During their big start, the Bulls had toyed with opponents through the first two or three quarters before flexing their might and finishing strong. When they rolled through January at 14–0, Jackson began talking openly of resting players just to lose a few games and slow things down. He seemed worried that his team would get so drunk with winning during the regular season that their energy might be spent by the playoffs. “You can actually take them out of their rhythm by resting guys in a different rotation off the bench,” he explained. “I have considered that.”
Jordan wanted no part of it. His focus was unbreakable. Fascinated by his play, Julius Erving sat down with him for a televised interview and asked about the shift in his approach as he aged. “Mentally, in the knowledge of basketball, I’m better,” Jordan replied. “Physically, I may not have the same speed or quickness. But the mental can override the physical. I can’t jump from the free throw line like I used to.”
“You seem to operate in a zone that seems to be reserved only for you,” Erving told him. “What’s it like when you’re there, Mike?”
“It’s like every move, every step, every decision you make, it’s the right decision,” Jordan replied.
Jordan was “in the moment,” as George Mumford described it. Every player could fall into a zone on occasion, but he now seemed to reside there. He had transformed his approach into a collection of post-up moves and midrange jumpers that opponents struggled to defend. He became a post weapon, much like a great center who could attack consistently. He did this despite tendinitis in his knees that required ice before games, and sometimes forced him to sit out practices.
In mid-February, he scored 44 against the Pacers, to go with Pippen’s 40. Matt Guokas, doing color analysis for the game, pointed out that Elgin Baylor and Jerry West, two of the game’s greatest scorers, had done that once or twice. More and more, Pippen and Jordan were becoming the perfect tandem. As Jordan went baseline repeatedly in just about every game that season, Guokas pointed out, “It’s one of the Jordan Rules. You don’t ever give Michael baseline.”
The Bulls juggernaut pushed through February at 11–3. And although March was interrupted by Rodman head-butting an official and getting suspended for six games, the Bulls still finished the month at 12–2. The seventy-win season that Lacy Banks had predicted was beginning to seem possible.
“What amazes me most about our team,” said Jack Haley, “is that we probably have the league’s greatest player ever in Michael Jordan, we have the league’s greatest rebounder in Dennis Rodman, and we have what is probably this year’s MVP in Scottie Pippen, and what amazes me most is the work ethic and leadership that these three guys bring to the floor night in and night out. With all of the accolades, with all of the money, with all of the championships, everything that they have, what motivates them besides winning another championship? How many months away is that? And these guys are focused now.”
Rodman marked his anticipation of the big event by showing up as a blond, highlighted by a swirling red streak. Then, headed into the team’s historic week, he opted for a flamingo-pink shade. They earned win number seventy in Milwaukee on Tuesday, April 16, and closed the regular season with a road win in Washington for a 72–10 finish.
The Miami Heat fell in the first round of the playoffs in three quick games. Next came a grunting rematch with the Knicks, who managed an overtime win at home about which Jordan was nonchalant. He scored 35 in Game 5 in Chicago to finish them off, 4–1. After one late bucket, he backed down the floor and waved bye-bye to Knicks fan Spike Lee, sitting courtside with a towel wrapped around his shoulders. “I’ve always been known as a player who could finish off a team,” Jordan said afterward.
To prepare the team for Orlando, Jackson spliced shots of Pulp Fiction, the story of two hired assassins, into the scouting tapes of the Magic. His players got the clear message. Rodman held Horace Grant scoreless for twenty-eight minutes of Game 1, until the Orlando forward injured his shoulder in the third quarter and was lost for the year. The meeting of the two best teams in the league ended 121–83, a 38-point humiliation for Orlando.
Commissioner David Stern had presented Jordan with the league MVP trophy before the game. “You still set the standard for greatness, determination, and leadership,” he told him.
They were behind by 18 at halftime in Game 2 when Jackson walked into the locker room and told his team they had the Magic just where they wanted them. Indeed, the Bulls had toyed with opponents all season. They won going away as the once-powerful Magic headed into a slide. “Guys like Michael and Scottie, when there’s blood in the water, they can smell it,” Kerr told a reporter afterward. “They’re ready for the kill.”
The strangest sight of the conference finals was Rodman defending the massive Shaquille O’Neal straight up, loading the big center on his thigh and hoisting him off the block. Sitting courtside, working as a scout, Brendan Malone marveled at what Rodman had brought to the Bulls and how Jordan had adapted his game.
Orlando fell in four straight, an exclamation mark on Jordan’s response to his failures a year earlier. “He’s the baddest dude to ever lace up a pair of sneakers,” Orlando’s Nick Anderson said of Jordan after he scored 45 points in Game 4 to complete the sweep. Dr. Jack Ramsay, the former coach turned analyst, pointed out that the Bulls star had done it by immersing himself within the team.
Seattle
The Bulls fidgeted through a nine-day layoff waiting for Seattle to advance in the West. The 1996 NBA Finals opened on June 5 with the Bulls listed as ten-to-one favorites to defeat the Sonics, who had won an impressive sixty-four games during the regular season. The only anxiety that Jordan felt was the approach of Father’s Day. He was mindful that the last time he was in the championship series, three years earlier, his family—including his father—had celebrated the title in his Phoenix hotel room. As this next milestone approached, the family now showed signs of fracture, although his mother still made an effort to support him. On the eve of the series, Princess Di visited Chicago for a medical fund-raiser at the Field Museum of Natural History. Deloris Jordan, a serious Diana fan, was confounded by the conflicting events. She wanted to attend the candlelit evening of dinner and dancing, so she slipped into an evening gown and attended the dinner with the princess, then changed clothes and dashed across town to watch her son. “I know Michael expects me to be there,” she explained.
The NBA had credentialed approximately 1,600 journalists from around the globe to cover the event. The whole world would be watching, as was usually the case for Jordan’s performances, particularly now that his new sidekick, Rodman, had yet another hairdo, with various red, green, and blue hieroglyphics and symbols scrambled on his skull. Reporters asked Jordan if he could still take flight and launch the dunks that made him famous, now that his game consisted largely of post-ups and jumpers. “Can I still take off? I don’t know,” he said. “I haven’t been able to try it because defenses don’t guard me one-on-one anymore. But honestly, I probably can’t do it.… I like not knowing whether I can do it because that way, I still think I can. As long as I believe I can do something, that’s all that matters.”
Seattle coach George Karl had hired Brendan Malone to scout the Bulls during the playoffs in hopes that he could help them employ the infamous Jordan Rules for the series. As the Finals were set to open, Malone and Chuck Daly encountered Jordan in a hallway in the arena. “Michael came walking by me,” Malone recalled in a 2011 interview. “He was upset because I had come with the knowledge of how to try and defend him.”
“You’re not going to beat me,” he told Malone sharply.
“He was ticked off,” Malone recalled. “Chuck looked at me and said, ‘You’ve got him upset.’ ”
“You have to try to match their intensity,” Malone told reporters at the time. “Forget Xs and Os. They are going to try and cut your heart out right away, right from the first quarter.”
He was both right and wrong. Jordan would certainly attack, b
ut the outcome was also about matchups. George Karl had six-ten Detlef Schrempf cover Jordan to open the series, with the idea that as soon as he dropped into the post, guard Hersey Hawkins would immediately double-team. It was a huge mistake. Jordan scored 28 points, and there was plenty of balance, as Pippen scored 21, Kukoc 18, Harper 15, and Longley 14. Karl later shifted Gary Payton, the NBA’s defensive player of the year, to cover Jordan, but it was too late. In the fourth quarter, the Bulls’ defense forced 7 turnovers, and Kukoc came alive with 10 points in what had become a typical Chicago finish. They took the advantage, 107–90.
Chicago shot 39 percent in Game 2, but that just meant more rebounds for Rodman. He finished with 20 boards, including a record-tying 11 offensive rebounds. Jordan struggled, but willed in 29 points. And the defense forced another 20 Sonics turnovers, including a batch during a three-minute stretch of the third period when Chicago pushed the margin from 66–64 to 76–65.
Jordan had grown furious with Kukoc for passing up shots. “Are you scared?” he taunted Kukoc. “If you are, then sit down. If you’re out here to shoot, then shoot.”
Kukoc hit two treys, and Jordan rewarded him moments later with a pass for a slam, and the Bulls took the second game, 92–88. With Harper’s knee hurting, Jackson and Winter figured they were in for a fight with the next three games in Seattle’s KeyArena. But the Sonics were strangely subdued for Game 3. With Kukoc starting for Harper, the Bulls were vulnerable defensively, but they forced the issue on offense from the opening tip. With Jordan scoring 12 points, the Bulls leaped to a 34–12 lead by the end of the first quarter. By halftime, the lead had stretched to 62–38. Jordan finished with 36, but the big surprise was 19 from Longley, who had struggled in Game 2. Asked what had turned the big center’s game around, Jackson replied, “Verbal bashing by everybody on the club. I don’t think anybody’s ever been attacked by as many people as Luc after Friday’s game. Tex gave him an earful, and Michael did, too. I tried the last few days to build his confidence back up.”
Chicago sat poised for a sweep, what would have been a 15–1 run through the playoffs, the most successful postseason record in NBA history. The next two days of practice took on the air of a coronation, with the media hustling to find comparisons between the Bulls and pro basketball’s great teams from the past. ESPN analyst Jack Ramsay said the Bulls just might be the greatest defensive team of all time. “The best defenders in the game are Pippen and Jordan,” he said. “They’re just so tough. In each playoff series, they take away one more thing from the opponent, and then you’re left standing out there naked, without a stitch of clothes. It’s embarrassing.”
The key to the Bulls’ drive was Jordan, Ramsay added. “He is such a fierce competitor that he brings everybody beyond their individual levels. I watched Steve Kerr, who had the reputation of being a no-defense guy, a good spot-up shooter. Now you watch him, he’s out there playing defense, challenging everybody that he plays, he’s right in their face. He may get beaten, but he’s not going to back down from the chore. He now puts the ball on the floor and creates his own shot. That’s something he never did before. Michael’s influence on all those players is tremendous.”
It was before Game 4 that George Karl, who had also played for Dean Smith at Carolina, realized he hadn’t done enough to rattle Jordan. So he arranged for Tassie Dempsey, who had cooked for Tar Heels basketball players for thirty years, to fly to Seattle to cheer on the Sonics. Jordan was shocked to see her that Thursday before the game and asked her, “Mama D, what are you doing here?”
“I came to cheer for George,” she replied.
Karl’s wife told a disbelieving Jordan, “Michael, Mama D’s our good luck symbol.”
The always-superstitious Jordan told her, “Then you’re going home, Mama D. If you’re bringing them luck, you’ve got to go home.”
Gary Payton proved to be a bigger problem for MJ than Mama D. Payton had spent much of the series guarding Pippen, but Karl saw that he was effective on Jordan in parts of Game 3, so he switched Payton over to cover more of Jordan in Game 4. Ron Harper was struggling with painful tendinitis, which meant that Jordan spent more time covering Payton. Chicago suddenly lacked the vital ball pressure that was so key to its defense. Without Harper, Jordan and Pippen couldn’t roam to create havoc. The Sonics settled the outcome with a second-quarter blitz from which Chicago never recovered. Frustrated by Payton’s defense, Jordan furiously berated both his teammates and the officials. Midway through the fourth quarter, Jordan was called for a double dribble. He flashed his anger again and stomped his foot, obviously rattled. He left the game minutes later, having hit just 6 of 19, and barked furiously from the bench in the closing minutes, with Pippen laughing, squeezing his shoulder. Payton had done the job, and Seattle fans were left to wonder what might have changed if Payton had spent more time on Jordan earlier in the series.
Harper sat again in Game 5. Given a second chance to close out the series, the Bulls struggled, fell behind, then closed the gap, only to fall a second time, 89–78. The series, miraculously, was returning to Chicago. THE JOY OF SIX, the Seattle newspapers declared the next day in a headline.
Jordan was livid about the failure to close it out. Backup center James Edwards had taken to dropping by Jordan’s room during the playoffs to have a postgame cigar with Ahmad Rashad and Jordan, who always had an attaché case filled with the finest smokes. There was usually something interesting going on there, Edwards recalled. But when he stopped in after Game 5, he was startled at Jordan’s fury. “I had never seen him that upset before. He kept saying, ‘We should have won today. It should be over.’ I told him we would get it when we got home. He didn’t want to hear that at all. He kept saying it should be over.”
He was ending the year just as he had opened it, with his harshest emotions on display. He had wanted to end the series as soon as possible, to unburden himself of the immense pressure he had shouldered since deciding to return. The championship showdown had not been his best performance. He had shot 41.5 percent from the field and would average 27.3 points for the series, well below the 36 points he was averaging during the playoffs. But there was another reason for his anger and disappointment: he had wanted to end it before Father’s Day. “He’s always on my mind,” he said.
That Sunday was Game 6, Father’s Day. He felt the rush of emotion and chose to dedicate the game to his father’s memory. The United Center crowd thundered at every turn that afternoon, with prolonged applause during introductions. The sound waves seemed to compress, then explode, when announcer Ray Clay got to, “From North Carolina.…” Taking all this in, the Sonics stood courtside, chomping their gum and setting their jaws. The audience exploded again moments after the tip-off when Pippen went to the hoop with an underhand scoop to open the scoring. With Harper back, the Bulls’ pressure returned, and they picked the Sonics clean time and again. Harper would play thirty-eight minutes; every time he paused, an assistant trainer would coat his knee with a spray anesthetic. Inspired by his presence, Pippen pushed the Bulls out of the gate in the first period with 7 points and 2 steals, giving Chicago a 16–12 lead. To settle the matter, the Bulls produced a 19–9 run in the third period, capped by Pippen dishing on the break to Rodman, who flipped in a little reverse shot, then thrust his fists skyward, bringing yet another outburst from the building, which got louder yet when he made the free throw for a 62–47 lead. Jackson had left Jordan on the bench for a long stretch at the end of the third so that he would be fresh for the kill in the fourth. But with Jordan an emotional wreck and facing double-teams, at least some of the momentum would come from Kukoc, who canned a three from the corner to push it to 70–58. Kerr followed with another three with 2:44 to go, and the entire building seemed to be dancing to “Whoomp! (There It Is).” Pippen’s final trey on a kick-out from Jordan came at fifty-seven seconds; moments later, for the last possession of this very historic season, Jordan dribbled near midcourt, then relinquished it to Pippen for one last, delirious air ba
ll.
Jordan broke loose from Jackson’s embrace to join a mad scrum for the game ball. He tumbled briefly to the floor with Randy Brown. Then he was gone, the game ball clutched behind his head, disappearing into the locker room, trying to escape the NBC cameras, searching for haven in the trainer’s room, weeping there on the floor in joy and pain over his memories on Father’s Day.
“I’m sorry I was away for eighteen months,” he said after being named Finals MVP. “I’m happy I’m back, and I’m happy to bring a championship back to Chicago.”
The players then jumped up on the courtside press table for a victory jig to acknowledge the fans, just as they had in 1992, the last time they had won in Chicago. With them was Rodman, already shirtless.
“I think we can consider ourselves the greatest team of all time,” Pippen said with satisfaction.
“This is the nineties, but they play with a learned mentality from an earlier time,” George Karl said. “This is an old-time package. I don’t know about the Bird era or the Magic era. They were great teams, but this Bulls team has that same basic mentality. I like their heart and I like their philosophy.”
In the euphoria of a championship moment, athletes and coaches tend to favor restraint. Why promise another championship and bring on the debilitating pressure? Why not bask in the accomplishment, especially if you’ve just delivered arguably the greatest season in the history of the game? But that had never been Jordan’s way.
“Five is the next number,” he said with the same sort of smile that had once so disarmed Sonny Vaccaro.
Michael Jordan Page 59