Eleven Rings: The Soul of Success

by Phil Jackson

  Michael was remarkably calm afterward. He spent half an hour talking to reporters about how challenging it was for him to gel with his new teammates. “I came back with the dream of winning,” he said. “I thought it was realistic. Now looking back, maybe it wasn’t, because we lost.”

  This was the kind of game that can haunt you for years, if you let it. “Just swallow this loss and digest it,” I advised the players. “Then get on with your lives.” Still, I knew it wasn’t going to be easy to let this one go.

  A few days later, however, while I was still struggling to get a handle on what had gone wrong, I suddenly came up with a vision of how to turn the Chicago Bulls into a champion team again.

  I couldn’t wait to get started.

  11

  BASKETBALL POETRY

  It’s more fun to be a pirate than to join the Navy.

  STEVE JOBS

  I’m often asked to reveal the secret of the 1995–96 Bulls, which some consider the greatest basketball team ever assembled. How could a team that was going nowhere in May transform a few months later into a team that couldn’t be beaten?

  The simple answer would be that it was all about the superstars: Michael Jordan, Scottie Pippen, and Dennis Rodman. But talent can only get you so far in this game. Other teams have been far more loaded than the Bulls but couldn’t achieve anything close to this team’s success. Another explanation might be the magic of the triangle offense. But even Tex Winter would admit that the triangle was only part of the answer.

  In truth, it was a confluence of forces that came together in the fall of 1995 to transform the Bulls into a new breed of championship team. From a tribal-leadership perspective, the Bulls were moving from being a stage 4 team to a stage 5. The first series of championships transformed the Bulls from an “I’m great, you’re not” team to a “We’re great, they’re not” team. But for the second series, the team adopted a broader “Life is great” point of view. By midseason it became clear to me that it wasn’t competition per se that was driving the team; it was simply the joy of the game itself. This dance was ours, and the only team that could compete against us was ourselves.

  The first breakthrough was a shift in vision. Right after our loss to Orlando in the ’95 playoffs, it struck me that we needed to reimagine the way we used our backcourt. In the midnineties most teams had small guards. It was dogma in the NBA that unless you could find another Magic Johnson, the smart strategy was to go small in the backcourt to keep pace with the quick, undersized point guards who dominated the league at the time. But I’d learned from watching Scottie Pippen play point guard that having a six-seven player with an extralong wingspan in that position created all kinds of fascinating possibilities.

  What would happen, I wondered, if we had three tall, long-armed guards on the court at the same time? Not only would it create confusing mismatches for other teams, but it would also improve defense immeasurably because big guards could switch off and defend post players without resorting to double-teaming. It would also allow us to move away from using full-court pressure all the time, which was taking its toll on some of our older players. With big guards, we could apply pressure more effectively inside the three-point line.

  In the off-season we had to figure out which players we were going to leave unprotected for the expansion draft. It came down to a decision between B.J. Armstrong, our current point guard, and Ron Harper, our former starting shooting guard who had been displaced when Michael returned to the lineup. I hated to give up B.J. He was a solid point guard with a good three-point shot, and he played dependable defense. But at six feet two, 175 pounds, he wasn’t big enough to switch and defend larger players or trap big centers like Shaquille O’Neal. Although Ron had not lived up to expectations as a scorer, he was adapting well to the triangle and was a great team defender. Ron was also big for a guard—six feet six, 185 pounds, with the strength and athleticism to play almost any position. So Jerry Krause and I decided to stick with Ron instead of B.J. During our end-of-the-year meeting I told Ron that I had big plans for him in 1995–96, but he needed to get in better condition and reinvent himself as more of a defensive player than a scoring threat. Moving to a big-guard strategy represented a significant philosophical shift for the team. But if it worked, it would make us more flexible, more explosive, and impossible to contain.

  —

  The second breakthrough was acquiring Dennis Rodman as our new power forward. During the off-season we drew up a list of possible candidates for the job, and Rodman’s name was at the bottom. We’d discussed Dennis before, but Krause was always cool to the idea, saying Rodman wasn’t “our kind of person.” After being traded by Detroit to San Antonio in 1993, Dennis had had a difficult time adjusting to the Spurs culture, even though he excelled as the league’s leading rebounder. He flouted the rules, showing up late for practices, acting out on court, and wearing gaudy clothing and jewelry. In fact, San Antonio’s management got so fed up with his rebellious antics, it fined him thousands of dollars multiple times and benched him during the crucial game 5 of the 1995 Western Conference finals, which the Spurs ended up losing to the Houston Rockets.

  Although I shared some of Jerry’s concerns, I was less troubled by Dennis’s eccentricities than I was by his selfish style of play. I’d heard from coaches who’d worked with him that he was so fixated on rebounding that he was reluctant to help teammates on defense. I also questioned whether he could work with Michael and Scottie, who resented him for the brutal way he had manhandled the Bulls when he was with the Pistons. But scout Jim Stack thought we might lose Rodman if we didn’t act quickly, so Jerry decided to give him a serious look.

  Two weeks later Jerry invited me to his house to meet Rodman and his agent, Dwight Manley. When I arrived, Dennis was lounging on the couch in sunglasses and a “poor boy” hat. He remained mute during the whole conversation, so I asked to speak to him privately on the patio. But all he wanted to talk about was how much he was going to get paid. I told him that the Bulls paid for production, not promise, and if he played up to his potential we would take care of him.

  The next day I met with Dennis again, in the tribal room at the Berto Center. This time Dennis was more open. I asked him what had gone wrong in San Antonio. He said it had started when he invited Madonna, whom he was dating at the time, to visit the locker room after a game. The media feeding frenzy that ensued had ticked off the guys in the front office.

  I expressed my concern over his reputation for selfishness. He said that his real problem in San Antonio was that he was sick of helping out center David Robinson, who, he said, was intimidated by Houston’s Hakeem Olajuwon. “Half the Spurs players had their balls locked up in the freezer every time they left the house,” he added sarcastically.

  I laughed. “So do you think you can master the triangle?” I asked.

  “Oh yeah, that’s no problem for me,” he said. “The triangle’s about finding Michael Jordan and getting him the ball.”

  “That’s a good start,” I replied. Then we got serious. “If you think you’re up for this job,” I said, “I’m going to sign off on this deal. But we can’t screw it up. We’re in position to win a championship, and we really want to get back there.”

  “Okay.”

  After that, Dennis took a look at the Native American artifacts in the room and showed me the necklace he’d been given by a Ponca from Oklahoma. Then we sat silently together for quite a while. Dennis was a man of few words, but sitting with him, I felt reassured that he would come through for us. We connected on a nonverbal level that afternoon. A bond of the heart.

  The next day Jerry and I had a follow-up meeting with Dennis to go over the team’s rules about attendance, punctuality, and other issues. It was a short list. After I finished reading it, Dennis said, “You won’t have any problem with me, and you’ll be getting an NBA championship.”

  I checked with Michael and Sc
ottie later that day to see if they had any reservations about playing with Rodman, and they said no. So Jerry went ahead and sealed the deal, trading Will Perdue to the Spurs for Rodman. And I braced myself for the ride of my life.

  Before Dennis arrived at training camp, I had a long discussion with the players. I warned them that he was probably going to ignore some of the rules because it was hard for him to abide by certain guidelines. I would probably have to make some exceptions for him at times, I said. “You’re going to have to be grown up about this,” I added. And they were.

  Most of the players developed a fondness for Dennis right away. They soon realized that all his wild offstage theatrics—the nose rings, the tattoos, the late-night parties in gay bars—were all part of an act he’d created, with the help of Madonna, to get attention. Underneath, he was just a quiet boy from Dallas with a generous heart who worked hard, played hard, and would do anything to win.

  Somewhere in the middle of training camp, I realized that Dennis was going to bring a new dimension to our team that I hadn’t anticipated. Not only was he a magician on the boards, but he was also a smart, mesmerizing defender who could guard anyone, even Shaq, who had six inches and close to a hundred pounds on him. With Dennis in the lineup, we could run fast breaks and also settle back and play a tough half-court game. Most of all, I just liked watching him play. He was so uninhibited and joyful when he stepped on the floor, like a boy discovering how to fly. On some level, I told the other coaches, he reminded me of me.

  The shadow side of Dennis was more of a challenge. Sometimes he was like a pressure cooker about to explode. He went through periods of high anxiety that lasted forty-eight hours or more, and the pressure would build inside of him until he had to release it. During those times, his agent would often ask me to give Dennis the weekend off, if we didn’t have any games, and they would go to Vegas and party for a couple days. Dennis would be a wreck by the end of it, but then he’d come back and work out until he got his life back together.

  That year I stopped pacing along the sidelines during games because I noticed that whenever I got agitated, Dennis would become hyperactive. And if I argued with a ref, it would only give him license to do the same. So I decided to become as quiet and restrained as possible. I didn’t want to set Dennis off, because once he got agitated, there was no telling what he might do.

  —

  The third breakthrough was Michael’s new approach to leadership. During the first run of championships, Michael had led primarily by example, but after the loss to Orlando he realized he needed to do something dramatically different to motivate this team. Simply glaring at his teammates and expecting them to be just like him wasn’t going to cut it anymore.

  Michael was at a tipping point. He had been stung by press commentary during the Orlando series contending that he had lost his edge and wasn’t the same Michael Jordan anymore. So he returned to the gym that summer determined to get his body back in basketball shape. He even had a basketball court set up in the studio in L.A. where he was filming Space Jam so he could practice between takes and work on a new fadeaway jumper that would eventually become his trademark shot. By the time he arrived at training camp in October, he had the hard look of vengeance in his eyes.

  A week into camp I was scheduled to do a phone conference with the media at a time that conflicted with our morning practice. When my assistant came down to the court to tell me it was time to get on the phone, I instructed the other coaches to postpone the scrimmage and give the players some shooting drills until I returned. The call was only fifteen minutes long, but before I was off the phone our equipment manager, Johnny Ligmanowski, was at my door saying, “You’d better come. M.J. just punched Steve and he’s in the locker room getting ready to leave practice.” Apparently, Kerr and Jordan had gotten into a bit of a scuffle that escalated back and forth until Michael popped Steve in the face and gave him a black eye.

  When I got to the locker room, M.J. was about to step into the shower. He said, “I’ve got to go.” And I told him, “You’d better call Steve and get it straight before tomorrow.”

  This was a major wake-up call for Michael. He had just gotten into a fight with the smallest guy on the team over nothing. What was going on? “It made me look at myself, and say, ‘you know what? You’re really being an idiot about this whole process,’” Jordan recalls. “I knew I had to be more respectful of my teammates. And I had to be more respectful of what was happening to me in terms of trying to get back into the game. I had to get more internal.”

  I encouraged Michael to start working more closely with George Mumford. George understood what Michael was going through because he had seen his friend Julius Erving experience similar pressures after he turned into a superstar. It was difficult for Michael to develop close relationships with his teammates because, as George puts it, he was “a prisoner in his own room.” He couldn’t go out with them in public and just hang out, as Scottie often did. Many of the new players were still in awe of him, and that too created a distance that was hard to bridge.

  Michael was impressed with the mindfulness training George had been doing with the team because it helped bring the players closer to his level of mental awareness. In George’s view, Michael needed to shift his perspective on leadership. “It’s all about being present and taking responsibility for how you relate to yourself and others,” says George. “And that means being willing to adjust so that you can meet people where they are. Instead of expecting them to be somewhere else and getting angry and trying to will them to that place, you try to meet them where they are and lead them where you want them to go.”

  While Michael had been away playing baseball, George and I had made changes in the team’s learning environment to enhance the players’ ability to grow mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. If Michael was going to gel with this team and be its floor leader, he would have to get to know his teammates more intimately and relate to them more compassionately. He would need to understand that each player was different and had something important to offer the team. It was his job, as leader, to figure out how to get the best out of each one of them. As George puts it, Michael had to “take his ability to see things on the basketball court and use that to improve the way he related to others.”

  Michael was open to the challenge, because he too had changed during his time away. He was still a fierce competitor, but he had also mellowed in certain ways. He was less judgmental of others and more conscious of his own limitations. Playing minor-league baseball, where he spent long hours passing the time with his teammates, Michael had rediscovered the joy of bonding with other men, and more than anything he wanted to have that experience again with the Bulls.

  Working with Mumford, Michael adopted a new way of leading based on what worked best with each player. With some players, he decided, he would get physical, either by demonstrating what needed to be done with his body or, in Scottie’s case, simply by being present. “Scottie was one of those guys for whom I had to be there every single day,” says Michael. “If I took a day off, he would take a day off. But if I was there every single day, he would follow.” With other players—Dennis in particular—Michael would go emotional. “You couldn’t yell at Dennis,” he says. “You had to find a way to get into his world for a few quick seconds so that he could understand what you were saying.” With still others Michael would communicate primarily on a verbal level. Example: Scott Burrell, a forward on the 1997–98 Bulls. “I could yell at him and he would get it,” says Michael, “but it didn’t hurt his confidence at all.”

  One person he didn’t have to worry about was Kerr. The fight had forged a strong bond between the two players. “From that day forward Michael looked at me differently,” Steve says. “He never picked on me again. He didn’t trash talk with me anymore. And he started trusting me on the court too.” Adds Michael, “I have the most respect for Steve because, one, he was thrown into a situation wher
e he really had no chance of winning. And, two, he stood up. When I started fouling him, he came back at me. Which got me angry. But that’s where the mutual respect comes from.”

  From Michael’s perspective, the second run of championships was harder than the first because of the personalities involved. Most of the players on the first championship teams had been together for several years and, together, had fought many battles. As M.J. says, “We’d go up the hill and get knocked down, knocked down, and knocked down, until we climbed over it as a group.” But during the second run, most of the players didn’t know one another very well, yet everybody expected the team to win right out of the gate. “I think we needed Phil more for the second run than the first,” says Michael now. “In the first run, the egos hadn’t set in yet. But in the second run, we had a lot of different personalities to mesh together and the egos were really strong. And Phil had to bring us together as a brotherhood.”

  —

  All the pieces fell together beautifully. We didn’t have a dominant big man like the sixties Celtics and other great teams from the past, but these Bulls had a remarkable sense of unity, on both offense and defense, and a powerful collective spirit.

  Everything we did was designed to reinforce that unity. I had always insisted on structured practices with a clear agenda that the players would receive ahead of time. But we also started organizing other aspects of the team process to create a sense of order. In general, I used discipline not as a weapon but as a way to instill harmony into the players’ lives. This was something I’d learned from years of mindfulness practice.

  That season we asked the players to arrive at the training facility at ten every morning to do forty-five minutes of strength training and warm-ups. Michael preferred to work out earlier at home with his private trainer, Tim Grover, and that year he invited Scottie and Harper to take part in the program, which they dubbed “the Breakfast Club.” By ten they, too, would show up to warm up for practice, which started at eleven. We’d focus on refining our triangle skills, as well as our defensive goals for the upcoming game or week. Then we’d move into an offensive segment, including a full-court scrimmage. I’d often put Pip or M.J. with the second unit and see what influence their presence would bring to the practice. Afterward, the guys would hang around and work on their shots, and our trainer, Chip Schaefer, would get them recharged with fresh blended fruit drinks. If we were headed for a road trip, we might go upstairs to our team room and have a short video session.