“The one thing in sports that’s been important to me is integrity. If someone is good, no matter what, I am never going to say he’s not. If you’re good, you’re good.
“I came real close to being MVP of the All-Star Game, MVP of the Finals, and MVP of the season. You think I think I’m going to be inferior to these guys because I was named late? And two of the previous three years our team is in the Finals? I mean, I’m trying to show some humility here but … please. I feared no one. I didn’t think there was any better than me.”
Well, this is another conversational box that needs opening. So I ask: even Jordan?
“Are you kidding? In my mind? Jordan was damn good, but was he better than me?” Drexler ponders that for a moment and answers this way: “The question is not really is he better. The question is, do you think you can win against him? And the answer is absolutely. I had a lot of success against Jordan. I beat him often. At his game. Which is also my game. I was bigger, faster. I did everything he could do.” Drexler stops and smiles. “Except shoot more.”
2
The Dream Unfolds
CHAPTER 19
THE WRITER
And So It Begins … at a Cattle Call in San Diego
It is moments like this, such as the first Dream Team practice session on June 22, 1992, when I most hate journalism. The Bulls had completed their six-game victory over the Blazers in the NBA Finals only a week earlier, and it was clearly time to decompress and take a vacation from pro basketball. But there we were, the nation’s, and some of the world’s, sporting press—maybe five hundred of us—on the steps of the University of California at San Diego, shuffling around with equal parts anticipation and exasperation, waiting for the doors of the holy temple to open, at which point we would prostrate ourselves at the feet of the Dream Team and grovel, like face-down chickens pecking in a field, for any casually tossed-out nuggets they might deign to cast our way.
Okay, that’s off my chest.
I wish I’d had a digital camera to record one moment that almost made it all worthwhile. There among our unwashed multitude, an outside-looking-in pariah like all of us, was Michael Jordan’s best buddy, Ahmad Rashad.
“Don’t they know I’m not a regular reporter?” an exasperated Ahmad was asking, apparently without irony.
In the normal scheme of things, Ahmad, then with NBC, went anywhere he damn well pleased, owing to his status as Michael’s guy. The fact that he was not allowed into practice was one of the first signs that this Dream Team thing was going to be something entirely different from what everyone was accustomed to. (To be fair, Ahmad did eventually claim his place at the table alongside Jordan. They hung together all the time in Barcelona.)
The operation was now under the aegis of both the NBA and USA Basketball, the latter an organization that liked nothing better than to throw around a little protocol from time to time. The Dream Team was also, both figuratively and literally, an Olympian operation. The combined celebrity of the team seemed to warrant extra levels of security—how true that would prove to be—and the Games themselves, to which this team would be heading in about a month, are always a nightmare of restricted access for the media.
In this locked-down atmosphere, nuggets of information would be hard to find. I had gone over to the team hotel, the Sheraton Grande Torrey Pines in lovely La Jolla, the day before, and there was Barkley—then in marital interregnum and feeling even more liberated since he had been traded from Philadelphia to the Phoenix Suns and was looking forward to playing the 1992–93 season for a contender—chatting up two women in the lobby.
“Jack, you want to help out here?” he asked, before immediately reconsidering. “Never mind. You’re too lame anyway.”
Magic Johnson’s people complained that he did not have a suite, and there was a moment of threat that he would boycott the practices. Magic didn’t even know about it. But then it was made clear that only Coach Daly would have a suite and everything was smoothed over.
Christian Laettner had already made an impact, not in a positive way. Brian McIntyre, the NBA’s head of public relations and a man universally respected around the league, was arranging a live TV hookup when he spotted Laettner, who was wearing shorts and a USA Basketball T-shirt, in the lobby.
“Just so you know, Christian,” McIntyre said to him, “all the other players are wearing suits, sport coats, and ties.” And Laettner responded, with a kind of fuck-you tone, “I don’t give a shit.”
That exchange confirmed what most journalists discovered during the weeks that they followed the Dream Team: Laettner, the one player who had never played a single minute of an NBA game, succeeded in being the biggest jerk.
Now, there is a distinction that must be made clear. Laettner was not a jerk in the presence of his teammates. Years later he describes the adjustment he had to make to being twelfth man as “fun and easy, just like going back to my freshman year at Duke when guys like Danny Ferry and Quin Snyder are way up here and you’re way down there.”
Well, I remind him, Ferry and Snyder aren’t Michael/Magic/Larry.
“But it was still the same transition,” Laettner insists. “I tell people that my favorite year at Duke was my freshman year, and they don’t believe me because we won two championships later. But it’s true. Everything was new and exciting and different and your head is spinning all over the place.
“See, people see only the cocky, arrogant Christian Laettner”—the one, for example, who refers to himself in the third person. “But if I’m not at that upper-echelon level as a player, I’m just a good kid with a good personality who knows his place. And my place on that team was very low on the totem pole.”
All that is true, but it doesn’t speak to his personality at the time and the situation he was in. It was hard enough being the twelfth man, but remember, too, that he was caught in the crosshairs of Shaquille O’Neal, who was telling anyone and everyone that he, not Laettner, should’ve been the collegian of choice. (Let me reiterate my opinion that while O’Neal would’ve been more fun, a genial giant of a target for the good-natured slings and arrows released from the quivers of Jordan and Barkley, Laettner was the right choice for the body of work that he had shown in four years.)
The quite unambiguous presence of Bonnie Laettner didn’t help matters, either. She was present at the press conference her son held in San Diego related to the 1992 NBA draft, where he had been chosen as the third overall pick by the lowly Minnesota Timberwolves, and couldn’t hold back when Laettner was asked about the boos that accompanied the announcement of his selection during the proceedings in Portland’s Memorial Coliseum.
“That was the fifty family and friends he [Shaquille] took with him to Portland,” Bonnie Laettner blurted out.
Christian was embarrassed and glared at his mother.
To reiterate, one cannot overestimate what a tough spot Laettner was in. He was like a kid fresh out of a high school play asked to join a repertory company with a dozen Oliviers, while his mother stands offstage shouting addled stage directions. Laettner may have been arrogant, but he was an intelligent young man who clearly realized he was the twelfth wheel, the one about whom everyone wondered: What the hell is he doing here? It was a tough spot for any twenty-two-year-old, never mind one who had spent the last four years as an exalted BMOC at a university where BMOCs are quite B. It’s one thing to say that you’re fine with being the butt of jokes, that it doesn’t matter when Barkley mentions that you should run to 7-Eleven to pick up a deck of playing cards (which is what happened in San Diego), quite another to actually be fine with it.
And as I see it, twenty years later it’s still tough to be Christian Laettner. After near canonization at Duke, Laettner has pretty much been consigned to the status of mere mortal over the last two decades. He never found a true NBA home, having played with five teams over thirteen seasons. He was never popular with the fans and media in any of those stops. He was a good player and probably would’ve retired as a very good
one if not for an Achilles tendon injury he suffered in the 1998 off-season. But he was no NBA immortal, as were all of the eleven others on the Dream Team. He is involved in a real-estate business with former Duke teammate Brian Davis, but it has been beset with financial problems, and one of the lawsuits filed against it, by NFL linebacker Shawne Merriman, drew a lot of media attention.
He has had some rocky moments with his former Duke teammates, one of them being Grant Hill, who angered Laettner by referring to him as “a jerk.” That requires some context. Hill genuinely likes Laettner and referred more to Laettner’s proclivity to act like a jerk, if such a distinction is possible.
But I think Laettner can become something else, something better. When I interviewed him, we met at a benefit golf tournament organized as a fund-raiser to help St. Anthony’s, the high school where Bob Hurley Sr. coaches. It was an inclement morning and I was wet and shivering, and here came Laettner to my cart with an extra umbrella and parka. Laettner was sometimes distant and unengaged when we talked—that’s the Laettner you know—but I did sense that he is a man trying to outrun his past. He doesn’t want to be That Guy anymore, the unpleasant preppie, the pampered underachiever. When I asked about his business problems, he didn’t exactly give chapter and verse, but he didn’t pretend they weren’t real, either. “The way the economy has been for the last three, four years, any money we made had to go back into our projects to keep them afloat,” Laettner said. “Yes, I have fallen behind. But I will pay the Shawne Merrimans and those other people back. It would’ve happened by now if not for the economy.” (Perhaps that has already happened, perhaps it has not.)
He spoke about wanting to get back into coaching, and though at this writing he didn’t have a job, he has been giving individual clinic instruction, some of it to Hill, who wanted to improve his low-post game as his career winds down.
And so as I look back on the portrait of Laettner that emerges in these pages, I worry that it is too negative. Yes, back then he did act like a jerk, and his teammates, as Jordan will confirm, did go at him in scrimmages. I didn’t make stuff up. Then again, sports tends to freeze its characters in time. They are, and continue to be, what we saw back then. But they can change—they can become the guy who brings you an umbrella in the rain instead of the one who laughs at you getting wet.
Cattle call notwithstanding, there was going to be something special about the first glance of these guys together. At All-Star Weekends I had seen almost all of the Dream Teamers in one place at one time, but this was different. They would be wearing the same uniform and going for the same goal.
You have to remember that the big question at this time was: how were they all going to play together? The rock star analogy that has been made ad nauseam about the Dream Team eventually came to fit, but it wasn’t apt in the beginning. These guys, unlike the Rolling Stones, had never played together. They didn’t know when to trade leads or let someone go off on a solo.
And as the days wore on, I came to realize that the truly remarkable aspect of all this was that the players bought into its remarkability. Experts at seizing the moment on their own teams, they saw right away that this was the moment. They weren’t students of history, but they sure as hell heard the distant thunder and could sense the super-sized storm front that was moving toward them. “Normally you don’t talk about the past when you’re in it,” Mullin told me recently. “But that wasn’t the case here. We talked about how it was all going to look later. We were aware it was special even as it was going on.”
They exchanged souvenirs like middle schoolers. I remember Barkley interrupting an interview to ask Bird for a pair of sneakers and adding, “I wouldn’t mind a jersey, either.” He said he was starting a “Dream Team museum” in his den. Twenty years later, any number of them would show me mementos from that time in their lives.
Yes, Jordan, Magic, and Bird all expected to be there and, needless to say, felt like they belonged. If I were guessing, I’d say that Barkley, Malone, and Ewing were next on the list of feeling they deserved it. But this was big stuff to all of them.
Here’s Pippen talking to me about it years later: “I was astounded to have been invited. Yeah, we had won a championship by that time, and another one by the time we got ready for Barcelona, but I never saw myself as one of those in-crowd guys. I was overwhelmed when I was asked.”
And John Stockton: “To be honest, the first time I ever thought about it was when Rod Thorn called me and invited me to be on the team. I never thought I would be considered. I was floored.”
Years later, when I told Mullin that he had been one of the committee’s first targets, he smiled like a fifth grader who had just won the spelling bee. “Well, I heard that, too,” he said shyly.
So the gates to the gym swung open, and there they were, doing much the same thing as any team does after formal practice has concluded, some idly shooting free throws, some chatting, some just standing around. The only difference was that these guys represented what could become the best team ever.
There is something jarring about seeing a basketball team in the full blush of summer, when their gym-rat pallid complexions have changed hue. There was Bird, whose season had ended six weeks earlier, looking like he had just stepped off the beach. Bird, as was his wont, was shooting around with Mullin in what would become a post- and pre-practice pas de deux throughout their days together. Jordan and Barkley were jawing at each other as Ewing leaned in and smiled. Chuck Daly was chatting with NBA and USA Basketball officials, being briefed, no doubt, about his endless promotional and media responsibilities.
And there, in one corner, filibustering the masses, was Magic Johnson. By dint of all that had happened to him, this was Magic’s Dream Team and it would be Magic’s Olympics.
He was, after all, the only one of them who was playing with a death sentence.
CHAPTER 20
THE MAGIC MAN
For a Man Who’s Dying, He Sure Looks Pretty Alive
A couple of weeks before perhaps the most dramatic press conference in sports history, the one at which Magic Johnson announced to the world that he had “attained” the AIDS virus, he was in Paris with the Lakers for the McDonald’s Open. The bloom had clearly gone off the Stern-Stankovic rose by that time. It is impossible to overestimate the low esteem in which most high-level athletes hold international travel, augmenting cross-cultural IQ rarely being a priority for them. We need only conjure up the example of a young Shaquille O’Neal, who upon being asked if he had visited the Parthenon during a college basketball trip to Greece, responded, “I can’t remember the names of all the clubs we went to.”
But Magic, being Magic, gamely put himself out front, the point man at press conferences, hospital visits, and promotional stops. Besides, there was a lot to talk about, Barcelona being one of those subjects, and he made it clear that he had appointed himself Dream Team captain.
“Ma-jeek, what will you do in Barcelona, if somebody on your team gets out of line?” a French journalist asked him during a press conference at the McDonald’s Open in Paris.
“I won’t let any somebodies get out of line,” he answered. “If any players get out of line, I’ll take care of it. That’s my job, and I’m going to do it.”
That was a classic Magic response. Had Bird been asked the same question, he might’ve said: “Hell, I ain’t no damn babysitter. Those guys can take care of themselves.” Jordan? He might’ve said: “We’ll all take care of each other.” But Magic was emphatic: It’s my job. That’s what some of his teammates loved about Magic—the fact that he would shoulder responsibility. That’s also what some of his teammates hated about Magic—the fact that it was always his team.
It was at that tournament in Paris that I realized the extent to which Magic had wedged one foot in the business world. He had been talking about becoming a mogul for a long time—he’d owned a radio station in suburban Denver when he was a rookie; hell, he’d had his own lawn mowing business in Lansing, Michigan,
when he was ten—but I never much pursued the subject because it didn’t interest me. And I doubt if anyone knew then how far he was going to take it. Whenever a microphone was around he spoke of the philosophy behind his company, Magic Johnson T’s, and how the Olympics “are going to put a whole new light on things in the business world for NBA stars. Michael and myself are really going to be able to cash in on it.” What do you do with a guy like that? Praise his candor? Or condemn his capitalistic soul?
Magic Johnson T’s was actually an official licensee of NBA Properties, Inc., empowered to sell NBA products. That meant that Magic was making money off the sale of T-shirts bearing the likenesses of Jordan, Bird, and the other Dream Team players. Magic even admitted, with a broad smile, that Jordan tees outsold Magic tees.
Magic was savant-like in his grasp of business. Ask him to sign an autograph to “Jim,” and there would be a chance he would spell it “G-y-m”; he was even known to misspell Johnson as “Jonson.” In later years he said he was dyslexic. But ask him the contract specifics of any player in the league and he could give you dollar figures and length of deal. His head worked in figures and numbers, not letters and words.
When Magic got back to L.A. from Paris, his doctor informed him that he had the AIDS virus, the shocking revelation from a physical Magic had taken weeks earlier. It was confirmed by a retest. Among the first calls Magic made were to Bird, Jordan, and Isiah. His doctors decided that he should retire from the game to work on fighting the disease. Then, with startling speed, came Magic’s press conference, his tour of the talk shows, and his clear pronouncements that he had contracted the disease through heterosexual contact.
Dream Team Page 13