Michael Jordan

by Roland Lazenby

  When Jordan got back to Chicago and the Bulls that fall, he was sporting a diamond stud in his ear, to go with his shaved head. It was a risky move for a guy to whom image was everything. Before long, the alpha-male “Jordan look,” could be seen everywhere, in men of all races and colors.

  Jordan and agent David Falk were also engaged in serious conversations about his move beyond basketball. They had begun to see “the four corners of the basketball court as a limitation, rather than a platform,” Falk would later explain. Just that season, some business partners were set to release a line of evening wear for men, “23 Night for Michael Jordan,” in partnership with After Six, the formal wear brand. “We’ve never had such excitement,” Marilyn Spiegel, a vice president of marketing for After Six, told People magazine. “Michael is the nineties man.”

  Jordan stood six-six, weighed 195 pounds, with a forty-five-inch chest and a thirty-three-inch waist, what would prove to be the perfect clotheshorse of a model. Evening wear would simply be the next in a stream of products over the decade—clothing, fragrance, jewelry, underwear, and so on—that would define what came to be known as the “metrosexual” male.

  “I became very fashion-conscious when I was young,” Jordan told People, recalling his experience taking home economics at Laney High. “I picked up on different styles, and I would always want them, but I couldn’t afford them.” Now, of course, he could afford it all, but had come to a point in his career that he no longer took great joy from the game that made it all possible. He hardly bothered watching NBA games when he was off. This was one of the themes in a book being developed behind the scenes by Chicago Tribune beat writer Sam Smith. Slated to be published in the fall of 1991, the book was based on information provided to Smith by unidentified sources in and around the team. It would reveal a monumentally selfish Jordan who had grown cynical, angry, bitter, and untrusting in his six NBA seasons.

  This was the situation that Phil Jackson faced as he sat down with Jordan for their first preseason powwow. Jackson recognized that he had come to a crossroads in just his second season coaching the team. He wanted to discuss how “Michael and his Jordanaires,” as they were called, would approach the upcoming schedule.

  Jordan had hoped the coach was going to tell him they were abandoning the triangle offense, but that was hardly the case. The coach not only expected the team to adhere to the system more closely, but he also informed Jordan that it would be better for the team if its star wasn’t so focused on winning another scoring title. Perhaps Charles Barkley had been reading Jackson’s mind.

  There was no pleasant end to the meeting, just as there would be no pleasant beginning to the season. As early as 1989, when the Bulls decided to put Pippen’s mug on the upcoming season schedule, Jordan had come to believe there was a “de-Michaelization” going on within the franchise, a determined effort to step out of the shadow he cast. He had heard inside reports of a Krause comment that if the team had Hakeem Olajuwon in his place, the Bulls would have won two titles already. He perceived a growing belief in the front office that he was not the kind of player who could anchor a championship team. In retrospect, it might seem ludicrous that he believed he wasn’t being promoted. His face was all over the pro game. But those around him had long learned that reality and Jordan’s competitive mind often inhabited parallel universes. More than ever, when he wanted to stoke the fire, he simply conjured up something in his mind to produce the heat. The people around him often had trouble separating the real from the imagined.

  What was undeniably real was the success of the Pistons’ physical defense. Jordan knew that other coaches would soon take a similar approach, and he intended to prove them all wrong. “Everyone’s going to make me take the outside shot,” he said, derisively.

  Also coming into clarity was the evolving relationship between the league and television. NBC had outbid CBS for the NBA’s broadcast deal, putting millions of new dollars into players’ pockets. Jordan’s own contract, renegotiated just two years earlier, was already obsolete, leaving him as only the seventh highest paid player in the league. Even worse, Pippen’s renegotiated contract had him earning about $760,000 that year, when many of his lesser teammates were making more than a million. Pippen thought it a good idea to hide out in a Memphis hotel room rather than report for training camp that season, until his agent convinced him that such a path would be disastrous.

  The financial issues would cause tremendous discord within the Chicago franchise over the coming decade as it became clear to players and their agents just how tough a businessman Reinsdorf was. The owner prized the art of the deal above everything, and had long ago made up his mind to avoid the bad player contracts that paralyzed so many teams. He had a strict policy of avoiding renegotiating deals at all costs, and while he might have done so for Jordan, Reinsdorf knew that his star would not ask for a raise, which meant that he could take his time evaluating the situation.

  The team chairman’s approach to “winning the deals” with his players and their agents involved a timeworn tactic of the lowball. It was Krause’s job to make extremely low offers that infuriated players and their agents, then Reinsdorf would step in with a better offer. But the owner knew what used-car dealers knew: if you start with a lowball, you usually wind up getting the other side to give up too much in the deal. While effective, that approach meant that Jordan wasn’t the only player on the roster who despised Krause. An array of the Bulls and their agents held the GM in special contempt.

  Over the summer of 1990, Krause had drafted a Croatian teen sensation named Toni Kukoc but still had to convince him to play for the Bulls at some point. At the time, European players were largely ineffective in the far more physical NBA. Krause’s excitement over Kukoc only drove Jordan’s sense of “de-Michaelization” as the team began trying to come up with endorsements and side deals to lure Kukoc, who was under contract to a European team.

  When Jordan and Pippen learned that Krause was working to squirrel away two million dollars of salary cap space to cover the costs of bringing Kukoc to America, that only inflamed them further.

  It was hardly the ideal time for Jackson to reveal that the team would again use the “equal opportunity” offense and to suggest that Jordan’s scoring and minutes played should drop for the good of the team. But like that, the die had been cast: it would be Jackson’s wits versus Jordan’s will. Of course both would have plenty of the opposite measure. Jordan truly liked Jackson and wanted to cooperate, but only within limits.

  After six seasons in the league with a variety of coaches and teammates, Jordan believed mostly in himself. In Mike he trusted. All others were open to question. That was the condition under which they would all have to proceed in the fall of 1990.

  PART VIII

  SOMETHING GAINED

  Chapter 26

  TRIANGULAR

  ONE OF JORDAN’S simple escapes when he managed to land for a few days in Chicago was the couch at his mother-in-law’s house on the South Side, where he could zone out on TV and load up on Dorothy Vanoy’s old-fashioned mac and cheese. Juanita was six months pregnant, with an active two-year-old underfoot; she, too, sought the sanctuary of her mother’s home. It was as good a place as any for Jordan to keep track of Krause’s off-season maneuverings to upgrade the roster.

  The Bulls had had money to spend that off-season to fix several serious issues with the roster. Jackson liked big guards, big perimeter defenders, to work his pressure defense. Plus Bach had pointed out that they needed a tough, veteran guard who could stand up to Jordan and tell him to go to hell when he started pushing too hard and taking over the offense. Danny Ainge fit that bill and was available in Sacramento, but the Kings were controlled mostly by former Bulls coach Dick Motta, who was not about to make any deals that would help his old nemesis Jerry Krause.

  Once again, the focus turned to Walter Davis, who was now a free agent with Denver. Jordan agreed to renegotiate part of his contract to help the Bulls around salary cap i
ssues, but only if they would use the money to sign Davis. The deal seemed to have momentum, until Davis’s wife made it known she wanted to remain in Denver. Jordan was stunned.

  So Krause decided to acquire New Jersey’s Dennis Hopson, a former Big Ten player of the year and a high first-round draft pick, for guard depth. For defensive help at small forward, they added Cliff Levingston, a free agent out of Atlanta. Krause also signed undrafted free agent forward Scott Williams out of North Carolina. Jordan was elated to finally have a fellow Tar Heel on the roster and took Williams under his wing. Two of the team’s first-round draft picks from 1989, B. J. Armstrong and Stacey King, had matured a bit and were considered ready to provide more help.

  Most important was yet more development from Pippen, who made the transition from being a wing into a point guard role, Jackson said. “He became a guy who now had the ball as much as Michael. He became a dominant force.”

  Pippen arrived in training camp with three years of experience battling Jordan in practice. The transformation in his competitive attitude could now be measured in his desire to score. He, too, wanted to be like Mike. More specifically, he wanted more money out of the team; to get it in this stats-driven business, he realized that he had to score. The only problem was that his new hunger would throw yet another monkey wrench into Jackson’s plans for using the triangle.

  The Bulls encountered turbulence just out of the gate with a loss to Philly in which Sir Charles outscored His Airness, 37 to 34. The smack-talking gabfest was on between the two then. The Bulls went on to make it three straight losses to begin the season, then plodded to a 5–6 record over the first three weeks, which didn’t fit at all with anyone’s expectations. It was in the ninth game, in Seattle, that Jordan and mouthy rookie Gary Payton started trading trash talk in advance of the game. Jordan scored 33 and the Bulls won handily, but he played just twenty-seven minutes, which increased his anxiety about Jackson’s efforts to prevent him from winning the scoring title.

  Release

  The mediocre start had prompted at least one phone call from Reinsdorf to Jackson to check in, but only the closest watchers saw any signs of perspiration out of the coach. It wasn’t the phone call that troubled Jackson nearly as much as the routine sight of Jordan and Pippen ignoring Winter’s offense and instead attacking the defense one-on-one. Jordan’s conspirator and early instigator in these departures was Johnny Bach, who whispered his opinion. “Johnny would say, ‘Fuck the triangle. Just take the ball and score. Get everyone else to clear out,’ ” Jordan recalled.

  Jackson would tolerate Bach’s insubordination only so long, but it played an important role in the evolution of the team’s style of play.

  “He had to be released from the offense sometimes,” Bach explained in a 2012 interview, adding that he believed his input was needed. Bach believed in Winter’s offense, but he also saw that the team’s star needed to make his own adjustment to it. Jordan was a master at reading defenses, so picking up the triangle was a charm for him. And while there was no shortage of drama, something else was happening. Jordan, who had once readily given himself over to Dean Smith’s offense, was exploring ways he could use the triangle to his advantage. It was fascinating to watch Jordan’s intelligence at work in that situation, Bach recalled, almost like a brilliant actor bringing his own masterful interpretation to a great script, while rewriting entire scenes and dialogue. “The player has to be aware of how he fits into things,” Bach explained, looking back. “Michael knew the triple post backward and forward. He could play any position in it.”

  By and large, the triangle offense provided a format that allowed Jordan to relate to his less talented teammates. The structure of the triangle demanded that the ball be passed to the open man. Once Jordan began complying with that, once he trusted enough to do that, the tension began to ease. A system quickly evolved in which Jordan would play within the triangle for three quarters, and then—depending on the pace and rhythm of the game—would break out of the offense in the fourth quarter to go on scoring binges. These fourth quarters each night produced their own tension, with Tex Winter anxious that Jordan was trying to do too much by himself. Some nights when he did just that, the team would stumble. But far more often, the result would be mesmerizing.

  Jordan’s life off the court during the season had fallen into a familiar pattern. He’d either stay in his room for marathon card games with his tight circle, or he’d slip off to a nearby golf course to zip through a round or two. He’d often manage this in the afternoons, after practice, while his teammates were napping.

  As the season progressed, the team found enough balance to allow for the integration of Horace Grant (12.8 points, 8.4 rebounds) and Paxson (8.7 points while shooting .548 from the floor). A key problem was the bench’s inability to hold leads. Armstrong, Hodges, Perdue, King, Levingston, Williams, and Hopson all worked hard to execute the offense, but it remained Jordan’s scoring that made things work. He would get irritated by the bench’s struggles, but it ultimately meant more time on the floor for him and more scoring opportunities.

  More importantly, it was the defense that carried them along after the shaky start. Bach’s presence served to energize, but the assistant coach would suggest that his contribution was merely window dressing next to the commitment and effort Jackson put into making defense a large part of his team’s identity. “I had a little part in the defense,” he explained, “but it took Phil to manifest it and make it clear to the team.”

  This clarity resulted in the first signs that they might be a very good team. In December, the Bulls’ defense held the Cleveland Cavaliers to just 5 points in one quarter at Chicago Stadium, where crowds presented an atmosphere as intimidating as the defense. The Bulls lost to Boston in Chicago the third game of the season. They wouldn’t lose at home again until Houston stopped them March 25, a run of thirty straight home wins.

  The defense essentially bought time for the offense to come along. When it did, the role players, such as Paxson, began to prosper. “John Paxson was one of the people who made all of the difference in the world, because of his attitude,” the coach recalled, looking back in 1995. “He was going to play full-court pressure and be a facilitator in this offense.”

  They finished February with an 11–1 record, which included a road win in the Palace of Auburn Hills just before All-Star Weekend. Isiah Thomas was sidelined, but the victory sparked the Bulls toward the first signs of belief. “Just winning a game in their building gave us confidence because we’d had such a tough time beating them,” Paxson recalled. “Phil had sold us on playing our game, not being retaliatory against the Pistons. That’s what really helped us along.”

  The outcome charged Jordan with optimism and yet more confidence, if that was possible. “When we went in there and beat them right before the All-Star break, that’s when I knew we could beat them in the playoffs,” he recalled. “We had been on the road for something like two weeks, and it just came together. I could feel it then.”

  The seven-foot-one Cartwright had been key to the Bulls’ new maturity in dealing with the physical Pistons. Cartwright could be as stubborn as Jordan, which also helped the team learn to face up to Detroit. “One of the things that got to us,” Jackson explained, “was that Detroit used to have a way of bringing up the level of animosity in a game. At some level, you were gonna have to contest them physically if you were gonna stay in the game with them. If you didn’t want to stay in the game with them, fine. They’d go ahead and beat you. But if you wanted to compete, you’d have to do something physically to play at their level. Bill stood up to the Pistons. Bill’s statement was, ‘This isn’t the way we want to play. This isn’t the way I want to play. But if it is the way we have to play to take care of these guys, I’m not afraid to do it. I’m gonna show these Detroit guys this is not acceptable. We won’t accept you doing this to us.’ You can’t imagine how much that relieved guys like Scottie Pippen and Horace Grant, guys who were being besieged constantly
and challenged constantly by more physical guys like Dennis Rodman and Rick Mahorn.”

  March brought a nine-game winning streak that helped them gain the all-important home-court advantage for the playoffs. They closed the schedule with another four-game win streak, including another win over the Pistons that brought Chicago’s record to 61–21.

  Determined to prove his point and still fulfill Jackson’s wishes, Jordan managed to again lead the league in scoring at 31.5 points per game (to go with 6 rebounds and 5 assists per outing). Pippen had found a higher plateau for his game as well. He played 3,014 minutes that season, and averaged nearly 18 points, 7 rebounds, and 6 assists.

  As the playoffs got under way, Jordan was named the league’s MVP for the second time.

  They opened against the Knicks and won the first game by a record 41 points, then went on to sweep them, 3–0. Next Charles Barkley and the 76ers fell, four games to one. During a two-day break in the playoff series with Philadelphia, Jordan and writer Mark Vancil motored over to an Atlantic City casino. They dragged back to the team hotel about six thirty the next morning, and Jordan still made the Bulls’ practice at ten a.m., which was no great surprise to anyone who knew him. The media took note of it, and later it would be cited as the first tremor in his rolling quake of troubles.

  Basketball brought him back to a reality of sorts. The Bulls dispensed with the Sixers, setting up the only rematch that Jordan wanted: the Bad Boys in the Eastern Conference championship series. Detroit was an injured and fractured team in May 1991. Chuck Daly had been named the coach for the upcoming 1992 US Olympic team, and Isiah Thomas returned from injury that April perhaps sensing that he wasn’t in Daly’s plans for the roster. He began publicly criticizing his coach, hinting that his Olympic responsibilities had taken his attention off the Pistons. Daly sought to quiet his star, but Thomas persisted in his pointed remarks. Privately, Daly was said to be furious at the suggestion he wasn’t doing his job. “All I’ve done is one meeting and look at some films,” he told reporters.