How to Be Like Mike

by Pat Williams

  All it can do is shatter your focus. All it can do is cloud your dreams.

  CHAPTER TWO

  THE JOY

  JORDAN ON PASSION:

  A lot of us in the NBA, we take it for granted that this is the only place we can play basketball, because we’ve made it to here. We forget about what it felt like when we were playing in high school, when it was so exciting just to put on that uniform and go onto the court for the game. Those days felt just as good as a lot of days in the NBA feel. Maybe better, because we didn’t take it for granted.

  My advice to kids is to let them just enjoy the game. Develop a love for the game.

  —Michael Jordan

  The feeling first overcame him in the backyard, on the court his father built in Wilmington, North Carolina, in the midst T of brutal one-on-one games against his older brother, Larry. It was there that Michael Jordan fell in love with basketball. He delighted in his improvement, in his first victories against a sibling who once had overpowered him. He spent hours on that court, until he was good enough to make his high school team, until he blossomed into a star.

  Those early glimpses of his potential were a revelation for Jordan. “He knew that he was going to get better,” says Buzz Peterson, who roomed with Jordan at a high school basketball camp and later played with him at North Carolina. “For the first time he had a sense of what the future might bring for him—and he was in love with it.”

  Jordan kept those diligent habits as his notoriety grew, as the temptations to succumb to distraction swelled around him. Every practice was a source of enthusiasm; games were punctuated by a grin, by a helpless shrug of the shoulders as another three-point shot faded into the net. Didn’t matter if it was a tepid evening in January against the Clippers or the heightened tension of a finals game against Utah, Jordan was there every night, pushing, prodding, elevating the moment. He was a relentless talker, always dancing along the edges of cockiness, yet able to sharpen that edge by backing up his attitude.

  A reporter once asked Luc Longley, Jordan’s teammate in Chicago, what it was that amplified Jordan’s game, what made him such a rarity. Longley was a rangy center for the Bulls, an Australian of moderate talent who was often the victim of Jordan’s consistent urgings. And to the reporter, Longley replied, in his rich Australian accent, “Michael Jordan is always up.”

  When I was in college at Xavier, I saw an MJ quote in Jet magazine: “I play for the love of the game, not for the love of money.” I went and got a tattoo on my chest because of that. It says, “For the Love.”

  —Michael Hawkins

  NBA PLAYER

  For eighty years, a cellist named Pablo Casals began every morning with the same exacting routine. He’d walk to his piano, play two preludes and fugues of Bach, and let the music flood over him, a sort of benediction, a daily rediscovery, an ode to the brilliant hues of life.

  I imagine that, with the same feeling coursing through him each morning, Jordan picked up a basketball, spun it in his fingers, set his feet, dribbled two or three times and took his first shot.

  Meanwhile, amid joyous lives like Jordan’s, there are large portions of our society who toil in futility, long ago accepting of their own mediocrity. They accede to other’s wishes, barely twitching a finger to change things. They bury themselves in the boredom and monotony of the everyday with nothing but an ineffable vision of what might come next.

  You’ve achieved success in your field when you don’t know whether what you’re doing is work or play.

  —Warren Beatty

  ACTOR

  Perhaps we know people like this. Perhaps we are people like this:devoid of the passion and energy that carries us from one moment to the next, unable to combat the intangible force that sets roadblocks in our minds. And then one lonesome afternoon in a corner office, it floods us: the pain, the anguish, the irreversible regret for what we should have done and never did, because we followed the path to comfort instead of the path to our yearnings.

  And we wind up lost, buried in our own remorse. But here’s the thing: It’s never too late for recovery.

  The Glow of Enthusiasm

  There is an energy that spills from the eyes of a joyous person, that emanates from their cheerful and exaggerated motion. But it’s more than just a surface energy that they’re revealing. What matters is what’s below, because the starriness of a person like this reveals so much about their potential for success. They are people doing what they want to do, living how they want to live, people who dictate their own actions, people who are immersed in their greatest pleasures: hitting a baseball, playing a trumpet, writing, drawing, painting, shooting a basketball.

  This was when I was with the Philadelphia 76ers. I was sitting on the bench and MJ came dribbling past us at full speed. Then he shifted into another gear and went to the hoop. I’ll never forget that fire in his eyes, that look of determination. It scared me to see that look. I’ve never seen it before. I’ve never seen it since.

  —Roy Hinson

  FORMER NBA PLAYER

  Historian David McCullough observed, “I would pay to do what I do. People say, ‘Take a vaction, ’ How could I have a better time than what I am doing?”

  Author Laurence Sterne writes in A Sentimental Journey:“What a large volume of adventures may be grasped within this little span of life by him who interests his heart in everything.”

  “You have to find something that you love enough to be able to take risks, jump over the hurdles and break through the brick walls that are always going to be placed in front of you,” said movie director George Lucas. “If you don’t have that kind of feeling for what it is you’re doing, you’ll stop at the first giant hurdle.”

  Author Roger Kahn once called Willie Mays the most joyous ballplayer of his era, especially at the prime of his career, in 1954, his first year back from duty in the army, when the Giants won the pennant. Mays couldn’t wait to get to the ballpark. He had the same anxious feeling each day. “You got to love the game,” he said. “Else how you gonna play good?”

  And some years later, Willie Mays observed Michael Jordan, his serpentine creative moves in traffic, his relentless bursts of vigor, his eponymous grin. “I look at Michael and I see a player who loves basketball,” Mays said. “He loves playing it the way I loved playing baseball. Intelligence, sure, but love is a big reason Michael can play basketball the way he does.”

  Live with no time-out.

  —Simone de Beauvoir

  WRITER

  Jordan is the only player I know of who had a“Love of the Game” clause inserted into his contract; it meant he could play in any basketball game at any time, whenever he wanted, without getting approval from the team.

  I watched hours and hours of MJ on tape. He never relented for a second. He never took a play off. He was on all the time. Always wired up.

  —Brendan Malone

  NBA ASSISTANT COACH

  Again I take you back to Jordan in college at North Carolina, to his days under Dean Smith, who used to insist that both he and his assistant coaches maintain a vigorous demeanor throughout practice, and that his players do the same. This way, he figured, even if someone wasn’t charged that day, even if a player felt like someone had removed his batteries, they’d be so coerced into enthusiasm that they’d end up feeling it regardless.

  Amid those practices, Jordan would dive for loose balls, would skin knees, would fight for every rebound. During one-on-one drills he’d spill with an almost boyish brashness, teasing his teammates as he’d drive by them, time after time, for easy dunks. Afterward, he’d write their names on a blackboard, with Roman numerals next to each name. The numerals signified how many times Jordan had dunked on them that afternoon.

  He meant nothing personal by it. It was just a mischievous incarnation of Jordan’s ardor for the game.

  Former teammate Ed Nealy said, “They should’ve charged admission for every Bulls practice, because you’d have seen more from Michael there than in
the games. It didn’t matter if we’d played five games in eight days. MJ would practice like it was his last day in uniform.”

  From the beginning of his NBA career, Jordan was the first to show up at practice and the last to leave. If there was a weakness in his game when he came to the NBA, it was that his jump shot was only slightly above average. So he’d work on his jump shot for hours with coach Kevin Loughery. They’d bet on games of HORSE, until Jordan could win back his money after Loughery tired out.

  Wrote David Halberstam:“He was going to be a great player, Loughery thought, not just because of the talent and the uncommon physical aspects but because he loved the game. That love could not be coached or faked, and it was something he always had. He was joyous about practices, joyous about games, as if he could not wait for either.”

  From the glow of enthusiasm, I let the melody escape. I pursue it. Breathless, I catch up with it. It flies again. It disappears; it plunges into a chaos of diverse emotions. I catch it again. I seize it. I embrace it with delight. . . . I multiply it by modulations and at last I triumph in the first theme. There is the whole symphony.

  —Ludwig van Beethoven

  “In 1992 at the Barcelona Olympics, we played cards until six in the morning,” said Magic Johnson.

  “MJ got one hour of sleep, then played eighteen holes of golf. That night he scored twenty-eight points. After the game, we played cards all night. Then golf at eight in the morning. On the third night, MJ said, ‘We’re staying up all night playing cards. ’ I said, ‘MJ, I can’t do it. I can’t do what you do. I’ve got to get some sleep.” ’

  There was so much joy that Jordan could manage to play extensive rounds of golf the day before a crucial playoff game and emerge from the locker room with the same energy level. He could subsist on two or three hours of sleep a night. In the 1992 Olympics in Barcelona, as Magic Johnson said, Jordan played thirty-six holes each day, a game at night and then sometimes played cards until six in the morning. Finally, when the U. S. was due to face its toughest opponent, Russia, U. S. Coach Chuck Daly went to Jordan and said, “MJ, how about you play eighteen holes today?”

  It is the greatest shot of adrenaline to be doing what you’ve wanted to do so badly. You almost feel like you could fly without the plane.

  —Charles Lindbergh

  AVIATOR

  Jordan agreed. That night he locked down one of Russia’s best players, Sarunas Marciulionis. The U. S. won easily. Afterward, Jordan said to Daly, “I could have played another eighteen holes today.”

  When you have the challenge, you feel the hunger for the game, the love for the game, the attitude of coming in and working harder in practice.

  —Michael Jordan

  Sports columnist Mark Whicker said, “Michael’s energy level was just different. He couldn’t relax. Even his relaxation was strenuous.”

  “He has a great sense of humor,” said former Bulls trainer Mark Pfeil. “And he has that big grin all the time.”

  During his rookie season, when it’s customary for most players to wear down physically, Jordan would often scoff at the trainers’ concern for his fatigue level. Can you play this many minutes, the trainers would ask. Do you need a break?

  Jordan would grin. “Watch me,” he’d say.

  “Michael Jordan’s energy supply is what separates him from other people,” says Bulls assistant coach Bill Cartwright. “Nobody in the NBA has as much energy. I believe that enthusiasm finds the opportunities and energy makes the most of them.”

  “In 1984, Michael played in the Olympics and then reported to the Bulls camp as a rookie,” said Jordan’s former teammate, Sidney Green. “All the vets thought he’d be tired and wouldn’t have any legs. He started camp by outrunning and outjumping all of us. Then, the second week, he ran even faster and jumped higher. By mid-season, he’d gone to an even higher level. He wanted to prove to everyone how special he was—and he was. He was the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.”

  I am known to those around me as a rather enthusiastic person—a notion that most would probably consider a vast understatement. Throughout the course of my career in the front office in both minor-league baseball and the NBA, my energy has led me to some rather odd precipices. Wrestling bears, for instance. Or overseeing the most disappointing trained pig act in the history of Philadelphia sports. Or donning a sweaty mascot’s suit. All for the sake of entertainment.

  Some might call me crazy. I call it a surplus of joy. And I just happen to believe you should have enough of a surplus to fill aWal-Mart.

  The aim of life is to live, and to live means to be awake, joyously, drunkenly, serenely, divinely awake.

  —Henry Miller WRITER

  It’s something I learned from my mentor, a one-legged baseball executive named Bill Veeck, who earned a measure of fame for having the courage and ingenuity to let a midget bat during a major-league baseball game. Veeck was the sort of man who slept two hours a night, whose head exploded with ideas. He was flush with energy. He relished interaction, and he savored the small pleasures of his life in baseball. And of his life outside of baseball. When Bill died in 1986, sports columnist Thomas Boswell wrote:“Cause of death—life.”

  Catfish Hunter stuffed twenty pounds of life into a five-pound sack. His life was a charm bracelet of good times.

  —Steve Rushin

  SPORTSWRITER

  These are the people I admire, the ones who leave nothing ambiguous. Musicians like Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong exuded a spontaneous optimism on stage; Ted Williams was nicknamed “The Kid” for the way he bounced from the dugout each afternoon. Thomas Edison sacrificed fortunes for the sake of continuous time to invent; Charles Schulz drew his Peanuts comic strip until the months before his death because it was all he could imagine. Tina Turner still struts on stage, even now that she’s well past fifty—“When you’re around Tina,” said talk-show host Oprah Winfrey, “you say, ‘I want some of that energy that’s coming off her.” ’ John Madden has said he could broadcast pro football games for an eternity;one of my favorite public speakers is former Dodgers manager Tommy Lasorda, who could probably weave stories for an eternity; and Joe Paterno seems destined to coach college football at Penn State for an eternity. “I’ve never been bored,” Paterno said. “Maybe that’s part of the reason I stay in it.” Baltimore Ravens coach Brian Billick said it best: “Passion is the lubricant of success.”

  In 1981, I played with MJ at the McDonald’s High School All-America game in Wichita. First practice, I was stunned. MJ got off the bus and without warming up, he was running and dunking all over the place.

  —Chris Mullin

  NBA PLAYER

  Not long ago, my wife Ruth and I were in Manhattan, preparing to perform another of our insane, enthusiastic stunts: running the NewYork City Marathon. The day before the race, we stopped into a Barnes and Noble bookstore where we had a chance to meet syndicated columnist George Will. We told him we were there to run the marathon.

  He looked at us solemnly, his face blank and curious. He said, “Why?”

  I’ve thought a great deal about that question. Why? I don’t know why. It’s uncontrollable. It’s an urge, a passion, something that blossoms from deep within and won’t let me stop.

  It may be the most consequential advice we can pass along to our children: To find something they love, to chase after it and to savor its every twist. My son Bobby was scrawling major-league starting lineups on notepads when he was six; now he works as a coach in the Cincinnati Reds farm system. As a boy, A. J. Foyt was racing around the outside of his house in a child-size racing car. And Wayne Gretzky, at three years old, was watching hockey games while flopping around in stockinged feet on a linoleum floor. He would cry when the game ended, unable to comprehend the deprivation of this one exalted joy. On the day that forty-six-year-old Moses Malone was voted into the Basketball Hall of Fame, he was on his way to a Houston recreation center for a 1 P. M. pick-up game.

  A magazine
called Nation’s Business once surveyed its readers, attempting to extract the top ten businesspeople America had poured forth in its first two hundred years. The list included the names you’d expect: Edison, Henry Ford, Alexander Graham Bell. But what’s interesting is that while each of the ten choices was involved in highly competitive businesses— often cited as a cause of health problems—they lived ripely to an average age of eighty-seven.

  MJ, I guess, had decided

  he’d catch up on sleep some other time in his life.

  —Matt Geiger

  NBA PLAYER

  Another survey polled 241 executives on the traits that most helped workers to become a success. More than 80 percent listed “enthusiasm.” Second, at 63 percent, was a “can-do attitude.”

  And enthusiasm does spread. If we project it, say, at a board meeting or in a presentation, it will carry through the room. Remember that groups aren’t naturally enthusiastic about doing anything. I’ve seen this in my flock of nineteen children (sixteen of whom were teenagers at the same time), whose primary pastime seems to be sitting on the couch complaining about the lack of things to do in life, because nothing in life is cool enough to do. It’s the same with a company. It’s the same with a team. We turn to leaders because they press us into action, because they make us feel that what we’re doing is healthy and intriguing and challenging. As long as that feeling is authentic, as long as it is not hidden from view, we can inspire entire groups.

  MJ brought out the fire in everyone around him. He never missed a practice, no matter how many minutes he played the night before, no matter how many points he scored. That attitude, that pattern, spread to the rest of us.

  —Scott Burrell

  NBA PLAYER

  How many teams did Jordan improve just by being there? How many others’ games did he inspire? In his book, Halberstam makes mention of Steve Hale, another of Jordan’s teammates at Carolina, a player of marginal ability who subsisted mostly on hustle. Jordan did the same. Every loose ball Jordan rushed after, every extra effort he made during practice, only further endeared him to the teammates who weren’t blessed with his natural ability. And it only made them want what Jordan wanted that much more fervently.