Eleven Rings: The Soul of Success

by Phil Jackson

  My other gaffe was even worse. During a fight between the Lakers and the Rockets in 1977, L.A.’s Kermit Washington threw a punch at Houston’s Rudy Tomjanovich that smashed his face and nearly killed him. I told reporters that I thought it was an unfortunate situation but that I’d narrowly ducked a similar blow from 76er George McGinnis a week earlier and nobody had even noticed. “It seemed you had to be a star to get the league to notice,” I complained. I still wish I could take back those words.

  The Knicks outmuscled us and got an easy ride from the refs en route to a surprising win in game 1. Early on Scottie Pippen severely sprained his ankle and the game slowed down to the Knicks’ pace. We bounced back in game 2, lifted by several key shots by B.J. Armstrong. And Michael broke loose from the Knicks’ crowbar defense to allow us to take back home-court advantage in game 3.

  Horace compared game 4 to a World Wrestling Federation match, and Michael said the officiating was so bad he thought it would be impossible for us to win. I blamed the refs and got thrown out in the second half, as the Knicks took over and won, 93–86.

  My bad-boy side came out in the postgame interviews. I said, “I think they’re probably licking their chops on Fifth Avenue where the NBA offices are. I think they kind of like that it’s a 2-2 series. I don’t like ‘orchestration.’. . . But they control who they send as referees. And if it goes seven, everybody will be really happy.”

  Riley loved it. I had just handed him the perfect opening. The next day he told reporters that I was insulting his team. “I was part of six championship teams and I’ve been to the finals 13 times. I know what championship demeanor is about. The fact that he’s whining and whimpering about the officiating is an insult to how hard our guys are playing and how much our guys want to win. . . . That’s what championship teams are about. They’ve got to take on all comers. They can’t whine about it.”

  The New York press bought it wholesale. The next day the papers were filled with Phil the Whiner stories. Before then New York fans had treated me like one of the family, even though I now worked for the enemy. But after Riley’s holier-than-thou speech, they started hurling catcalls at me in the street. It was strange, but I realized there was nothing I could say to undo what had been done. Winning was the best revenge.

  It took us seven games. My Lakota friends told me that I should “count coup” on Riley before game 7, so I did. As I walked by the Knicks bench, I stopped and reached out my hand to Pat and said: “Let’s give them a good show.” He nodded, a little nonplussed that I was talking to him. As it turned out, the game was a good Michael Jordan show. Early on Xavier McDaniel was pushing around Scottie, who was recovering from his sprained ankle, so Michael stepped in and confronted the bigger, stronger power forward until he backed down. (I was so impressed by the way Michael defended his teammate, I later hung a picture of the stare-down over my office desk.) In the third quarter Jordan stymied McDaniel with one of the best turnaround plays I’ve ever seen. It started when Michael hit a jumper, then stole the Knicks’ inbound pass and started driving to the basket for another quick 2 points. But Xavier knocked the ball out of his hands and charged downcourt for what looked like an easy layup. Except that Jordan was on his heels and knocked the ball away from behind just as McDaniel went up for the shot. That play destroyed the Knicks’ spirit, and they never got close again. Afterward Riley graciously summarized what the Bulls had done. “They played like they are,” he said.

  —

  Still, nothing came easy. After winning another hard-fought series against Cleveland, we faced the playoffs-hardened Portland Trail Blazers in the championship finals. They were a fast, dynamic team led by Clyde Drexler, whom some observers not based in Chicago considered on par with Jordan. Our plan was to play strong transition defense and force them to beat us with their outside shooting. M.J.’s plan was to show the world that Drexler was no Michael Jordan. Michael was so determined Drexler’s teammate Danny Ainge later told author David Halberstam it was like watching “an assassin who comes to kill you and then cut your heart out.”

  We came out strong and won the opener in Chicago, then let the next game slip away in overtime. Rather than take a late-night flight to Portland, as the Blazers did, I decided to fly the team out the next day and give them time off rather than make them slog through practice. The next day we burst out and took back the series lead, 2–1. After splitting the next two games, we returned to Chicago with a chance to put the series away on our home court.

  The Blazers were on a roll in game 6, running up a 17-point lead in the third quarter. Tex insisted that I take Jordan out because he had gone rogue and wasn’t playing within the system. I usually pulled Michael out two minutes before the end of the third period, but this time I took him out early and left the reserves in longer because they’d gone on a 14–2 run, helped by M.J.’s backup, Bobby Hansen, who threw down a key three-pointer. Michael was not happy when I didn’t put him back in at the start of the fourth quarter. But I liked the backup players’ energy and enthusiasm, and the Blazers seemed baffled about how to defend them. By the time Michael and the other starters returned to the game, the lead had shrunk to 5 points and the Blazers were reeling. Michael scored 12 of his 33 points and Scottie made some key shots to finish them off 97–93.

  Bring on the champagne. This was the first time we’d won a championship at home, and the fans went wild. After the traditional craziness in the locker room, I led the players back to the floor to join in the celebration. Scottie, Horace, and Hansen jumped on the scorers’ table and started to dance, and Michael followed, waving the championship trophy. It was a joyous celebration.

  After a while I returned to my office to reflect on what had just transpired. Later, when I met with the players privately, I told them that winning back-to-back championships was the mark of a great team. But what pleased me even more was that we’d had to navigate so many unexpected twists and turns to get there. Paxson called the season “a long, strange trip,” referring to the famous Grateful Dead song. He was right. Our first championship run had been a honeymoon. This was an odyssey.

  9

  BITTERSWEET VICTORY

  Human beings are not born once and for all on the day their mothers give birth to them, but . . . life obliges them over and over again to give birth to themselves.

  GABRIEL GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ

  That summer Michael and Scottie headed to Barcelona to play for the Dream Team. Jerry Krause was not pleased. He argued that they should skip the Olympics and rest up for the coming season. But they ignored his request, and I’m glad they did. An important shift took place in Barcelona that would have an enormous impact on the future of the Bulls.

  Michael returned from the games raving about Scottie’s performance. Before the summer, Michael had regarded Pippen as the most talented member of his supporting cast. But after watching him outplay Magic Johnson, John Stockton, Clyde Drexler, and other future Hall of Famers in Barcelona, Michael realized that Scottie was the best all-around player on what many consider the best basketball team ever assembled. Scottie, Michael had to admit, had even outshone him in several of the games.

  Scottie came back with renewed confidence and took on an even bigger role with the Bulls. NBA rules prevented us from adding a third cocaptain to the roster (in addition to Michael and Bill Cartwright), but we gave Scottie that role ex officio. We also made B.J. Armstrong a starter, since John Paxson was recovering from knee surgery and his playing time was limited.

  In The Tao of Leadership, John Heider stresses the importance of interfering as little as possible. “Rules reduce freedom and responsibility,” he writes. “Enforcement of rules is coercive and manipulative, which diminishes spontaneity and absorbs group energy. The more coercive you are, the more resistant the group will become.”

  Heider, whose book is based on Lao-tzu’s Tao Te Ching, suggests that leaders practice becoming more open. “The wise leader is of se
rvice: receptive, yielding, following. The group member’s vibration dominates and leads, while the leader follows. But soon it is the member’s consciousness which is transformed, the member’s vibration which is resolved.”

  This is what I was trying to do with the Bulls. My goal was to act as instinctively as possible to allow the players to lead the team from within. I wanted them to be able to flow with the action, the way a tree bends in the wind. That’s why I put so much emphasis on having tightly structured practices. I would assert myself forcefully in practice to imbue the players with a strong vision of where we needed to go and what we had to do to get there. But once the game began, I would slip into the background and let the players orchestrate the attack. Occasionally I would step in to make defensive adjustments or shift players around if we needed a burst of energy. For the most part, though, I let the players take the lead.

  To make this strategy work, I needed to develop a strong circle of team leaders who could transform that vision into reality. Structure is critical. On every successful team I’ve coached, most of the players had a clear idea of the role they were expected to play. When the pecking order is clear, it reduces the players’ anxiety and stress. But if it’s unclear and the top players are constantly vying for position, the center will not hold, no matter how talented the roster.

  With the Bulls, we didn’t have to worry about who the top dog was, as long as Michael was around. Once I forged a strong bond with Michael, the rest fell into place. Michael related strongly to the “social bull’s-eye” I described earlier because he envisioned the leadership structure as a series of concentric circles. “Phil was the centerpiece of the team, and I was an extension of that centerpiece,” he says. “He relied on me to connect with all the different personalities on the team to make the team bond stronger. He and I had a great bond, so everything I did, Scottie did, and then it fell down the line. And that made the whole bond stronger so that nothing could break it. Nothing could get inside that circle.”

  Scottie was a different kind of leader. He was more easygoing than Michael. He’d listen patiently to his teammates vent, then try to do something about whatever was troubling them. “I think guys gravitated toward Scottie because he was more like us,” says Steve Kerr. “Michael was such a dominant presence that, at times, he didn’t appear human. Nothing could get to Michael. Scottie was more human, more vulnerable like us.”

  —

  The 1992–93 season was a long winter of discontent. Cartwright and Paxson were recovering from off-season knee surgeries, and Scottie and Michael were bothered by overuse injuries. I’d promised the players the year before that if we won a second championship we wouldn’t have grueling two-a-day practices during training camp. Instead we held one long practice each day, interrupted by breaks to watch game videos. But that schedule didn’t work out very well because the players stiffened up during the breaks.

  Some coaches like to run long practices, particularly after they’ve suffered a hard loss. My college coach, Bill Fitch, was a classic example. Once he got so exasperated with our lackadaisical performance at a game in Iowa, he made us practice when we got back to the UND campus, even though the plane didn’t arrive until after 10:00 P.M. I don’t believe in using practice to punish players. I like to make practices stimulating, fun, and, most of all, efficient. Coach Al McGuire once told me that his secret was not wasting anybody’s time. “If you can’t it get done in eight hours a day,” he said, “it’s not worth doing.” That’s been my philosophy ever since.

  Much of my thinking on this subject was influenced by the work of Abraham Maslow, one of the founders of humanistic psychology who is best known for his theory of the hierarchy of needs. Maslow believed that the highest human need is to achieve “self-actualization,” which he defined as “the full use and exploitation of one’s talents, capacities and potentialities.” The basic characteristics of self-actualizers, he discovered in his research, are spontaneity and naturalness, a greater acceptance of themselves and others, high levels of creativity, and a strong focus on problem solving rather than ego gratification.

  To achieve self-actualization, he concluded, you first need to satisfy a series of more basic needs, each building upon the other to form what is commonly referred to as Maslow’s pyramid. The bottom layer is made up of physiological urges (hunger, sleep, sex); followed by safety concerns (stability, order); love (belonging); self-esteem (self-respect, recognition); and finally self-actualization. Maslow concluded that most people fail to reach self-actualization because they get stuck somewhere lower on the pyramid.

  In his book The Farther Reaches of Human Nature, Maslow describes the key steps to attaining self-actualization:

  experiencing life “vividly, selflessly, with full concentration and total absorption”;

  making choices from moment to moment that foster growth rather than fear;

  becoming more attuned to your inner nature and acting in concert with who you are;

  being honest with yourself and taking responsibility for what you say and do instead of playing games or posing;

  identifying your ego defenses and finding the courage to give them up;

  developing the ability to determine your own destiny and daring to be different and non-conformist;

  creating an ongoing process for reaching your potential and doing the work needed to realize your vision.

  fostering the conditions for having peak experiences, or what Maslow calls “moments of ecstasy” in which we think, act, and feel more clearly and are more loving and accepting of others.

  When I first encountered Maslow’s ideas in grad school, I found them extremely liberating. As an athlete I was familiar with peak experiences, but I’d never fully understood the complex psychology behind them. Maslow’s work opened a door for me to think more expansively about life. I was particularly drawn to his insights about how to get out of your own way and let your true nature express itself. Later when I became a coach, I found that Maslow’s approach of balancing physical, psychological, and spiritual needs provided me with a foundation for developing a new way of motivating young men.

  —

  Our biggest enemy during the 1992–93 season was boredom. Life in the NBA can be a stultifying, mind-numbing experience, particularly when you’re on a long road trip and every minute of every day is scheduled. My goal was to get the players to break free from their confining basketball cocoon and explore the deeper, more spiritual aspects of life. By “spiritual” I don’t mean “religious.” I mean the act of self-discovery that happens when you step beyond your routine way of seeing the world. As Maslow puts it, “The great lesson from the true mystics . . . [is] that the sacred is in the ordinary, that it is to be found in one’s daily life, in one’s neighbors, friends, and family, in one’s backyard.”

  To make your work meaningful, you need to align it with your true nature. “Work is holy, sacred, and uplifting when it springs from who we are, when it bears a relationship to our unfolding journey,” writes activist, teacher, and lay monk Wayne Teasdale in A Monk in the World. “For work to be sacred, it must be connected to our spiritual realization. Our work has to represent our passion, our desire to contribute to our culture, especially to the development of others. By passion I mean the talents we have to share with others, the talents that shape our destiny and allow us to be of real service to others in our community.”

  To tap into the sacred in work as well as in life, it’s essential to create order out of chaos. Teasdale quotes Native American songwriter James Yellowbank, who says, “The task of life is to keep your world in order.” And that takes discipline, a healthy balance between work and play, and nourishment of mind, body, and spirit within the context of community—values deeply rooted in my own being, as well as my objectives for the teams I’ve coached.

  Getting the players to turn inward wasn’t always easy. Not everyone on the Bulls was
interested in “spiritual” realization. But I didn’t hit them over the head with it. My approach was subtle. Every year the team went on a long West Coast road trip in November when the circus took over the stadium for a few weeks. Before the trip I would select a book for each of the players to read, based on what I knew about them. Here’s a typical list: Song of Solomon (for Michael Jordan), Things Fall Apart (Bill Cartwright), Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (John Paxson), The Ways of White Folks (Scottie Pippen), Joshua: A Parable for Today (Horace Grant), Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind (B.J. Armstrong), Way of the Peaceful Warrior (Craig Hodges), On the Road (Will Perdue), and Beavis & Butt-Head: This Book Sucks (Stacey King).

  Some players read every book I gave them; others dumped them in the trash. But I never expected everyone’s 100 percent engagement. The message I wanted to convey was that I cared enough about them as individuals to spend time searching for a book that might have special meaning for them. Or at least make them laugh.

  Another way I pushed the envelope was to have experts come in and teach the players yoga, tai chi, and other mind-body techniques. I also invited guest speakers—including a nutritionist, an undercover detective, and a prison warden—to show them new ways of thinking about difficult problems. Sometimes when we were traveling short distances—between Houston and San Antonio, for instance—we’d load everybody onto a bus to give them a chance to see what the world looked like beyond airport waiting rooms. Once, after a hard loss in a playoff series with the Knicks, I surprised everyone by taking the team on a ferry ride to Staten Island, rather than making them go through another round of enervating interviews with the New York media. On another occasion I arranged to have the team visit my former teammate, Senator Bill Bradley, in his Washington, D.C., office, where he gave us a talk about basketball, politics, and race. He’d just delivered a resounding speech on the Senate floor (shortly after Rodney King had been beaten by L.A. police officers) in which he banged a pencil against the mic fifty-six times for the number of hits that King had taken. On one wall in Bradley’s office hung a photo of the jump shot he missed in game 7 of the 1971 Eastern Conference finals that effectively ended the Knicks’ hope of repeating as champions that year. Bill kept it there as a reminder of his own fallibility.