Michael Jordan

by Roland Lazenby

  Jordan later gained clarity on Jackson in the wake of the final championship, on the firing of Johnny Bach and other things, but mostly it was the sense that Jackson had walked away from him. Jordan had managed to overturn Krause’s edict that Jackson was through, yet the coach had left them all standing there, jilted.

  Krause then moved swiftly to deal Scottie Pippen to Houston. Pippen would collect his riches as a result of the trade, but the fracture with Jackson and the rupture of the team only drove his sense of alienation. Jordan, who trusted few people to begin with, now trusted even fewer. One close associate who had been a part of the tight circle that Jackson built with the team ran into Jordan later that year and immediately sensed that any warm feelings that had been created were now gone. “We talked,” the associate said, “but it left part of me feeling that he didn’t trust me anymore, not in the same way at least. It was like we were cool, but now we weren’t cool anymore.”

  If the trust that was the Bulls was gone, did that mean the experience was a mirage?

  With Pippen traded and Jackson gone, it became a foregone conclusion that Jordan would retire. But that move was delayed by a labor dispute between the NBA owners and players. It was an easy time for Jordan to lose himself as the NBA owners locked out the players over the 1998 off-season while they argued over a new collective bargaining agreement, one necessitated by his own huge contract. The owners simply didn’t want to be paying Jordan-size money to lesser players. The situation bought him more time to play around, ostensibly as he deliberated his future.

  During one of these lost weekends, he accidentally sliced a tendon in his hand with a cigar cutter, which required surgery and threw his future into further doubt.

  Meanwhile, his relationships with his mother and siblings were likewise in the various stages of suspension. Sis continued to struggle with her emotions concerning her father. Shortly after his death in 1993, she had begun writing her book, only to abandon the project in 1995. She remained a persistent critic of her rich and famous younger brother, especially over his gambling substantial sums while she and other members of the family struggled financially. It wasn’t that he didn’t help them; for instance, he bought a tractor-trailer rig for his uncle, Gene Jordan, which allowed him to work as a trucker well into his seventies. Sis estimated that her brother had given her a total of about $100,000 over the years. She didn’t expect him to take on her or her children as a responsibility, but she and others had become embittered by the revelations of the large sums he wagered. Her criticism apparently had a price. She noted that each of his family members received a brand-new vehicle from their brother’s Nissan dealership except for her. She was given the keys to a used car. She pointed to that slight as evidence that he used his wealth to control them.

  By 1997, Sis and Michael had stopped speaking to each other. He had given everyone in his immediate family expensive jewelry pieces commemorating each of his NBA championships, but in 1998, he did not give her the championship jewelry. In 1999, after his retirement, he reacted angrily upon learning that she was back working on her book. She said that he remarked that the book would be her attempt to sponge off of his reputation by making exaggerated claims. Her reply was that she was simply not one of the numerous yes-men in his life, telling him what he wanted to hear, that she had known him and loved him long before he became famous, that unlike other relatives who offered the same criticisms in private, she was not afraid to speak out.

  Later that year, golfer Payne Stewart died in a plane crash, not long after winning the US Open, leading Sis to think about how much time her brother spent zipping around the globe in his private jet. She phoned and left a message that she was concerned about him and wanted to know if he was OK. He sent a message through his mother that he was fine. He didn’t speak to her personally, she later suggested, because “Michael has a tendency to run from things he does not want to face, and his wealth affords him the opportunity to do that in many ways.”

  While Jordan remained in touch with his mother, they were not nearly as close as they once were, friends and acquaintances noted. In the fall of 1996, they had made an emotional appearance together at the University of North Carolina to announce a $1 million gift to create a Jordan Institute for Families in the school of social work. If people wondered where Jordan got his legendary energy and drive, they needed to look no further than Deloris Jordan, who would continue to write and travel the globe to talk about family issues well into her seventies. A good portion of his charisma also came from his mother, Jim Stack observed. “She’s a wonderful lady, very cordial. He had components of all those things in his personality.” The UNC Jordan Institute fit with her great positive energy and message, perhaps as a way for her to deal with issues that she had struggled with as a young mother.

  Later, word would circulate around Chapel Hill that the school was having difficulty collecting the gift. Was it his legendary stinginess, or was it a sign of the growing gulf between the star and a mother who had become one of his harshest critics? Or was it both? In time, the gift would be made, and the institute would offer an array of programs for the school of social work, an important element in the Jordan family legacy.

  The summer of 1999 marked the sixth anniversary of James’s death. Of the immediate family, Michael had been closest to his father, who had been his seemingly constant companion and advisor, his most ardent admirer. James had always been the one at his side, keeping things moving in a positive direction, offering constant encouragement in the face of the mountainous pressures Jordan encountered with the increasing complexity of his life. It seemed clear that for the remainder of his existence Jordan would be caught between the two angels of his nature: his mother in one ear, encouraging a selfless public life lived at the foot of the cross, and his father in the other, telling him to take his fun where he could find it, because he had surely earned it.

  Mother and son had endured their battles in the wake of James’s death, Sis reported, to the point that Michael had changed the locks on the foundation offices to deny her access there for a time. He had even attempted to limit her use of his name in her activities, according to his older sister. Yet Jordan continued to pay his mother a monthly stipend in addition to other financial support. And while they would get past their conflicts to some degree, the relationship appeared to have sustained some damage.

  His father was gone, but it seemed that in many ways, the elder Jordan’s influence loomed even larger than it had when he was alive. For some, the primary evidence of that was the lifestyle Jordan pursued away from the public eye. Others, however, saw that simply as a well-deserved release from his caged life in hotel rooms.

  Either way, Sis claimed to have seen it all coming. Like others in the family, she had supported the pretense that he was still the loving, caring, gentle younger brother she had known. “With the birth of his bigger-than-life image, he has become imprisoned by his public status and hardened by the strain of success,” she would write. “Eventually the pressures of being ‘always on display’ and the pressure to live up to the public’s expectations lessened his ability to relax, even with family.” He had become a “walking and talking conglomerate,” she alleged.

  In all fairness, his defenders said, that corporate existence was the essence of his long-term success. His emergence as a business figure was a large part of what distinguished him from the crowd of former athletes reduced to trying to wring a few dollars from their earlier glory.

  In 1999, Jordan was facing the challenge of trying to construct a second act. According to one study, as many as 90 percent of retired NBA players were broke within a few years of the end of their playing days. Many of them were ripped off by agents and money managers. Others were victims of an educational system that taught them little or nothing about managing wealth. Most of them fell victim to “the life,” a pricey style of living that proved impossible to sustain after their playing days were over.

  In contrast, Jordan’s role as a partne
r with Nike, and his other endorsements and investments, brought him new millions each year. His wealth was routinely estimated at as much as $500 million, and he was often described as the first billion-dollar athlete. He had achieved long-term success despite the vagaries of a life in professional basketball, much as his grandfather Peoples had prospered despite the impossibilities of sharecropping. Better yet, Jordan’s feats remained fresh in the memories of so many of his contemporaries. For years, interviewers had asked Jordan about his most memorable performances, and his reply had often been the standard: “I’ll wait until my run is over before I evaluate what I accomplished.”

  The response was understandable, though his public displays of emotion had long suggested that he reveled in those accomplishments. Passion was his signature. He had celebrated with memorable outbursts that riveted the attention of the global audience.

  As with the others who had helped create the cultural icon who became MJ, Sonny Vaccaro often marveled at the breadth of Jordan’s reach and popularity. “Prior to Michael no one had ever been marketed the way we marketed him,” Vaccaro said. “And no one ever put as much emphasis on an individual athlete to sell a product.”

  By 1999, Jordan stood alone at that pinnacle of a sports-hero mythologizing culture. How deep was his global penetration? The Financial Review would express great surprise in December 1999 upon learning that as early as 1992, a survey of Chinese schoolchildren had named Jordan one of the two greatest figures of the twentieth century, along with Zhou Enlai, the longtime Chinese premier. This was a good five years before the making of Space Jam, and well before Jordan’s legend had gained its most serious momentum, with his first “retirement,” the public fervor of his comeback, and the winning of his final three championships in storybook fashion.

  “The nomination of Jordan seems bizarre,” the Financial Review noted, “except that black sporting and athletic achievement provides some of the defining images of the twentieth century.”

  “How big is Michael Jordan?” Newsweek magazine had asked in 1993. “We all know he is a living god to tens of millions of American kids, the most media-genic sports figure in history, a one-man conglomerate who can move goods and services the way a few words from a Federal Reserve chairman can move financial markets.”

  His return in 1995 had driven his profile even higher. Four years later, 800 reporters converged on Chicago’s United Center to cover his second retirement news conference, fully aware that an era was ending. “Michael is one of the most important athletes, obviously. But even beyond that, he’s one of the most important cultural figures in the history of the US,” Todd Boyd, a University of Southern California professor specializing in sports and culture, said at the time. “I don’t think that’s in question. When you talk about an athlete who clearly dominated his sport but also transcended the sport in terms of his success as a brand, his ability to market products, just what Michael Jordan came to stand for after a while was perhaps the biggest transition anybody’s been able to make from the basketball court to the highest realm of American popular culture.”

  At the height of his popularity, the public often expressed surprise at any hint of irregular behavior by Jordan. But the greater surprise, as Sonny Vaccaro had suggested, was that there wasn’t more of it to hint at. How could he not have been corrupted? Vaccaro asked. “It would have been humanly impossible. How could you not? Remember he had the Mars Blackmon commercials he was doing in the early nineties with Spike Lee. They were immensely popular. Then he went on to do a film and commercials with Bugs Bunny and Looney Tunes. He won all those championships and became the greatest athlete in the world.”

  So, indeed, Jordan’s older sister was correct in assessing that the profound experience had changed him, Vaccaro added. “It’s been another Michael since we created the commercialism.… He became another Michael. That took on a life of its own at such a young age. I don’t know how you turn back from that.”

  His admirers made the case that considering other victims of boundless success, such as Elvis or Michael Jackson, Jordan had done quite well in holding his ground against the many destructive options available to the lost and lonely inhabitants of such fame. This would remain true, even in the many storms that lay ahead in his second act as a basketball executive and team owner. Where before, his larger-than-life performance on the court always helped obscure his imperfections, his life as an executive offered no such cover. In fact, Jordan soon learned that it would only expose and amplify the negatives.

  Reinsdorf’s Loyalty

  The NBA lockout finally ended in December with a target of starting play in January 1999, which allowed Jordan to announce his retirement to an assembly of worldwide media gathered at the United Center on January 13. Still, he declined to make his decision any more certain than 99.99 percent certain. Never say never, he said.

  “Mentally, I’m exhausted. I don’t feel I have a challenge. Physically, I feel great,” Jordan said in explaining the move. “This is a perfect time for me to walk away from the game.”

  Some noted he didn’t sound all that convincing. “I think the league is going to carry on, although we’ve had our troubles over the last six months,” he said, referring to the league’s struggles over the new collective bargaining agreement that caused it to miss nearly half of the 1998–99 season. “I think that is a reality check for all of us. It is a business, yet it is still fun. It is still a game. And the game will continue on.”

  But it would have to do so without him.

  “I’m just going to enjoy life and do things I’ve never done before,” he explained. In short, he said, his newfound freedom would be consumed by his wife and three young children, his love for golf, and his many commercial endorsements.

  “I see Michael doing a lot more carpooling,” Juanita Jordan told the crowd of reporters when asked for her vision of Jordan’s future.

  “Unfortunately,” Jordan continued, “my mother, my family, brothers and sisters, could not be here. But as you see me, you see them. My father, my mother, and certainly my brothers and sisters. They are here, through me, and they, along with myself, say thank you for taking me in and showing me the respect and gratitude you have shown me over the years I have been here. I will be in Chicago for the rest of my life. My wife won’t allow me to move nowhere else. I will be in Chicago and I will support Chicago teams.”

  One reporter asked if Jordan might consider using his many talents to save the world. Jordan avowed that he was no savior. Indeed he had failed to save the championship team that he had desperately sought to keep together. Yet Jordan made scant mention of the dispute at his retirement press conference other than to point out that Bulls management had their work cut out for them.

  “We set high standards around here,” he said with a hint of a smile.

  “I want to say thank you to the two gentlemen here, Mr. Stern and Mr. Reinsdorf, for presenting me with the opportunity to play the game of basketball and certainly giving me the opportunity to come to Chicago, meet my beautiful wife, and build a family here,” he said. “And my family in North Carolina and a lot of my friends who have come up to support this day, support me, and who have always supported me once I stepped foot on the basketball court and even when I didn’t play on the basketball court. I want to say thanks to both of those gentlemen and all the fans of Chicago for allowing me to come here and they have adopted me as one of theirs.… We are hopefully going to be known as a championship city and I hope it continues on even when Michael Jordan is not in uniform. I will support the Chicago Bulls.”

  He and Juanita had talked at his press conference of his slipping into a quiet existence and finally being a regular dad. He truly loved his children, had from the very start, so it seemed possible—until he actually tried to do it. The world’s golf courses were waiting for him, his Jump 23 jet just sitting there, beckoning him to go anywhere he damn well pleased, to play cards all night en route, puffing cigars and joking with his pals. He continued to c
onsume holes in what seemed like great gulps, virtual orgies of golfing and gambling, now tempered only slightly after his troubles in the early nineties. He would later be accused of pulling pal Tiger Woods into this strange and exclusive orbit, to the point that when Woods encountered his very public issues with sexual addiction, one of the golfer’s representatives complained that running around with Jordan in his bacchanalian pursuits led to Woods’s downfall.

  Even though Jordan had walked away from basketball, his competitiveness raged on, to the point that he truly craved action, always looking for the next buzz, playing rounds into the evening darkness with however much on the line he needed to make him feel that certain edge. Was it the adrenaline that addicted him, or was it the sense of escape from his life in the public eye where he was paid so well to be so perfect? Likely it was both and much more, including the fact that, given his inability to show himself in public, his golfing schedule kept him together with his friends. After two decades, he knew little else but a cycle of hanging out with the entourage, taking just enough meetings to sustain his business life, shooting commercials, all mixed with enough landings in Chicago to hold his family life together.

  Or so he thought.

  Whatever the root of it all, the days of his impromptu celebration in Austin in June 1998 had turned into weeks, then months, then a full-blown lifestyle. As Lacy Banks pointed out, Jordan had assumed the air of royalty, a status happily bestowed upon him by an adoring public. His insistence on the big expectations that came with such an existence hadn’t gone away with his retirement. Through all the golf and unchecked fun, he soon decided that he wanted a place for himself in the game, to put into effect the values he had so clearly established as a player. He would teach the next generation important things about the game, he explained to reporters.

  His first thought was that he would assume an important position with the Bulls, as a part owner with a role in management. To some, it seemed almost ludicrous that he would have such an expectation in the wake of the raging conflicts of his final seasons in Chicago. Jordan’s anger alone was enough to make a tough guy like Jerry Reinsdorf blanch. Yet his Nike experience suggested a precedent. He had endured no small differences of opinion with Phil Knight over the years, but his presence and involvement with the shoe company had brought vast growth and wealth to Nike. Accordingly, he was rewarded richly with unprecedented power and influence over its direction.