Michael Jordan

by Roland Lazenby

  Bryant

  During the NBA’s predraft camp in 2008, he sat alone, high in the end zone seats of the Disney sports complex in Orlando, watching the college hopefuls and free agents run through drills and games on the floor below. He seemed distracted enough that when a reporter asked for an interview, Jordan agreed, as if glad to be relieved from watching lesser players seemingly running in sand. The interviewer’s questions eventually got around to Kobe Bryant.

  Phil Jackson had won three championships earlier in the decade in Los Angeles, and that spring the Lakers had again come alive, led by Kobe Bryant. Jordan had watched with interest as Bryant filled his old role in the triangle offense, working for Jackson and Winter. The Lakers guard had spent years trying to Be Like Mike, from his shaved head as a teen to the aped Jordan mannerisms, although Bryant went out of his way to deny that he was a copycat. He was, it seemed, the best of a generation of Jordan wannabes, of the legion of players who sought to inherit the mantle. Bryant was the one, perhaps, who actually could.

  Jordan himself had long been an interested observer of Bryant’s pageant, as had Jackson and his staff. Comparisons of the two players routinely generated heated debates on the Internet. Frankly, Jordan didn’t see what all the fuss was about. After all, human behavior is mimetic. Humans copied and aped one another, like every rock band that for decades had sought to be the Beatles or the Rolling Stones, who themselves had derived so much from the great American bluesmen of previous generations.

  Obviously his play had created a path for Bryant, Jordan observed that day. “But how many people lighted the path for me? That’s the evolution of basketball. There’s no way I could have played the way I played if I didn’t watch David Thompson and guys prior to me. There’s no way Kobe could have played the way he’s played without watching me play. So, you know, that’s the evolution of basketball. You cannot change that.”

  In conversation, it quickly became obvious that Jordan respected Bryant, without any hint of condescension. He respected any player who did the work, who had the mental toughness. Bryant passed both those tests, he said. “So he’s not one that’s so different than me, but he is different than me. People just have to understand that, and realize that you may see a lot of similarities, but he’s definitely different.”

  Even if you set aside Bryant’s obvious debt to Jordan, what made the comparison so interesting for Jordan was the fact that Bryant played in the same triangle offense that he did, with the same coaching architects, Jackson and Winter. It was a system that created room for a superstar to operate, Jordan said. “The triangle’s a great offense to get people to get spacing, to get in the right position. But, then you’ve got talented people like Kobe who can play it and involve everybody and make everybody that much better.”

  Winter had begun developing his system years before, based on six principles of team play. But when he started coaching Jordan in 1985 he realized that you needed a seventh principle—that an extremely talented player can trump all other principles.

  You have to adjust everything for a great player, Winter had long conceded.

  “Tex is absolutely right,” Jordan said that day, smiling, remembering his many moments in Bulls practice with Winter fussing about one issue or another. “And Kobe’s going through the same process.”

  That fans resented Bryant’s own journey through the system was silly, Jordan observed. “Kobe does everything, when you talk about greatness or success. Success is very similar, no matter what. It’s nothing you’re going to say of anyone previous of you because you’ve got to have similar characteristics to achieve it.”

  It wasn’t so much about copying a style as it was about pursuing a proven formula for success, Jordan said. “And success is in store for him. He’s done the work to do that, to achieve that.”

  Jordan indicated that he had been able to relive some of his own career by watching Bryant. The two had shared phone conversations about things that only they could understand. Told during the 2008 championship series that Jordan had said flattering things about him, Bryant’s ears perked up immediately, almost like a kid hungry for an autograph. “MJ was talking about me?” he asked. “That’s my man.” It was obvious that Bryant drew support and confidence from the relationship.

  A few years earlier, the Lakers’ coaching staff had concluded that Bryant and Jordan were much alike, almost eerily so, when it came to the alpha male qualities of their competitive natures. The two were ruthless when it came to winning, everyone agreed. And their skills were similar, although Jordan’s hands were larger. The major difference between the two came with college experience. Jordan had played in a basketball system at North Carolina, thus he was better prepared to accept Winter’s triangle, the team concept. Bryant had come into the league directly from high school with stars in his eyes.

  “I tend to think how very much they’re alike,” Winter observed. “They both display tremendous reaction, quickness and jumping ability. Both have a good shooting touch. Some people say Kobe is a better shooter, but Michael really developed as a shooter as he went along. I don’t know if Kobe is a better shooter than Michael was at his best.” Jackson too acknowledged the similarities but allowed that there was only one Jordan.

  Observers liked to point out that Jordan played on a Bulls team with no great center, but Winter always countered that Jordan was a great post-up player and, indeed, was the premier post weapon of his time. Bryant himself came into the NBA with great post skills, but there was never room for him to play in the post with Shaquille O’Neal occupying the lane during their years together with the Lakers.

  Winter doubted that Jordan would have been a good fit playing with O’Neal.

  In a lot of ways, Bryant was Jordan’s equal as a post player, Winter said, except for one critical element. Jordan was much stronger, the coach said. “Michael had a knack for holding his ground a little better than Kobe.”

  Like Jordan, Bryant found much of his success playing small forward, instead of guard, which allowed him to work “behind the defense,” as Winter had often explained it. Even with all of Bryant’s offensive success, Winter said that the Lakers needed to keep the ball moving, that Bryant’s teammates still deferred to him too much, just as they did with Jordan.

  Another difference, according to Winter, was their leadership style. Jordan admitted to harsh, sometimes cruel, treatment of his teammates to get them ready to perform under pressure, whereas Bryant took a kinder, gentler approach.

  Then there was the incomparable Pippen. You could not overestimate the contribution of Pippen, Winter often said.

  Springfield and Beyond

  Jordan met supermodel Yvette Prieto during this period, and his life began to change. The Bobcats struggled mightily, were supposedly losing tens of millions a season, while Internet sites such as TMZ became a Greek chorus for His Airness. It seemed that controversy and criticism lurked behind each moment. He was voted into the Hall of Fame in 2009, the first year he was eligible, and that would become his next cross to bear.

  George Mumford once remarked that you had to see what people did, not what they said, to evaluate them. As the induction neared that August, it was Johnny Bach whom Jordan chose to accompany him, not Phil Jackson. The longtime assistant coach, now in his eighties, had fallen on hard times with a divorce settlement that took away his NBA pension. Jordan paid to have his old “attack” coach at the event in high style. He also asked two Bulls employees from his first days with the team—ticket manager Joe O’Neil and PR man Tim Hallam—to fly with Jordan, Prieto, and a small group that included George Koehler on his jet to the event in Springfield, Massachusetts.

  “It was quite a thrill, to be honest with you,” O’Neil said of the experience. “I started with the Bulls many years ago. Michael must have been a freshman or sophomore in high school when I started here. Timmy Hallam and I were a couple of the first people Michael met in Chicago. It was a very different time then. He wasn’t the mega superstar. Now, I don�
��t know who is the most recognizable person on the planet, but he’s got to be right up there. To sit on that plane with Michael and his girlfriend going to the Hall of Fame, I can’t tell you what it meant. We sat and just laughed and told stories about the early years, sneaking out to play golf, doing this and doing that. Michael didn’t forget people. He brought Johnny Bach out for the Hall of Fame. I think that Michael’s closest friends in a lot of ways are not celebrities. He’s got buddies that he hangs around with and golfs with and hangs out with. Of course he’s got a million celebrity friends. But the people he hangs around with day in and day out are just regular guys and I think he enjoys that.”

  They spent the flight talking about his first year in the league, the Bulls’ crazy roster, their trash can golf matches in the office, about waiting for lines of children coming and going before the Bulls could get on the practice floor at Angel Guardian Gym. They laughed and reminisced, and O’Neil noticed that the closer they got to Springfield, the more nervous Jordan seemed to become.

  “As much of the limelight and glamour as Michael has had, I think that sometimes when the spotlight is on him, a shyness comes out,” O’Neil observed in a 2012 interview. “I think he was a little bit uncomfortable with the whole thing because it was such a big thing with Michael Jordan going into the Hall of Fame. I think in some ways he looked forward to it just as in some ways he looked forward to it being over, too. George was on the plane with us. Even to this day, George and I will say, ‘Can you believe where we are and where we came from?’ ”

  As for his speech, O’Neil noticed that Jordan didn’t have anything prepared. “He didn’t really have it written that much,” his old friend recalled. “He wasn’t really sure what he was going to say. He was nervous going out there.”

  Jordan had asked his former idol, David Thompson, to present him and stand there with him in his moment before the assembled basketball elite, who had shelled out big dollars to be there for basketball’s crowning moment, to see Michael in the ultimate spotlight. It was then, in the emotion of the moment, that Jordan chose to unburden himself and reveal his competitive heart, to address all the things, real or imagined, that had driven him over the course of his life. Even for longtime Jordan observers, who felt they knew him well, it was surprising, and even disappointing. To much of the public, it was nothing short of shocking as he revisited his anger over being denied a place on the varsity as a high school sophomore, over Dean Smith keeping him off the cover of Sports Illustrated as a college freshman, over his exchange with Tex Winter involving the I in win, over his dislike of Jerry Krause, even over a dispute with Pat Riley about a hotel room in Hawaii. He seemed to insult as many people as he thanked that day with his frank approach.

  Phil Jackson watched the event on TV in a crowded sports bar, where he saw the surprised reactions among the patrons. Jackson, though, immediately understood that Jordan was merely trying to explain his great competitive nature, the only problem being that just about all of the things that had spurred Jordan on in his life were hugely negative and hard for people to comprehend. It all translated into something of a disaster.

  “Michael Jordan’s Hall of Fame talk was the Exxon Valdez of speeches,” wrote Rick Reilly in Sports Illustrated. “It was, by turns, rude, vindictive, and flammable. And that was just when he was trying to be funny. It was tactless, egotistical, and unbecoming. When it was done, nobody wanted to be like Mike.”

  No one was more stunned—and then more elated—than Jerry Krause. “I sat there,” Krause recalled in 2012. “I was a little, shall we say, surprised. But again, that’s Michael. I was surprised that he’d done it on that stage. I was very shocked that he nailed Dean. Me? You could expect it. Dean? That was hard. Dean must have sat there thinking, ‘What?’ Dean must have been shocked. We lived with it long enough to win six championships, and you understand who it’s coming from.”

  Krause contrasted it with Dennis Rodman’s highly emotional self-admonishment upon his own induction two years later. “Dennis could behave terribly,” Krause said. “But Dennis is good-hearted. He did things to harm himself. But Dennis would never hurt another human being, except himself. Michael? Michael doesn’t care if he hurts people. He’s not all there at times. I’m not saying he’s nuts. I’ve seen so many times where he was incredibly gracious. I would assume it would be a psychiatrist’s delight to take him and break him down. That would be very interesting. He’s one of the smartest basketball players I ever worked with, but that Hall of Fame thing, that speech, helped me make people realize how stupid he is. I had umpteen people come up to me after that speech and say, ‘I didn’t realize Michael was such an asshole.’ ”

  Jackson was an excellent psychologist who brought out the best in Jordan, Krause said. “We had a very good basketball team with high-strung egos. He took those egos and put them in the right place. He understood the players and how to get them to work together.”

  The other key was Winter, Krause said. “Tex was tougher on Michael than anyone in terms of perfection. Michael didn’t like the triangle. He said, ‘What’s that motherfucking thing gonna do for us?’ It took a good year for him to accept it, but then he realized how he could work in the post because of the offense.”

  As the former GM talked (he had been eased out by Reinsdorf in 2003) about the Hall of Fame speech, he began to relax and talked about what a great, great competitor Jordan was, how not one single time in all their years together had Jordan shirked from the hardest tasks and the heaviest burdens. Krause said that he had a library filled with videotape of every one of Jordan’s magnificent performances, and yet the experience had been so bitter that he had never viewed even one of them. He reiterated, “He is what he is. Michael and I will never break bread together.”

  So much of the harshness was driven by the narcissism of the age of constant media and worship, Krause said. “If Michael had played in the days of Elgin and Oscar and those guys, you wouldn’t have had that. If you put Oscar and Elgin in today’s atmosphere, the same thing would have happened to them. Bill Russell would have been making thirty million a year, too.”

  As Jordan had said so many times, however, his timing was his own. In the spotlight, he had been as he always was, defiant and unbowed. As Sonny Vaccaro observed, “It was like he was anointed. I mean seriously, everything. I mean, even where he did something contrary to what was supposed to happen, it would come out all right.”

  He moved on from Springfield, even as sports columnists at newspapers large and small, sports talk radio hosts, Internet sites, and TV commentators all roundly criticized the speech. Mostly, they scratched their heads, perplexed and angry that they had been denied a moment of joyful celebration with a hero long admired by generations.

  “I think his heart is in the right place, I really do,” said David Aldridge.

  But the public had wanted something more satisfying from the man who had changed everything.

  The Owner

  He turned then to the task of completing his purchase of the Bobcats. For the first time in history, a former player would be the majority owner of an NBA team. David Stern and Jordan had never been close, but now Stern worked behind the scenes to make the transition happen, and once it happened, he continued to help in the adjustment. Somehow overlooked in the process was the closest thing the public would get to an answer about an enduring mystery. Jack McCallum had sought to answer the question that so many had asked: Was Jordan forced from the game in 1993? There was nothing to the conspiracy theories about his gambling, Jordan said again and again in interviews in 2011 and 2012, and he had long resented that Stern hadn’t stepped up and said more to make the matter clear at the time. The commissioner knew of his great anger, but as McCallum pointed out, Stern was in an awkward position. If he said too much or protested too much, that would only feed the conspiracy buffs. Jordan took the commissioner’s approach as indifference.

  Whatever was said between the two men was left with them, and neither discussed it
or offered any further details. The evidence at most was circumstantial, but strong, it seemed. If Jordan had indeed been forced from the game, the commissioner obviously had welcomed him back as a player. But he would never have seen fit to agree to Jordan as an owner. After all, Jordan had hardly repented his ways. (In 2007, NFL player Adam “Pacman” Jones joined Jordan at a high-stakes craps table in Las Vegas. All night, Jordan insisted that no one else touch the dice—only he was allowed to roll the bones. In a 2014 interview, Jones recalled that he won a million dollars that night while Jordan lost five million.) “I don’t know that there ever really was a gambling issue,” Krause said. If there had been, it seemed highly unlikely that Stern would have worked so hard to make Jordan’s ownership a reality. Short of anything to the contrary, that stood as the best evidence that Jordan’s departure for Birmingham was just what the record showed: his grief and sorrow come to bear in a desire to feel close to his father in baseball.

  As for the Bobcats, they had laid off dozens of staff in 2009. Now that Jordan was the majority owner, the team began refilling those positions and tackling a host of business issues. The arena had never earned any naming rights, and they promptly sold those to Time Warner Cable. One by one, the staff lined up all the best things to do to improve the franchise. In meetings they soon discovered that Jordan was a great listener—something his mother, and then Dean Smith, had learned years earlier. He began meetings with season ticket holders, usually at the most difficult times, such as after embarrassing losses (and there were many of those).