How to Be Like Mike

by Pat Williams

  Wayne Gretzky’s statement about Tiger Woods confirms that thought:“When I watch golf and hear other players interviewed, most of them sound like they can’t believe they won. Then you hear from Tiger, and he either expected to win or he can’t believe he didn’t. It’s a different mind-set altogether.”

  “I was with Minnesota and checked into the game to guard Michael,” said NBA player James Robinson. “He said to Scottie Pippen, ‘I’ve got a guinea pig on me. ’Then he said to me, ‘I’m going to score on you. ’ Next three plays, he posted me up and hit three straight hoops. I left the game and Michael patted me on the butt and said, ‘I’ll see you later. ’”

  “One night when I was an assistant with the Hawks, we were playing the Bulls in Atlanta,” said NBA assistant coach Johnny Davis. “Dominique Wilkins made a sensational shot to give them the lead late in the game. No time-out for the Bulls. They cleared a side for Michael. He took the ball, turned his head toward our bench and winked at us. He faked baseline, turned back the other way and slammed it down over everybody.

  “Then he ran past our bench and winked at us again.”

  A Con Game

  All of these stories make Jordan sound like a ruthless soldier, like a merciless man without the capacity for friendship or compassion. But the truth is a great deal less rigid than that. Jordan’s effervescent personality, that subtle upturned smile—these were weapons as much as anything else. NewYork Knicks coach Jeff Van Gundy once called Jordan a “con man.” Although Jordan was very angered by the accusation, it was meant to be a compliment. “He was so into winning, he’d befriend the other players and the refs and they didn’t even know it,” Van Gundy said. “He knew every button to push. The guys wanted to be liked by him so much they had a hard time competing against him.”

  “He had the competitive arrogance,” said University of Connecticut coach Jim Calhoun, “but it didn’t leave the court.”

  It wasn’t that Jordan played nice on the court. In fact, he was one of the most prolific trash-talkers in NBA history. Even in pickup games, where Jordan was (and still is) known to resurrect his magic just because he can (one Chicago fan remembered Jordan singing his own Gatorade theme song—“Sometimes I dream, that he is me . . .” —after winning a pickup game); and even in his own fantasy camps, where Jordan once joined a team that trailed by twenty points with five minutes to play and led them into overtime.

  One of his teammates in Chicago, Michael Holton, was guarding Jordan in practice shortly after he returned from his foot injury in 1986, and Jordan yelped, “Don’t make me open that can!”

  Holton didn’t respond. Next day, Jordan said the same thing to him. Holton began to guard Jordan more closely, and Jordan got madder until finally he said, “All right, I’m opening the can.”

  “What’s in the can?” Holton said.

  “A butt-kicking,” Jordan replied.

  “That was the highlight of my time with the Bulls,” Holton said. “I made Michael open the can.”

  During Erick Strickland’s rookie season with Dallas, he saw Jordan in a restaurant. Strickland introduced his aunt to him. Jordan said, “Make sure to get him home right away, because it’s going to be a long night for him tomorrow.”

  Once, against Boston, the Celtics were beating the Bulls in their home opener, and the Celtics were talking a little too much. They were lined up for a free throw and Jordan said, “I’m getting this rebound.”

  The free throw was missed. Jordan got the rebound. He scored and was fouled.

  I was with Boston, playing at Chicago. I’m alone on Michael and he said, “Watch this.” He started to back me down, and before he jumped, he shouted, “Aaaah!” Like I fouled him. And the ref called the foul.

  —Ron Mercer

  NBA PLAYER

  He could talk up a storm himself, but he couldn’t stand others taunting him. Brian Shaw, then with Golden State, once had a good night against Jordan and started jabbering too much, and Jordan turned to Warriors coach P. J. Carlesimo and said, “Tell Brian Shaw to be quiet.” Shaw kept talking. Jordan said to Carlesimo, “I’m warning you.” And then he scored twelve straight points to win the game. And as he walked off the court, he said to Carlesimo, “I told you to leave me alone.”

  Ric Bucher of ESPN magazine has a vivid memory of Jordan the competitor: “In 1998 I went to a Bulls shoot-around and saw an amazing sight. Michael was going one-on-one with Scott Burrell at the highest level of intensity. MJ was down 9–7 but won 11–9 and was talking the whole time. As Burrell walked toward me I asked, ‘What did you do to deserve that?’ Jordan heard me and said, ‘Talking. ’ I was stunned— here was Michael at the end of his career and got his hackles raised to the point he had to whip up on a journeyman player at a shoot-around!”

  Former NBA player Sam Bowie observed, “MJ could talk trash with you, but it was positive trash. It was almost complimentary, and not belittling or degrading. Mike would score on you and then pat you on the butt, and it made you feel you almost liked what he’d just done to you.”

  If being an egomaniac means I believe in what I do, then, in that respect, you can call me that. I believe in what I do, and I’ll say it.

  —John Lennon

  The closest I came to talking trash with Michael Jordan was when I played in Charles Barkley’s charity golf tournament in Orlando one summer. Our group was one foursome ahead of Jordan’s group. We got backed up on a tough par three that looked down into a valley, and by the time I teed off, all of Jordan’s followers had gathered around the tee to watch. I was petrified; I hadn’t hit a decent shot all afternoon.

  From behind me, Michael muttered, “Let’s see what this guy can do.”

  I steadied myself and swung. Somehow, I managed to land my drive within five feet of the pin. As I walked off the tee, I heard Michael say, “You can tell that Pat doesn’t spend much time at the office.”

  Jordan knew how to play the game within the game. The psychological war. He knew exactly how far to let it go. “MJ would never play dirty,” said referee Hubert Evans. “But he’d always react when it started.” When New York’s Chris Childs threw a basketball at Jordan in a fit of misguided anger, Jordan flashed, for an instant, a burst of raw rage. And then he backed away.

  During my rookie season in Charlotte, I tied up a loose ball with Jordan. Then I won the jump ball. Greatest jump ball of my career. It’s probably something I’ll brag about to my kids someday.

  —Malik Rose

  NBA PLAYER

  “A killer in control,” Pat Riley has called him.

  “My grandparents used to always say, ‘Think before you act, and always be in control at all times, ’” Jordan said. “I always remember that.”

  And so he could attack when needed and he could make friends when needed. Either way, he’d maintain control. Either way, he’d win. And there was a part of him that cultivated friendships and encouraged opponents because he didn’t want to discourage his opponents entirely; he relished the aftermath of a difficult victory. He once thanked his friend Buzz Peterson for being named North Carolina high school player of the year because it gave him a reason to outdo him in college. The reason that he retired the first time was because all of the challenges were gone. “I really think MJ wanted the other players to play up to his level,” said veteran pro Hersey Hawkins. “It was more challenging to him to have other guys competing at his level.”

  Still, there were those who saw through Jordan’s amiable nature. George Karl tried to counteract it in the 1996 NBA Finals. He told his Seattle Supersonics team that he didn’t want to be friends with Michael, and that he didn’t want them to be friends with Michael, either. He delivered a ten-minute speech, giving specific instructions to everyone from point guard Gary Payton to his son, a ball boy. Jordan never shook Karl’s hand the entire series. Never even looked at him. “I thought I was the macho guy,” Karl said, “but MJ outraged me. ”

  Cultivate a healthy respect for your competitors, but never overestima
te or underestimate them. Never forget that, no matter how highly one or more of them may be regarded, if you make the mistake of holding them in awe, you will lack the will to beat them.

  —Al Kaltman

  AUTHOR

  “One night when Michael was sick, I scored twenty-four and he scored twenty-one,” said former NBA player Craig Ehlo. “The next day, Sam Smith quoted me in the Chicago Tribune:‘If you’re sick, you should stay home from school. ’ Our next game against the Bulls, Michael scored fifty-five on me. I should have kept my mouth shut.”

  There are three lessons to be taken from this. The first is that politeness can be a disarming strategy when competing. The second is that the politeness of others can be a disarming strategy when competing. And the third is that there is a time, in the midst of competition, to let politeness fade for the moment.

  It was difficult not to place Jordan on some higher plane. Rarely, if ever, has sports been blessed with such a pure competitor, a man whose lone goal was victory by whatever means necessary. He was intimidating, he was fearless, he was driven and the legacy of his competitive nature is like none to come along in generations.

  It continues to trickle down in the residue of memories like those of veteran pro Larry Robinson, who on the first night of his rookie season in Washington in 1991 was assigned to guard Jordan. Jordan had powdered resin on his hands, and as he touched fists with his opponents, bits of powder burst from his hand. The Bullets won the opening tap, and Jordan backpedaled to play defense. What Robinson didn’t realize was that Jordan kept powder inside his fists as well. Michael raised his arms, opened his hands, and the powder sprinkled down upon him like fairy dust.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  THE FIST

  JORDAN ON TEAMWORK:

  There are plenty of teams in every sport that have great players and will never win titles. Most times, these players aren’t willing to sacrifice for the greater good of the team. The funny thing is, in the end, their unwillingness to sacrifice only makes individual goals more difficult to achieve.

  A great player can only do so much on his own, no matter how breathtaking his one-on-one moves. If he is out of sync psychologically with everyone else, the team will never achieve the harmony needed to win.

  —Phil Jackson

  Grant Hill held up one of his hands. He stretched five rangy fingers at me, spreading them as far apart as they would go.

  “These,” he said, “are the five members of a basketball team.”

  We were sitting in the locker room in Orlando. It was Hill’s first year with the Magic after six years with the Detroit Pistons, but he was reaching back further, to his years at Duke, to a speech that his coach, Mike Krzyzewski, used to give.

  Hill waggled his fingers. “These,” he said, “do not become very effective until they are joined together tightly.” He balled his hand into a fist. “This,” he said, “can cause much more damage than five fingers sticking in different directions.”

  Hill relaxed his hand, so that the fist became a jagged creature with a couple of fingers splayed apart.

  “If one or two stick out,” he said, “that’s not a very effective fist.”

  That, Hill said, became the rallying cry for a Duke team that won NCAA titles in 1991 and 1992. It is a vivid illustration of a principle that interlopes on the worlds of both sports and business: the notion of teamwork.

  It was something that Michael Jordan did not accept when he entered the NBA. At first, he tried bullying his way to a championship. He had the idea that he could hoist an entire team on his shoulders and lead it through the play-offs. In retrospect, it’s easy to understand why he felt this way. Those early teams Jordan played on in Chicago were not exactly blessed with grade-A talent. It was his show, and nobody else’s. He had no one to rely on, no one to depend upon besides himself. But when Jordan scored sixty-three against the Celtics in the 1986 play-offs, his team still lost. And the Celtics, with Larry Bird, with Kevin McHale, with Robert Parish and Dennis Johnson and Danny Ainge, did not lose.

  In 1983, Michael was kind of full of himself and dogging it at practice. Dean Smith had a rule that if you dogged it, the whole team had to run extra. So Dean stopped practice, put a chair in the middle of the floor, and told Michael to sit and watch while the rest of the team ran. I think that was a defining moment for Michael.

  —David Chadwick

  PASTOR AND AUTHOR

  By the end of his career, Jordan had developed a complex symbiosis with his teammates. Together they earned those six championship rings.

  You want your company to run well? Here’s an ironclad rule: Get everyone on the same team. Get everyone working for the same team. Get everyone working for the same goal; get them to win or lose together.

  —Gordon Bethune

  CEO OF CONTINENTAL AIRLINES

  If there is one concept that I have studied more than others in my years as an NBA executive, it’s that of teamwork. I have presided over terrible teams (we won’t get into details) and championship teams (I won’t brag, though I certainly could, if you ask) and I have isolated those elements that make up the difference. Call it chemistry or bonding or mutual acceptance or any of the above. The absolute truth is that sports franchises fail— just as corporations fail— without teamwork.

  Without everybody embracing what we want to do, we haven’t got a prayer.

  —Jack Welch

  CEO OF GENERAL ELECTRIC

  No surprise, then, that teamwork has become one of those buzzwords for corporate America. A great many of my public-speaking clients ask me to address this topic, whether to a grand ballroom of Fortune 500 CEOs or a banquet hall filled with small-business owners. They’re all curious about the same thing: is what happens in sports transferable to the business world?

  Business—and this means not just the business of commerce, but the business of education, the business of government, the business of medicine, is a team activity. Always, it takes a team to win.

  —Andrew Grove

  CEO OF INTEL

  The obvious answer is: Yes. Of course. The less obvious question is: How is it transferable to the business world?

  I spent a few years looking into this. I even wrote a book about it, The Magic of Teamwork. What I attempted to discern were the defining characteristics of great teams. What follows are my eight primary findings, dovetailed to the experience of Michael Jordan.

  When you don’t take care of the team first, the baseball gods won’t let you get away with it.

  —Todd Hundley

  MAJOR-LEAGUE CATCHER

  1. Talent

  You can take an old mule and run him, feed him, train him and get him in the best shape of his life, but you ain’t gonna win the Kentucky Derby.

  —PEPPER MARTIN

  former major-league baseball star

  I owe this one to Jack Ramsay, the longtime NBA coach and broadcaster, who looked at my list of great team characteristics and told me—as B. J. Armstrong had once told me about my Jordan outline—that I’d forgotten the most important thing.

  “Can’t have a great team,” he said, “without great talent.”

  Pretty simple thought. But one of those things we have a tendency to forget. We think we can piece together our organizations with people of patchwork abilities, that we can stretch them to their absolute capacities and it will be enough.

  And sometimes it may be.

  But most of the time, it probably won’t be.

  You will notice that even the greatest coaches don’t win without talent. When Phil Jackson first became coach of the Bulls, the franchise was just beginning to refine its talent level. When Jackson surrounded Jordan with a higher caliber of player, and with role players who completed their tasks without fail, the Bulls began to form a dynastic core.

  “If you have talented players, you can win,” Jackson said. “If you know what to do as a coach, you can bring out the best in talented players. To go off and coach a team that’s going to win fifteen ga
mes, I can’t.”

  It matters, of course, that you are able to recognize talent (“The ability to discover ability in others,” said author Elbert Hubbard, “is the true test” ), and to choose coachable people, those who are willing to accept the demands of others, who are dedicated to goals larger than themselves.

  It also matters that you help talent settle into its proper place. The key to handling talent, says sports executive Mark McCormack, is this: “Employ it properly, then leave it alone.”

  “Find some people who are ‘comers, ’” said Dallas businessman John Stemmons. “People who are going to be achievers in their own field and people you can trust. Then grow old together.” NBA player Juwann Howard asks, “You know how good teams win? By staying together.”

  Talent alone is not enough. They used to tell me you have to use your five best players, but I’ve found that you win with the five who fit together best.

  —Red Auerbach

  And this is what Bulls general manager Jerry Krause did. He drafted Horace Grant and Scottie Pippen in the spring of 1987, then hired Jackson as an assistant coach (under Doug Collins) that fall. He recruited the best talent he could find. He set the pieces into place. It was up to Jackson to provide for the development of his young players, like Pippen, a raw talent from Central Arkansas. Jackson taught him to find his shot and to harness his athleticism, to develop his abilities in four crucial dimensions: physical strength and skill, plus emotional and spiritual well-being.

  So the talent was acquired, and the talent was harnessed. It was up to Jordan to provide the final element: cohesion.

  “Michael had four qualities,” said NBA scout Yvan Kelly. “Number one—superior athletic ability; number two—superior skills; number three—mental toughness; and number four—synthesizing these elements into team play. You will find players with as much talent and skills, but they just can’t pull it together.”

  2. Leadership

  There are many elements to a campaign. Leadership is number one. Everything else is number two.