Michael Jordan

by Roland Lazenby

  Jordan continued to struggle with his knees, with the physical challenges of the game. On December 15, he once again scored just 2 points in a game. However, he rounded back into form, and that February returned to the All-Star Game, where he was a surprise starter. He scored 20 to eclipse Kareem Abdul-Jabbar as the leading scorer in All-Star Game history. But it was a torturous evening in many ways. He missed his first 7 shots, had 4 shots blocked, and missed a dunk. He scored a late bucket to give the Eastern Conference a lead, only to have the game tied by Kobe Bryant. In two overtime periods, Jordan missed 3 shots, and the East fell, 155–145.

  The season became the kind of farewell tour that Jordan had once vowed he would never do. When the Wizards visited Los Angeles for his final game against the Lakers, Kobe Bryant offered a parting gift. “Kobe just wound up destroying him in the first quarter, like 40 points in the first half of that game,” J. A. Adande recalled. “That was like the true end and the passing of the torch. I mean it had to be humbling for him. I mean there was nothing he could do about it.”

  The previous season, when Bryant had run through a streak of 40-point games, Jordan had remarked that he and Bryant seemed to share a trait: they both had sought to distance themselves from their contemporaries. For Jordan, that had largely been to achieve more than the immensely talented Clyde Drexler. Clearly, however, Jordan remained Bryant’s top mark.

  As the Wizards came down the stretch that season, Jordan’s relationships with several of his teammates deteriorated. In Chicago, Phil Jackson had developed strategies, like the mindfulness sessions with George Mumford, to help Jordan relate to less-talented teammates. Heavy on group dynamics, Jackson’s entire approach was aimed at playing to the strengths of each player while moderating their weaknesses. In Washington, there was no Phil Jackson, no George Mumford, no offense from Tex Winter, and, almost just as important, no Pippen. Jordan didn’t have any of the outlets of the past, and he seemed to have very little trust in the key players around him. “Whatever trust he once had, he no longer had,” said an associate. “That was a very lonely place to be.”

  It was about to get worse. About three weeks before the season ended, Jerry Krause learned of the trouble that was coming. “I called Abe Pollin,” he recalled in 2012. “He told me, ‘I’m gonna fuck that friend of yours. He thinks he’s fucking me. You watch. He doesn’t know.’ Abe was a tough son of a bitch himself.”

  Shortly after that, basketball writer Mike Wise of the New York Times got a phone call from a source, who told him the shocking news that Pollin was going to cut Jordan loose at the end of the season. Wise began doing interviews and soon learned that Jordan had few friends among the staff and players beyond his own handpicked managers, that he had overplayed his hand with Pollin.

  “I knew there were problems,” David Aldridge recalled. “That’s why I thought one of the first things Michael was going to do was go to Abe and say, ‘Look, we may have messed up here. Here’s what we’re going to do. You’re the owner. We understand that. We’re not going to do anything you don’t want to do. I apologize if my people were rude to your people, if they were condescending to your people. It won’t happen again.’ He never had a chance to have that meeting.”

  The New York Times ran Wise’s story about Jordan’s troubles, forecasting that Pollin was going to dump him. Ty Lue remembered being surprised at the tone of it. “How could he be trashed like that?” Lue said. “You have a guy who comes back at the age of forty, still averages 20 points a game, still shoots a high percentage from the field. I mean, I thought he was great. But, it wasn’t going to be the same old Michael there, which we knew, but his will to win, his passion for the game, it was all the same.”

  Brent Barry recalled reading the story and being outraged by the attitudes of some of the players expressed there. “You know what, though?” Barry said. “That’s not his cross to bear. When a player like that takes the time to talk, teach, express what it is that you need to do in order to achieve your maximum potential, it’s up to them to do it. Because let’s face it, that is your job. Now if Michael had never taken the time to do that, that would have been another story.”

  “I thought they could work together,” Aldridge said of Jordan and Pollin, “that they’d figure a way to work together, at some point, but not after that. Obviously, there were a lot of people that were airing their grievances when that Times story came out. That was kind of like the shot across the bow that this is way more serious than you guys know.”

  The story seemed so far-fetched that neither Jordan nor David Falk seemed to believe it could be true—a grave miscalculation. “I think he could have survived all of that if he had shown more deference to Abe Pollin,” Aldridge said of Jordan. “I think that was the beginning of the end, the lack of deference. This was a New York Times story. It was clear, once that story came out, that this was the way it was going to go, because you don’t put something out in the New York Times unless you plan on doing something, right? So, even though I could not get it independently confirmed, it was obvious that it was placed there by someone who had an agenda. I think whoever was responsible for getting that story to the paper was very smart, because I think most of the local media were viewed as sympathetic to Michael and weren’t going to be willing to carry that line of attack.”

  A veteran basketball writer, Wise had never been enamored of the version of Jordan he saw in Washington. He was struck by how lost in his own world Jordan seemed, like an Elvis figure, someone who had lost touch with reality. Jordan and his associates were the picture of arrogance in Washington, Wise said, looking back in 2012.

  Johnny Bach had a different view. Yes, Jordan may have been detached, withdrawn at times while trying to play, but Bach saw Jordan as being eager to please Pollin, willing to put his reputation aside to help the team even though he knew it had no chance to win. For the second year in a row, the team finished 37–45 and out of the playoffs. Jordan’s last night in a Washington uniform had provided a sweet scene, with emotional Wizards fans showering him with warmth and love. The season—indeed, the entire experience—had been a tremendous disappointment to Jordan, but he smiled broadly and genuinely seemed to enjoy the fans’ attention that final evening.

  Despite the Times story, Jordan walked into his meeting with Pollin after the season fully expecting to be rewarded for all he had done. After all, the franchise had been in miserable financial shape when he got there. Jordan and his people had rid the team of several disastrous player contracts and cleared up the financial situation, allowing the team to acquire younger players. He had played two years for a minimal salary, which he had given to charity. All the while, the team had enjoyed sellout after sellout every night he played, an unprecedented attendance record that helped the franchise erase its losses and rake in an estimated $30 to $40 million in profits.

  Pollin’s message was short and harsh that day. He presented Jordan with a severance payment, reportedly worth several million by various estimates. Jordan apparently left the money on the table and exited the meeting swiftly.

  Abe Pollin, the man who never fired anybody, had fired Michael Jordan. Many in pro basketball were stunned at the turn of events. Jordan was viewed by many as a national treasure, as the game’s most important figure, the man who had brought billions in profits to the NBA.

  “That was savage,” said Pat Williams, who had been an NBA executive for four decades and knew both men. “You suddenly had these two camps that were absolutely split. It was an organization heading in two different directions. It rocked Michael.”

  “That ended up very badly,” recalled Johnny Bach. “Suddenly he was out. All of his guys, we were all out of a job. I don’t understand it either, whatever was said between people. Michael is the kind of person, he lives up to his word. And if you give him your word, you better live up to it. They had agreed. There were things you couldn’t put in writing.”

  Even the players on the roster were taken aback.

  “That
is hard to take,” Ty Lue offered. “I mean when a guy comes back and plays and makes up all the money you lost in the last five years in two years of playing… he makes it up in two years and then you repay him like that? It was a sad day.”

  Even Washington, the city of dirty tricks, seemed staggered by the turn of events. “Now,” Aldridge explained, “there’s a great debate in Washington over this: Did Abe willingly use Michael until he could no longer use him and just cast him aside? I think a lot of people believed that, you know. I think a lot of people believed that. It was no secret what Michael expected to happen. It wasn’t like it was a surprise. He thinks he’s going to go back to being an executive. He was pretty open about that the whole time he was playing. I mean, it wasn’t like he just sprung it on somebody, like three weeks before he decided to retire.”

  Aldridge said he leaned toward believing that Pollin never planned to live up to his agreement to bring Jordan back.

  “I tend to agree,” he said, “that Abe was never going to sell the team to Michael, was never going to give Michael more than 50 percent of the team. I never believed that.”

  Jordan had a final night on the town after being fired that day, an event much documented in Internet accounts that portrayed him as something of a lost soul.

  “He went away,” David Aldridge recalled. “He went away.… I didn’t see him for a very long time after that.”

  Chapter 38

  CAROLINA

  THE CHARLOTTE BOBCATS certainly didn’t feel like a step forward, at least not for a long time. But Jordan resurfaced there in 2004. Robert Johnson, the publishing magnate, had been granted the expansion franchise to replace the Hornets, who had left town for New Orleans in one of the league’s most bitter chapters. The Hornets had been one of the league’s leading small-market teams, with the brand-new Charlotte Coliseum in 1989 soon packed to the rafters each night with adoring fans cheering stars like Alonzo Mourning, Larry Johnson, and Muggsy Bogues. But within a decade owner George Shinn was agitating for yet another new arena with skyboxes that could increase revenues and make the team more competitive. The scene had gotten progressively uglier during the protracted fight over funding for an arena. At one point, Shinn was charged with sexual assault, a public relations nightmare that seemed to be the last gasp for the Hornets. Fans turned away, so Shinn packed up the team and abandoned the city, now left with nothing but distaste for pro basketball.

  In the wake of all that, the Bobcats expansion franchise had opened for business in a beautiful new downtown arena for the 2004–5 season, but fans responded tepidly. As the first African American to assume majority ownership of a major sports franchise, Johnson had great interest in striking a deal with Jordan to come in as a minority owner in charge of basketball operations. Jordan had patched his marriage back together, but this job would require him to spend more time on site. The new post would prove to be far from ideal for restarting a family life.

  Billiards

  Daniel Mock was working as a bartender in late 2004 at the Men’s Club of Charlotte, an upscale topless bar on the south side of the city. As a child, Mock had worshiped Jordan, with posters on his wall and every jersey possible in his collection. He had even gotten Jordan’s autograph at a celebrity golf tournament, and had treasured the memory of following his hero around the course. So he was stunned one night a decade later to see Jordan, Robert Johnson, Charles Oakley, and Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban come into the Men’s Club to be seated in the small, private bar area where he worked. It was a large club spread across two floors, with four bars, three stages, and sixty topless dancers going nonstop every night.

  “They came in the Men’s Club, and I was in awe of it,” Mock recalled with a laugh. “I freaked out, and all the waitresses were making fun of me. When they first came in, they sat down, and I got their order, and I had a bunch of girls dancing for them.”

  Two tables were pulled together so the men could eat dinner among the company of the dancers, who came in shifts to perform privately and sit at the table with Cuban, Jordan, and Johnson. Oakley went over and sat at the small bar that Mock supervised a few feet away. They soon struck up a conversation in which Mock informed him that Jordan was “just the idol of my lifetime.”

  “Really,” Oakley said. “I’ll get him over here.”

  Mock panicked, as if he were about to be introduced to the prettiest girl in school.

  “No, don’t do that,” he said.

  Between songs, each of the topless dancers would go sit on the men’s laps. The club had a line of dancers rotating in and out at Jordan’s table six at a time. They would dance for five minutes or so, then sit with the men.

  Finally, Mock went over to speak to Jordan. “I said, ‘Mr. Jordan, how is everything tonight?’ They were smoking huge cigars. ‘I just want you to know I got your autograph when I was eleven in Lake Tahoe. You were the idol of my youth.’ ”

  “You still got that autograph, kid?” Jordan asked.

  Mock explained that he had it locked away for safekeeping.

  “Well, you better hold on to it,” Jordan said with a laugh.

  The group had champagne and dinner. It was the kind of place where they could pick their lobsters out of a tank and watch their steaks being prepared. After they ate—their tab was well over $1,000 by then—Jordan got up to play pool at a nearby table with three of the dancers. He walked by just as Oakley was explaining to Mock that they were playing golf early the next morning at Firethorne Country Club. Mock, an avid golfer, had worked at the club.

  “Jordan said, ‘Yeah, Firethorne’s tough,’ ” Mock recalled. “I told him I used to work there.”

  “Really?” Jordan said, suddenly stopping and looking at Mock. “Tell me about it.”

  The bartender then launched into an extended description of the lay of the course, and offered advice on which clubs to use on which holes, where to use a 3-wood, where not to. “He sat there like five minutes, just staring at me, like he was recording everything,” Mock said. “Then he played pool. He played doubles, him and this little Chinese chick against these two tall blondes, Pamela Anderson types. They’re playing topless. He’s got a huge cigar in his hand, and he played one-handed. And every time he’d go to hit, he’d be standing there with this huge cigar in his mouth. He’d have one hand behind his back, kind of resting the cue on the table. And every time he’d go to hit, one of the girls would get down on the table and hang her tits on the table.

  “I was sitting there with Oakley,” Mock recalled with a laugh, “and he’d go, ‘Oh, just another night for Mike.’ That’s how it was all night.”

  Johnson left early, but Cuban, Jordan, and Oakley stayed until well past the two a.m. closing time. Mock was astounded to learn that they had a five o’clock tee time.

  Mock got up the next morning to phone a pro at the club, one of his old friends, who informed him that the staff had wanted Jordan to tee off at six thirty in the morning. “He said that was too late,” the bartender recalled. “He got them to let him go off at 5:45 in the morning, right as the sun was coming up. I told him, ‘They were up till three.’ He said, ‘Come on, two hours’ sleep?’ ”

  The pro asked him how he knew they were up so late. Mock told him they had been at the Men’s Club. “He said, ‘No way,’ ” Mock remembered with a laugh. “He said, ‘We’ve got a bunch of members who wanted to go out behind them. So Jordan bought out four tee times, so they wouldn’t have anybody around them.’ So they bought out four tee times after being at the club till the wee hours and spending God knows how much. I think the girl said the bill was about eighteen hundred. I’m pretty sure Cuban paid for the whole thing.”

  The pro reported that Jordan, Oakley, and Cuban whisked around the course and were done by nine thirty. The appetite, it seemed, still raged on.

  From there, Jordan settled in as an executive for the Bobcats, a period punctuated by his continued travels about the globe, golfing and gambling and partying. It seemed no great surpri
se that he soon faced divorce once again, after seventeen years of marriage to Juanita. The divorce was finalized in December 2006 and estimated by Forbes to have cost Jordan $150 million, said to be one of the largest settlements in history.

  In a few short years, his once seemingly untouchable image had taken a huge hit, with the madding crowd routinely having a field day on the Internet, taking him to task for his missteps. More miscalculations followed, with Charlotte’s drafting of Adam Morrison as the third overall pick in 2006. Morrison would prove to be a huge disappointment and another blow to the Jordan mystique. As the criticism mounted, some Jordan observers wondered why he had never once spoken with Krause about the substantial challenge of being an NBA personnel executive. Others knew that Jordan would never have taken that route. He was viewed as being walled off by his fame, limited in discussing matters beyond his tight inner circle.

  Quietly, however, Jordan had done the next best thing, or perhaps even better than speaking with Krause. Jim Stack had moved on from the Bulls to become an executive with the Minnesota Timberwolves. He and Jordan talked frequently about player issues.

  “We had a lot of dialogue between 2004 and 2008,” Stack recalled, adding that like any other executive Jordan routinely sought opinions from a variety of figures in and around the game.

  They had talked extensively about the drafting of Adam Morrison, Stack said. “Adam was a very gifted offensive player. He later proved to have limitations with his diabetes. He was kind of a frail kid to begin with, then the NBA schedule took a toll on him. I had talked with MJ about it. We spoke candidly. At that point in the draft, there wasn’t a clear-cut guy to take. It was just a bad draft.”

  Being an executive requires both great effort and good fortune, Stack explained. “You do all that work and get in position, hope to have a little luck, and the right player is available to you.” Still the job seemed to take Jordan out of his game, throwing off his timing somehow. People who saw Jordan scouting players at NBA draft camps were struck by what seemed to be his damaged confidence. Although as congenial as ever, Jordan seemed unsure of himself in the wake of his difficult experiences. His weary countenance reminded acquaintances of just how much Jordan had been through since the end of his glory days. In fact, sometimes his body language seemed as out of place as it had in the foreign world of baseball over a decade earlier.