortune. As his parents’ relationship came apart before his eyes, Jordan now had a new stability that he could turn to. Juanita provided a refuge of home and family and sensibility.

  Privacy had long been one of the most precious things in Jordan’s life, Lacy Banks said of those days. “He and Juanita had a house in Highland Park off of Lake Cook Road. It was a large house, no mansion or anything. They would build the mansion later, 25,000 square feet. But Michael wasn’t the kind of person to throw any soirees or anything like that. If he had any mass gatherings, he went to someone else for it like the golf course or some kind of party room or whatever. But Michael was not the kind of guy to throw any kind of parties with regularity.”

  One event that the couple made room for each year in their social calendar came on Halloween, when Jordan made arrangements to treat a large number of children from the community. He would make it a no-parents affair, where he could hand out treats to the children personally without the prying eyes of adults eager to gain information about his personal life. It was an activity that he had begun during his earliest seasons in the league and it would later expand, once he had built his mansion in Chicago’s north suburbs.

  “As he sensed his greatness and as his greatness increased and evolved, he became more aware of what he needed to do to maintain,” Lacy Banks explained. “And he also became aware that he had the power to control the traffic in his life. If he didn’t want you to be in there, and everybody wanted to be in there—because everybody wanted to be like Mike, be like him, to be with him—you weren’t in there. Michael to a great degree was a very secretive person. Like a good gambler. And I can understand it. He couldn’t open himself to any- and everybody.”

  Late in September, Jordan invited Esquinas to his resort home on Hilton Head Island (one of several Jordan properties) for a weekend of golf, gambling, and card games, a weekend he reserved before training camp each year to load up on fun before the long NBA season began. “If it was daylight at all, we were playing golf,” Esquinas recalled. “If it was dark, we were playing cards.”

  Tonk was the hand of choice, the games played in quarters that “looked like something off a plantation,” Esquinas said. The three Freds were there, as was Adolph Shiver, and one of the Freds got into it with Shiver, to the point that Jordan had to step in and separate them. It was not a pretty moment for the entourage.

  On the final hole of the final day, Esquinas four-putted and lost a bet with Jordan. He promptly wrote a check for $6,500 to cover it.

  “E-Man, I don’t like to win that way,” Jordan told him. Still, he accepted the check, and their intense little game edged up a notch.

  The Game of Thrones

  As an adolescent, Phil Jackson was said to have played lots of board games with his mother, who was often described as a spirited woman. She had played basketball herself, but that didn’t seem to be nearly as important as the fact that she regularly matched wits with her youngest son in a Williston, North Dakota, household that had few modern conveniences, not even a television.

  Young Phil lived much in his mind—reading, playing games, and quizzically observing the world—seemingly the natural development of a man who would employ so many mind games in his professional life. He certainly had plenty of challenges to contend with once he assumed head coaching duties for the Bulls. Tops on that list were the two bullies in the organization, Jerry Krause and Michael Jordan, and Jackson himself would come to be described as a bully by others who worked with him. Such figures are common in the world of competition, but the convergence of these three men in an unfolding power game led to great conflict, intrigue, and, ultimately, success for the Bulls.

  What made their game most interesting was the fact that they each wielded decidedly different forms of power. Krause had the power of his intelligence, his drive, his vision, and his experience as a scout, which earned him the trust of Jerry Reinsdorf. Krause had behind him the power of the “organization,” as he liked to call it.

  Jordan had his own power, which has been documented here: his intelligence, his unsurpassed athletic ability, his drive and competitive nature, his work ethic, his charisma, and his great standing in the game. All of that combined to allow Jordan to make a lot of money for himself—and for Jerry Reinsdorf and his partners, as well as the NBA and its players.

  Later, Jackson would develop his own great powers, but in those early months on the job, he had his own experience, his ability to relate to players, his very different perspective, his intelligence, his competitive nature, his cunning, and his great powers of observation. It was no small point that he owed everything to Krause, his kingmaker. No one else had had the slightest interest in Jackson, except the New York Knicks, who had taken notice of him as an assistant coach with the Bulls.

  Sam Smith once quipped that one of the immediately noticea
ble things about Krause was that he spent too much time going on and on about his successes. The GM reveled in the role of talent scout, finding young, talented people and helping them advance. For example, he talked often about his bright young assistant, Karen Stack, and her brother Jim, whom he also hired and then promoted. He liked to find hidden talent and watch it work. Being a kingmaker, however, gave him a sense of superiority, which in turn left him feeling free to be brusque and difficult with the people he brought along.

  “Jerry has a real gruff side,” Jim Stack admitted. “Jerry’s a very stubborn guy and a very prideful guy, too.”

  As an assistant, Jackson had watched Krause’s overbearing manner in dealing with Doug Collins and wanted to avoid challenging Krause unnecessarily. When Krause was a young scout and executive working for the Bulls in the 1970s, he had been treated harshly, often ridiculed, by coach Dick Motta, another driven sort who had never played college or even high school basketball. Motta had a knack for motivating his players by humiliating them, but he seemed to reserve a certain scorn for Krause, former Bulls GM Pat Williams recalled.

  “Krause and Motta are obsessed people, but in totally different ways,” observed Bob Logan, who covered the Bulls for the Trib in the 1970s. “They couldn’t stand each other, so it was interesting to watch ’em go at each other.”

  Motta started winning in Chicago, and he was soon offered a job by another team. Krause desperately wanted the Bulls to let Motta go, but the popular coach stayed on and continued tormenting Krause until he drove the chubby young scout out of the organization. That perhaps explained in part Krause’s eagerness to dismiss Doug Collins in 1989 right after the team had played its way into the conference finals. That was the last possible opportunity for Krause to get rid of a coach he did not get along with. In another year, if Collins guided the Bulls to the league championship series, it would have been impossible for Krause to remove him. Having reached his position of power, the GM was not about to be undone by a puppy of a coach. Jackson saw that and went out of his way to keep Krause happy.

  For his part, Krause had made a new young king, an eager and willing protégé in Jackson. Obviously, it wasn’t just his dislike of Collins and his self-preservation that motivated Krause. The GM still had deep respect for Tex Winter and his offensive system. He likewise had long been struck with Jackson. He had a vision that the two men working together could do something special.

  In his first position as head coach, Jackson’s primary power was his quiet self-confidence. Everybody around him felt it, most importantly Jordan. “If you’re gonna coach a player like Michael Jordan, you better have some shit with you,” Tim Hallam once observed. “And Phil had some shit with him.”

  “Phil Jackson, with his approach, probably he and Michael had the best accord,” Johnny Bach explained. “They both had reached that stage in their lives where they both knew who they each were.”

  Collins had many strengths, but his insecurity played out in a difficult way. On a certain level, he wanted to be loved by his players, particularly Jordan, which simply wasn’t possible. Jackson, on the other hand, showed little interest in that. “The most important thing is that he has never sought their love,” Bach said of Jackson, looking back. “There are many coaches who want to be loved, who have to be loved and go down in flames as a result of it. Pro athletes just aren’t going to do that. They aren’t going to give you that love if you seek it.”

  Jackson had a subdued, mirthful view of the game. He enjoyed sitting back and watching players struggle against its impossibilities. As an assistant, he presented something of a mysterious figure. That mystery would only grow when he became head coach—and would become key to the firm grasp he held over his team.

  On the Bulls staff, Tex Winter had spent the most time with him. The older coach had first been impressed by the detail and perceptiveness of the scouting reports that Jackson produced. Later, when they coached in summer league together, Winter was stunned by Jackson’s seemingly total recall of events in games, even games long in the past. He had a perfect memory, Winter decided.

  One of Jackson’s first tasks as head coach was to settle the roster. He established a pecking order, Bach recalled. “Phil would explain hierarchy to his team. How many coaches could do that? He’d put that long arm of his way up in the air when he told them. Phil would say, ‘Here’s what hierarchy is.’ He put his hand way up in the air to say, ‘That’s where Michael is, up there, way up there.’ Then he’d come down the ladder, and he’d point to some guy and say, ‘This is where you are, way down the ladder.’ ”

  It sounds like a simple thing to do. Everyone on the team knew Jordan was the top dog, but most coaches try to preserve the lie that things are equal when they’re not. Jackson got that out of the way from the very start, which left just about everyone involved with an appreciation for his honesty and directness, especially the one who mattered most.

  “Michael enjoyed the way Phil coached, he really did,” Bach recalled. “And it was different.” It would take years for the public to understand just how different.

  Jackson’s eccentricity was somewhat unsettling for his players. His unique coaching style derived in part from a deeply psychological approach to the game. Both his mother and father were fundamentalist preachers, and he had lived as a child near an Indian reservation. At a young age, he came to love all things Native American, to the point that he checked out every book he could find in the local libraries about Indian culture. In college, he had been fascinated by William James’s book The Varieties of Religious Experience. As a New York Knick, he had been transformed into a bicycle-riding, dope-smoking hippie. In addition to his Native American philosophies and interests in Zen Buddhism, Jackson soon revealed a way of sitting back and looking at himself and the team. He sought to teach each of his players to achieve his own perspective. Through it all, he exuded the sense that he knew what he was talking about. And of course there were his basketball credentials: championship experience with the Knicks, and his championship team in the CBA.

  “People forget he was in the CBA, and being in the CBA was worth thirty years of coaching, because you drove the cars,” explained Bach. “You served as a trainer and psychologist, because you had mostly the failures and nuts who couldn’t make it in the NBA because they were disrespectful of the game, of their coaches, of their teams. So here you have the have-nots, and he put them together and won a championship.

  “You could see Phil had a knack of looking at his teams, not impassionately,” Bach added. “He doesn’t tip you off to where he is emotionally. He saw a lot, didn’t rush in for answers, had a quiet confidence underneath it all. He had played for some fine coaches in Bill Fitch and Red Holzman.”

  Fitch had coached Jackson at the University of North Dakota and Holzman had guided him with the Knicks. “You’re talking about two very different guys,” Bach said. “One, Fitch, emotional, tough, and outspoken. The other guy, Holzman, quiet but had learned this business. I played against him as a player. Crafty, a backcourt player. He played for Nat Holman with that fast-passing, moving offense. Red Holzman was one of Nat Holman’s beloved players. I think Phil with his unusual background absorbed a lot from them both. He came from North Dakota. His father and mother were tent preachers. He’d been in ROTC.”

  Jackson soft-pedaled his eccentricities at first. It would take time for him to get his players to accept meditation and mindfulness and his other unique practices. In time, Jordan would take great benefit from Jackson’s Zen approach and the mindfulness sessions he provided the team, no matter how unusual they seemed, though he often kept a playful distance in those early years.

  “Michael would always have some pithy or irreverent statement to make when Phil tried these things,” Bach recalled. “It was nothing disrespectful. Phil is very able to handle relationships like that. I kind of enjoyed Michael’s irreverence. It wasn’t harmful, wasn’t nasty. Michael’s humor added that little spark in the coach-player relationship
. It was exciting. We would all ask, ‘What did Michael say?’ ”

  Some of Jackson’s more bizarre practices would be revealed only later, when he coached the Los Angeles Lakers. Chief among them was the drum. In what had to be a first at any level of basketball, Jackson beat a tom-tom on game days. He explained that the ritual had a routine purpose in the lives of the Native Americans, and he wanted the same for his players. The drum was his means of calling them together, to get their hearts pounding for competition.

  “I guess the drum is basically for gathering in terms of Indian customs,” explained Derek Fisher, who would later play for Jackson in Los Angeles. “They would hit the drum so that people would come together. Whether it was time to eat or time to meet or whatever. He just does that on game days when it’s time for us to go in and watch film. It’s different. But that’s part of who he is, his life experiences. He chooses to share that with his teams.”

  Jackson evoked the Native American mysticism of the white buffalo (a symbol of rare and special knowledge) and took to burning sage in the locker room in Chicago. “That’s done to drive away the evil spirits,” Fisher said of the sage. “I think everybody kind of knew that he enjoyed doing different things. And he kind of touched on the things that he would like to do when he first talked to us.”

  When he first appeared beating the tom-tom and chanting, many players fought to suppress snickers. It was unlike anything they’d seen from other coaches. Perhaps more than anything, it suggested just how confident and persuasive he was, to be able to build acceptance for such practices among his teams. Bach was right: Jackson didn’t seek their love, just their acceptance of his unusual approach to the team as an odd cult of sorts.

  When he started out in Chicago, Jackson didn’t beat the drum as often or as insistently as he did later in Los Angeles. Still, his approach underpinned his desire to share a great intuitive feel for the game with his players. From that shared intuition, Jackson would develop a deep and abiding love for his team. There were Bulls employees who came to dislike him, but even they later talked of Jackson’s obvious love for his team, and they admired him for it.