Michael Jordan

by Roland Lazenby

  Chapter 34

  THE RECKONING

  HAVING FOUGHT HIS way back to the top, Jordan’s time now came around to free agency and the opportunity to rectify the great discrepancy between his salary and those of other top players in the league. With the Bulls, contract negotiations often left tempers flaring and people taking offense. Wealth and fame didn’t make any of them immune to getting their feelings hurt. Just the opposite, actually: the bigger the ego, the deeper the bruise.

  “The summertime is when all that stuff erupts with Michael,” Steve Kerr observed at the time. “We win the championship, and he goes to the podium and makes his plea for another crack at it.” That infuriated management, Kerr said. “Then it goes on all summer.”

  Reinsdorf and Jordan had always enjoyed what appeared to be a strong relationship. As player salaries skyrocketed in the 1990s, Jordan was said to be understandably bothered that his contract paid him in the range of $4 million annually, while a dozen or more lesser players in the league earned twice that. At the same time, he was far too proud to ask for a renegotiation. His answer was to live up to the deal he had signed in the highest fashion. Yet when he abruptly retired in the fall of 1993, there were the inevitable insinuations that he did so in part because of his contract.

  The Bulls continued to pay Jordan in his retirement, which, according to one of Reinsdorf’s associates, was a gesture of loyalty from Reinsdorf to Jordan. More cynical observers pointed out that by continuing to pay Jordan, the team also kept his salary slot open under the league’s labyrinthine salary cap rules. If nothing else, the circumstances suggested the difficulty of fostering personal relationships amid the conflicts of business. Even kind gestures could be interpreted as ploys.

  In one sense, Reinsdorf and Jordan were partners in a lucrative sports-entertainment venture. The problem was that as a player, Jordan was barred from having any real equity position in the relationship. As a result, Reinsdorf was management, and Jordan was labor. The labor costs were fixed, while the profit percentages were soaring for those with a piece of the action.

  Jordan, of course, was making his tens of millions off the court. Still, his relatively meager player contract created an inequity. And when he returned to the game in 1995, he returned under his old contract, which meant that the Bulls’ payroll itself remained well under $30 million, and the team could continue raking in tens of millions in profit. That, of course, was in addition to the tremendous growth in equity that Jordan’s brilliant play and the flurry of championships had created for the team’s owners. Reinsdorf’s group had purchased the club during Jordan’s rookie season for about $15 million, then watched its value grow to better than thirty times that over the ensuing decade.

  There was a strong sense that Jordan was “owed,” felt not just by Jordan and his representatives but by virtually anyone who had anything to do with the NBA. Jordan’s play and leadership through the historic 1995–1996 season solidified that notion. With the close of the campaign, his long-term contract finally expired. And then the real trouble started.

  Just days after the championship celebration, the star’s representatives and Reinsdorf began discussing his new contract. In a 1998 interview, Jordan recalled his approach: “What I instructed my representative was, ‘Don’t go in and give a price. I’ve been with this team for a long time. Everyone knows what this market value may be, or could be. If he’s true to his word and honest in terms of our relationship, listen to what he says before we offer what our opinions may be.’ Falk’s instruction was to go in and listen, never to negotiate. Because it shouldn’t have come to a negotiation. We didn’t think of it as a negotiation. We felt it was an opportunity for the Bulls to give me what they felt my value had been to the organization.”

  Jordan, however, was also well aware of Reinsdorf’s reluctance to let go of money. The star believed a drawn-out negotiation would only demean what he had accomplished for the Bulls. So Jordan and his advisors entertained offers from the New York Knickerbockers. Would Jordan have given up the Bulls for the Knicks?

  “Yes,” he said.

  In fact, the Knicks had put together a few million in base salary for Jordan to be augmented by a megamillion personal services contract with one of the Knicks’ affiliated companies. When he learned of the deal, Reinsdorf was reportedly so infuriated that he demanded an opinion from the league’s front office on the legality of the move as a way around the salary cap. The Bulls chairman supposedly threatened a lawsuit to block the Knicks, but a highly placed person at the NBA counseled Reinsdorf about the futility and possible backlash of filing suit against his popular star and the Knicks.

  David Falk wanted a substantial one-year contract to reflect Jordan’s contribution to the Bulls and the game. But Reinsdorf offered nothing specific, so Jordan stepped into the proceedings.

  “As I know it, no numbers were ever talked about until I was into the game,” Jordan recalled. “No one wanted to put the numbers out on the table. Everyone was jockeying to see who was gonna put the first number out, which we were not gonna do. We had a number in our heads, but we really felt like it was the Bulls’ place to tell us what our net worth was. And to do it from an honest state, not influenced by David, not influenced by me. Just what they felt I’d meant to the organization.”

  Finally exasperated at Reinsdorf’s reluctance to make an offer, Jordan was pulled into a conference phone call with his agent and Reinsdorf. At the time, he was playing golf. But he told Reinsdorf that if the team wanted to re-sign him it would be a one-year deal for better than $30 million. And that Reinsdorf had one hour to agree.

  “At the time they were negotiating I was in Tahoe for a celebrity golf tournament,” Jordan explained. “And we had some conversations with New York. And we were gonna meet with them right after we met with Reinsdorf, and I think that was within an hour’s time. David wanted the Bulls to make their offer and discuss it before we go down and have a conversation with New York. But [Reinsdorf] knew he had a window in terms of the conversation with New York.”

  Krause would later describe Jordan’s approach to the timing of the negotiations as “cold.”

  Although he would never admit it or discuss it publicly, Reinsdorf was wounded. He had assumed he had a personal relationship with Jordan. After all, hadn’t he extended the opportunity to Michael to begin a pro baseball career with the White Sox? Hadn’t he always made the effort to make clear his respect for his star player? Reinsdorf later told close associates that he began to think Jordan had faked their friendship to take advantage of him. After the hurt came Reinsdorf’s anger. But he realized he had no choice. He had to accept the terms.

  Even Reinsdorf had trouble arguing with the amount Jordan had asked for. In fact, the star could have pushed for far more and enjoyed the support of public opinion. But in agreeing to the deal, Reinsdorf made a comment to Jordan that would further damage their relationship. Reinsdorf said he would live to regret giving Jordan the $30 million.

  “Michael is bitter at Jerry,” a Bulls employee later explained, “because when Jerry agreed to pay him the $30 million, Jerry told Michael that he would regret it. Michael stood in the training room one day the next fall and told all his teammates, ‘You know what really pissed me off? Jerry said, You know what, Michael? I’m gonna live to regret this.’

  “Michael said, ‘What the fuck? You could say, You deserve this. You’re the greatest player ever, you’re an asset to the city of Chicago and the organization. And I’m happy to pay you $30 million. You could say that, but even if you don’t feel that way and you’re going to regret it, why are you telling me that?’ Luc was standing there and said, ‘Really? Jerry told you he was going to regret it?’ Michael said, ‘He told me that. I couldn’t believe my owner told me that.’

  “That creates tremendous bitterness,” the team employee said.

  “I said I might live to regret it,” Reinsdorf clarified.

  Jordan recalled: “Actually, he said, ‘Somewhere down the
road, I know I’m gonna regret this.’ It demeaned what was happening. It took away from the meaning of things. The gratitude seemed less because of that statement. I felt it was inappropriate to say that.”

  The team chairman had reportedly made a similar comment to John Paxson a few seasons earlier, when Paxson had finally won a decent raise after several seasons with a contract that paid him relatively little. Upon signing the deal, Reinsdorf had told the hardworking Paxson, “I can’t believe I’m paying you this kind of money.” Although Paxson, who would later become president of the Bulls, never discussed the comment, sources with the team confirmed that he was angered and insulted. Both Jordan’s and Paxson’s negotiations revealed that management’s mentality was that Reinsdorf had to “win” every contract negotiation with every player. That attitude erased any good feelings between players and management, a former player said. And it usually resulted in bitterness from Krause or Reinsdorf whenever they “lost,” the player said.

  “He’s loyal, he’s honest,” Phil Jackson said of Reinsdorf. “He’s truthful. His word means something. But there’s something about going in and trying to get the best every time. Winning the deal. When it comes to money, to win the deal.

  “He has actually said those things, according to people I’ve been close to,” Jackson said of Reinsdorf’s comments, “and those things really hurt. Because most everybody really likes Jerry Reinsdorf.

  “But,” Jackson added with a laugh, “Jerry is Jerry. Jerry is… Jerry doesn’t spend money freely, even with himself. He wants value for money. Who doesn’t? The salaries that have happened in the past ten years have been real difficult for owners to swallow. Large money. It’s an amazing amount of money.”

  The Worship

  Rookie Ray Allen stood nervously in the hallway of the United Center, waiting to catch a glimpse of the Chosen One, much like a young Brahman hiding in an olive grove waiting to catch sight of the Buddha. A first-round draft pick of the Milwaukee Bucks, Allen had spent countless hours studying videotape of Jordan, one favorite sequence in particular. “It’s the one that he beat a Starks and Oakley double-team and took it baseline for a jam on Ewing,” he confided. Allen had watched it again and again, transfixed.

  Concern crept over him as the moment approached. It was only a preseason game. What if Jordan chose to sit it out? But suddenly he was there, in his crisp home whites, striding toward the arena. Allen’s heart did a little tip drill at the sight, his eyes widened, and he gathered himself to challenge his hero, remembering every little detail so that he could tell his home boys what it had been like. Mostly Allen was nervous because he wanted to play well.

  “Just being introduced to Mike for the first time, just the game time prep for it, thinking about it, then finally seeing him,” Allen said afterward, his voice trailing off wistfully.

  Allen had enjoyed a fine sophomore year at the University of Connecticut not quite two years before and had thought about turning pro then. It was the era before rookie salary caps, and the industry had begun scouring colleges for “the next Michael Jordan,” a fool’s errand, and an expensive one. Allen’s own teammate at Connecticut, Donyell Marshall, had gotten a guaranteed $40 million deal to leave early (and turned out to be a bust). Allen decided to stay in school another year, to remove any deficiency from his game before testing Jordan.

  After a good junior year, he had made his move, and now Allen found himself face-to-face with the master, trying to appear nonchalant as he lightly brushed fists with Jordan. He allowed himself only the quickest glance into the killer eyes, to see the amused glint, the twinkle of that ultimate confidence, the Air up there.

  The ball went up and Allen was off to a memorable first quarter. “I didn’t want to be passive when I played him,” he confided afterward. “I didn’t want him to think I wasn’t ready for the challenge.”

  Allen knew Jordan would ease into the affair and that he needed to be aggressive against him right away. He demonstrated that he could get his shot and scored over Jordan in a variety of ways. A trey, a pull-up jumper, a drive down the lane for a slam. The “Hallelujah Chorus” was playing in his head, but his game face showed nothing. He scored 9 points in the quarter and had Jordan scrambling to cover him, even talking a bit of trash, trying to get inside his head.

  After it was over, Allen stood in the Bucks’ locker room with a dazed expression, as if he had just inhabited a dream. “Mike is Mike, unbelievable,” he said, his tone now shifted by the experience, trying to sound more like a veteran.

  “Ray Allen’s gonna be a good player,” Jordan appraised. “I like the way he came out at the beginning of the game.”

  Another wave of talent had come into the league with the 1996 draft, drawn by the environment of instant wealth Jordan had created for them. Joining Allen would be the teenager in Los Angeles, Kobe Bryant, and Allen Iverson in Philadelphia, among others. The 1996 off-season had brought a massive reshuffling of veteran players as well. With nearly two hundred free agents on the market, teams offered up more than a billion dollars in contracts to select stars, virtually all of that money made possible by Jordan’s presence in the sport. None of these moves was more dramatic than Shaquille O’Neal’s jump to the Los Angeles Lakers from Orlando for a $123 million contract.

  The Bulls played a preseason game at the Thomas & Mack Center in Las Vegas that season, an odd choice given Jordan’s gambling history and Rodman’s own struggles (he had made nineteen different junkets to the craps tables there in recent months alone and had lost mountains of cash, Jack Haley revealed). Yet Rodman’s freak-show look fit perfectly with the grotesque backdrop of the Vegas strip. In this culture of concocted celebrity, Jordan’s rebounder was the ultimate concoction. He had married himself that summer in a publicity stunt in New York for his new book, Bad as I Wanna Be.

  NBA preseason games were notoriously unenthusiastic road shows, exhibitions that the league staged in strategic global locations—Mexico, London, Japan—or in out-of-the-way arenas near a star player’s hometown or college. In the old days the Bulls set up games in Chapel Hill. This trip, however, offered a memorable look at Jordan at the height of his power, before the coming acrimony managed to drag him down and out of the game. He was clearly a man in full.

  The Bulls had actually opened their preseason a night earlier in Albuquerque in the first of a pair of games against Seattle, a rematch of the championship series. Afterward, they hurried out of Albuquerque on their private—and lavishly accoutered—jet and arrived in Las Vegas shortly after midnight. Steve Wynn, the chairman of Mirage Resorts, provided both Rodman and Jordan with complimentary four-thousand-square-foot villas for their stay. The rest of the Bulls, meanwhile, were assigned rooms in the hotel. Jackson cancelled the team’s morning shootaround, allowing Jordan to take in as many golf holes as possible.

  The Saturday night game between the Bulls and the SuperSonics featured a battle between Jordan and Craig Ehlo that involved so much pushing and shoving that Jordan even took a quick swing at Ehlo that was missed, or ignored, by the officials. Jordan laughed about it afterward. “I’ve played against Ehlo so many times,” he said. “He can get away with it sometimes. I can get away with it sometimes. That’s the beauty of the game of basketball. I have so much respect for him and so much competition in competing against him that it’s always fun to go against him and see who can get away with the dirt first. That’s what it is.”

  The premiere of Space Jam, Jordan’s animated film with Bugs Bunny, was also in the mix. “I think it’s gonna do fine,” he said. “But I’m very nervous about it. This is a whole new arena for me, but it’s just been a lot of money invested in me, and hopefully I did my part. I tried to do it the best I could, and if it’s good… great. I may do it again. If it’s not, certainly I’ll know where I stand in that career. I’ll stick to the thirty-second commercials.” The film would eventually rake in $400 million, a towering success, prompting David Falk to urge Jordan to do another, but by then he had changed his m
ind and would turn down all offers over the ensuing years.

  As he left the locker room that night, a boy with a brand-new basketball and a black indelible marker stepped out of the shadows, too cowed to speak.

  Jordan furrowed his face and looked at the boy. “Do I get paid for this?” he asked as he reached for the ball and marker. “Normally I get seven digits.”

  Somehow the boy managed to speak.

  “I… I got five dollars,” he offered hopefully.

  Jordan smiled. “No problem,” he replied, trying to make it clear that he was just joking.

  The marker, though, was nearly out of ink, and when Jordan stroked his signature across the face of the ball, it barely took. Jordan frowned.

  “Man,” he said, “you gave me this cheap pen.”

  Panic and disbelief spread across the boy’s face. He jammed his hand in his pocket to bring out a raft of pens for another try.

  “I thought you were reaching for some money,” Jordan said, laughing.

  He could be excused for thinking that the young fan was digging for cash. For years now he had been on the receiving end of an immense transfer of wealth. In the 1995–96 season alone, it was estimated that he had raked in better than $40 million in off-court endorsement income. For 1996–97, the numbers would surge again, with the introduction of his new cologne line (it sold 1.5 million bottles the first two months on the market) and his role in Space Jam, which set ticket sales records on its opening weekend. He had come to earn that sobriquet Spike Lee had bestowed upon him in their Nike commercials: he was Money indeed. People from around the world now paid to see him, to be near him, to wear his shoes or his jersey, to drink his Gatorade and gobble his French fries at McDonald’s, to buy his Hanes briefs, to whack his golf balls, to read his books, and to enshrine his trading cards.