Michael Jordan

by Roland Lazenby

  If it hadn’t been for his grand entrance, fans might have realized that a bizarre, almost hellish training camp was unfolding that fall. It would take years for the truth to leak out about what really happened in those long, foreboding days at the Berto Center. When it was over, the Bulls rolled out of the station like a trainload of parolees, as frightened as they were frightening.

  “I got a glimpse of it right away,” Steve Kerr recalled in 2012. “Camp was insane, how competitive and intense it was. Michael was coming off the comeback when he hadn’t played that well in the playoffs, at least as far as his standards were concerned. He was out to prove a point and get his game back in order. So every practice was like a war.”

  If Dennis Rodman had any thought about acting up, he ditched it immediately—Jordan was that intimidating. In fact, Rodman didn’t even speak to his new teammates, preferring instead to work in a silence that would grow stranger with each passing day. “It was a tough training camp because everybody was guarded,” Jack Haley would explain later in the season. “Again, you’re Michael Jordan. You’re Scottie Pippen. Why would you have to go over to Dennis? Michael Jordan made $50 million last year. Why would he have to go over and basically kiss up to some guy to get him to talk? They came over and shook his hand and welcomed him to the team, and this and that. But other than that, it was a slow process.”

  “I think everybody was skeptical of what might happen,” recalled John Paxson, who had been hired as an assistant coach. “But we were also optimistic as to what could happen. The optimism stemmed from Phil’s personality. We felt that if there was anyone around the league who could get along with Dennis and get Dennis to respect him as a coach it would be Phil.”

  Central to the uneasiness about team chemistry was the relationship between Rodman and Pippen. “No, I have not had a conversation with Dennis,” Pippen acknowledged early in the year. “I’ve never had a conversation with Dennis in my life, so I don’t think it’s anything new now.”

  It was a blessing, in retrospect, that the Rodman sideshow served to obscure what was really happening in training camp. Jordan was even more difficult than he had been the previous spring. He was far more strident in his relationships with his teammates upon his return from retirement. “When he came back after the murder, he was a different animal,” Lacy Banks explained. The team, after all, had been rebuilt while Jordan was away from the game. There was little question that he found himself working with a group who had no real idea how to win a championship.

  “A lot of these guys have come from programs who have never experienced the stages of being a champion,” Jordan explained in acknowledging his rough approach with new teammates. “I’m just speeding up the process.”

  Another factor had been that summer’s lockout. At Falk’s bidding, Jordan had led the failed effort to decertify the union, with Steve Kerr on the other side of the issue. Reinsdorf had opposed Jordan “being out front” on the issue, but he did it anyway. “We had an underlying edge from the lockout,” Kerr recalled, “and I was the Bulls’ player rep and Michael was one of David Falk’s guys and they weren’t happy at all with the union leadership, so there was kind of an undercurrent of that. Every drill, every practice was so intense.”

  Kerr sensed an extra level of irritation, perhaps even dislike, from Jordan. It did not seem racial in any way, he recalled with a laugh. “He never used race in any comment. He was above that. He didn’t discriminate. He just pretty much destroyed all of us. But, I think it was calculated, for sure. He tested every guy. You may not have known it at the time, but he was testing you and you had to stand up to him.”

  Kerr’s time to stand up came on the third day of training camp. “This is what I remember,” he recalled in 2012. “We had a scrimmage and the starters were beating up on us. We were the red team and they were getting away with fouling. Michael was just being incredibly physical. And Phil had left to go up to his office. He had to go tend to a phone call or something, and so Phil’s absence definitely led to a situation where it was a little out of control. Michael was talking all kinds of shit. It really is kind of a blur as to what he was saying, but I got really fed up, you know, because I felt like they were fouling every time and Michael was fouling. The assistant coaches are reffing and they don’t want to call a foul on Michael. He’s talking, and I start talking back.

  “I’m not sure anyone had done that before,” he said with a laugh.

  Kerr got the ball, and Jordan again fouled him. “He was guarding me and I think I used my off arm and threw an elbow or something, to get him off of me, and he kept talking. Then I’m yapping and the next play, I’m running through the lane and he gives me a forearm shiver in the middle of the lane and I give him one back. And he basically came after me. As Jud Buechler says, ‘It was like a velociraptor.’ I was like the kid in Jurassic Park who got attacked by the velociraptor. I had no chance. It was just mayhem. We were screaming at each other, and our teammates, thank God, they all ran in and pulled us apart. But I ended up with a black eye. Apparently, I got punched. I don’t even remember getting hit.”

  It was the first and only fistfight in Kerr’s life. “We were barking at each other, and it got out of hand,” recalled Kerr, the son of a career diplomat. He was just letting us know how they were kicking our ass. I knew they were kicking our ass. He didn’t have to tell me about it. Why wouldn’t that piss me off? It’s natural. Other guys were pissed off, too. He just happened to be guarding me at the time.”

  Jackson saw the incident as a serious and immediate threat to the team’s chemistry. “Michael stormed out of practice,” Kerr said, “and Phil came down and came over to talk to me. He said, ‘You and Michael have to patch things up. You gotta talk to him and you gotta patch it up.’ I got home and there was a message on my phone, on my answering machine, from Michael, and he apologized. And it was weird, it was like from that day forward, our relationship was great. Like, you know, a few days after that, where it was a little weird just because of what had happened, but clearly he accepted me from that point on.”

  With that one incident, Jordan had assumed complete control of the team. Where before he had used his anger and mental intimidation to push the group, he now added the implied threat of violence. He had created an atmosphere that for the next three seasons would allow him to drive the Bulls at the pace he set. He wasn’t alone in this effort. He formed a partnership with Jackson, the team’s other dominant personality, to create a fiercely disciplined group.

  It was why Jackson referred to Jordan as the alpha male. Jackson sought to temper and direct Jordan’s fierceness with Zen teachings, mindfulness, meditation, and other practices. “He didn’t articulate much on a personal level,” Kerr said of Jordan’s approach. “He articulated plenty on a basketball level. I mean, he had his opinions. In the film sessions, he would talk all the time, and Phil would sometimes ask him to talk, so he exerted his influence on us through the game, but not so much on a personal level.”

  This unprecedented approach was at its most extreme in that first training camp after Jordan’s return, but the dynamic continued for three very successful, very turbulent seasons, Kerr said.

  “He knows he intimidates people,” Jackson would say that fall. “I had to pull him in last year when he first came back. He was comfortable playing with Will Perdue… he was tough on Longley. He would throw passes that, at times, I don’t think anybody could catch, then glare at him and give him that look. And I let him know that Luc wasn’t Will Perdue, and it was all right if he tested him out to see what his mettle was, but I wanted him to play with him because he had a big body, he wasn’t afraid, he’d throw it around, and if we were going to get by Orlando, we were going to have to have somebody to stand up to Shaquille O’Neal.”

  Jackson, who had always made an effort to keep the team’s hierarchy clear, now had Jordan as his enforcer. They had help from Tex Winter, who also had a harsh way of going after players if they slacked off.

  The
Zen

  Jackson had brought in George Mumford, a psychologist and mindfulness expert who taught the players to meditate and do togetherness exercises. Mumford also counseled individual players to help them grasp the team dynamic, which consisted in part of Jordan bullying them and Jackson using his influence to keep everybody on board. What was remarkable was to see Jordan come to embrace Jackson’s softer efforts with the team, Kerr pointed out. “That was the key to the whole thing. If Michael hadn’t trusted Phil, it never would have worked for any of us. But Michael had such great respect for Phil that he embraced those methods.”

  It often felt incongruous that Jackson would use thirty minutes of precious practice time to have his players sit on the floor and meditate in the dark—only to face Jordan’s wrath as soon as the drills started. As Kerr said, Jackson told them that he didn’t run the triangle offense for Jordan, but for the rest of the players. The meditation seemed to fit a similar, but converse, pattern. The coach didn’t really have meditation so much for the rest of the players. He had it in hopes that it might prevent Jordan from chewing up one promising teammate after another.

  In short time, Jordan gained a level of trust with Mumford and told the psychologist that if he’d met him earlier in his career he might not have spent his life a prisoner in his hotel room.

  Pippen also helped enforce the hierarchy. He could flash his anger, but was an understanding and compassionate leader. He had graduated from MJ’s school of hard knocks, and by the fall of 1995, Pippen and Jordan acted as partners at the heart of the team, Kerr observed. “By the time I got there, they had a great relationship. You know, they had their breakfast club where Harper and Pippen would go over to Michael’s house and lift weights in the morning. They would go lift weights and then show up to practice together. Those three were really tight. And it was the perfect role for Scottie, as we all know, not having to be the man, but being able to dominate in his own way.”

  Jordan was still the alpha male, but his pairing with Pippen had created a two-man unit in which the sum was far greater than the individual parts. “They were a perfect combination, at both ends,” Kerr explained. “They were both so versatile defensively, they could just switch and cause so much havoc. And then offensively, Scottie really preferred to pass and Michael preferred to score. By the end, I think, one of our last championships, Michael basically pulled him under his arm and announced to the crowd that it wouldn’t have been possible without Scottie. So, in the end, it was an incredible relationship.”

  It was in this atmosphere that Dennis Rodman was injected, into Chicago’s most unusual team chemistry. Everyone on the inside was eager to see how he would fit into a new hierarchy and identity that fall. “They hardly ever spoke,” Kerr said of Rodman and Jordan. “There was just this respect, this underlying respect that you felt. It was really easy to feel it, because Michael never picked on Dennis. Never. And Dennis was like subservient to Michael in an emotional way, not in a physical way. He never did anything for Michael that he didn’t do for the rest of us, but there was just this understanding that Michael is the ‘greatest’ and I’m below him, and so I’m not going to mess with him, and vice versa. It was really interesting.”

  The primary target of Jordan’s fury would remain the team’s foreign-born stars, Luc Longley from Australia and Toni Kukoc from Croatia. By all accounts, including Jordan’s, his treatment of them was harsh, and it lasted over his final three seasons in Chicago. “Those guys were so talented, particularly Toni, who was incredibly gifted,” Kerr said. “And Luc was a huge piece, literally and figuratively. I mean we needed him to man the paint and anchor the defense and rebound and you had to light a fire under Luc to get the best out of him. So, I think there was a reason that Michael and Phil and Tex and Scottie all stayed on those guys. It was because they needed it. They needed the kick in the pants. I think Toni was just so laid back. I’m very laid back on the surface, but you can get to me. And I have a button that can be pushed, especially when I was playing.… I could get so angry, like I did that day, that I could snap. I never saw Toni snap, though. I never saw Luc snap, and so it was like they were just fair game for Michael.”

  Tex Winter had seen every sort of team dynamic but was transfixed by the evolution of Jordan after his return. “It’s another way he has of challenging himself,” the older coach theorized, pointing out that if Jordan was so hard on his teammates, it allowed him little room for personal letdowns.

  Kerr agreed. “If you look at his past, it’s filled with moments of sort of created challenges for himself to raise his level. The thing that amazes me is that the standards he has set are so unbelievably high that it’s almost unfair that he has to maintain them. It’s incredible. Every arena that we go into all season long, he’s expected to get 40 points. He loves it. That’s the amazing thing about him. The combination of incredible talent, work ethic, basketball skills, and competitiveness. It’s just an unbelievable combination.”

  Looking back two years later, Jordan would acknowledge that he had sometimes come down so hard that he had run people off. “You have a better understanding for me as a leader if you have the same motivation, the same understanding for what we’re trying to achieve, and what it takes to get there,” he explained. “Now, if you and I don’t get along, certainly you won’t understand the dedication it takes to win. So if I run ’em off, I don’t run ’em off with the intention of running ’em off. I run ’em off with the intention of having them understand what it takes to be a champion, what it takes to dedicate yourself to winning. I’m not hard every single day. I mean there are days where you have to relax and let the tension flow or ease. But for the most part, when you have to focus, you have to focus. As a leader, that’s what I have to do.

  “And I’m not by myself,” he emphasized, echoing Kerr. “Pip does the same, and Phil does the same. But I do it more consistently, I guess, because I’ve been here the longest. I feel obligated to make sure that we maintain the same type of expectations, the same level.”

  Jordan knew intimidation well, having taken a beating from the Pistons. And it would have to be taught to others. He had made that decision in 1990, when he had laid his heart on the line and realized afterward that his teammates hadn’t done the same. He would not find himself in battle again with faint hearts around him, he decided. “That’s going through the fucking stages of being on a losing team to a championship team,” he said in retrospect, his eyes narrow as he frowned. Jordan had grabbed the team by the throat to elevate its emotional level. Just the realization of that had staggered Steve Kerr. So this is what it is, he said to himself.

  Jordan readily acknowledged that his status in pro basketball allowed him to do things that perhaps no other player—probably no coach, even—could get away with. “You don’t want to do it in a way that they misinterpret the relationship,” he said. “It’s nothing personal. I love all my teammates. I would do anything. I would extend myself to make sure they’re successful. But they have to do the same. They have to have a better understanding of what it takes.”

  The fact that Jordan occasionally chased some would-be teammates off “may be a good thing,” Kerr said. “You’ve got to kind of weed out the people who can’t really help out. And Michael has a way of finding those guys, finding weaknesses.…

  “Obviously we all have weaknesses,” Kerr added and laughed. “Except for Michael. And what he does, he forces us to fight and be competitive, to fight through those weaknesses and not accept them, to work on them, and to improve ourselves.” Make no mistake, though, Kerr said, what Jordan did was pure challenge. “There was not a whole lot of encouragement.”

  “I suspect that Larry Bird was the same way,” said trainer Chip Schaefer, “and I know from observing countless Lakers practices during my time at Loyola Marymount that Magic Johnson was a bitch at practice. You drop one of his passes, you miss a layup, you miss an assignment on defense—man, if eyes could kill, that’s the way it was.”

  It w
ould take time for this harsher Jordan to gain focus in the public mind. Bruce Levine, a reporter for a Chicago sports radio station, had gotten to know Jordan well over the years. Slowly, Levine saw what James Jordan’s death had meant for the star. “Up until then, he was the most unaffected superstar, because he wouldn’t allow things to get to him,” Levine explained at the time. “He would still sit in the locker room before the game and stretch out with us and talk for a half hour or forty minutes about everything but basketball. He would stretch out on the floor, and we would just sit for forty-five minutes and talk about everything. We’d have fun. He’d ask questions. He’s very inquisitive, a guy who wanted to learn about things. He was still learning about life and educating himself. But once the situation occurred with his father and the way the media portrayed that funeral, he never had the same feeling for the media again. He distrusts most media, even people like myself who are peripherally friends with him. It just changed. He became hardened by it to a certain extent. He’s still very gracious with his time, but the fun kind of went out of it for him and for us.”

  What made Jordan’s harshness so difficult to read was that it often came wrapped in the mirth of his trash talk. “Michael has made up his mind that he’s going to enjoy his time of playing basketball,” Tex Winter observed. “I think he made his mind up a long time ago. He enjoys playing, and he wants to keep it fun and loose. And that’s what he attempts to do. His methods sometimes in my mind are questionable. But if that’s what it takes for him to enjoy himself and to challenge himself, then so be it.”