Eleven Rings: The Soul of Success

by Phil Jackson

  One of the biggest changes I noticed was a shift in Dennis’s level of interest in the game. During his first year with us he was driven to prove—to himself and others—that he could still play great basketball without losing control of his emotions. But now he seemed bored with the game and drawn to other amusements. In my amateur opinion, Dennis was suffering from attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, or ADHD, a condition that limited his ability to concentrate and caused him to get frustrated and act out in unpredictable ways. That’s why he was so enchanted with Las Vegas, haven of endless distractions.

  Now that Dennis had become a national star, the media world was offering him all sorts of opportunities that threatened to divert his attention away from the game even further. In addition to endorsement deals and club appearances, he was costarring in the movie Double Team with Jean-Claude Van Damme and hosting a reality show on MTV called The Rodman World Tour. The event that garnered the most publicity, though, was the book tour for his best seller Bad as I Wanna Be, for which he appeared in a wedding dress and announced that he was marrying himself.

  Another change that would eventually have a significant impact was the advancing age of our lineup. Rodman was thirty-five; Michael would be turning thirty-four in February 1997; and Scottie and Harper were in their early thirties. In general, the team was in excellent condition and played much younger than its years, but injuries were beginning to slow us down. Both Luc and Harp were recovering from off-season surgeries. And Scottie, who had played for Dream Team III in Atlanta during the 1996 summer off-season, was suffering from a sore ankle. I couldn’t think of any top guards who’d done well in the NBA after age thirty-four. When would time run out for Michael Jordan?

  Still, I was grateful that we hadn’t been decimated by free agency like so many other teams. We could build on what we’d already achieved and deepen our relationships with one another. I told the team that this might be our last run together, so we should make it something special. Michael had a similar point of view. When reporters asked him what he thought the impact of all the one-year contracts might be, he sounded like a Zen monk: “I think what we’re showing is that we’re going to play for the moment. . . . We’re going to come out here and play each and every game like it’s our last.”

  —

  It certainly looked that way in the opening weeks. We had our best start ever: 12-0, including a 32-point blowout against the Miami Heat. But Dennis seemed detached, even bored in some of the games. And soon he started acting out, challenging refs and making inflammatory remarks about them to the media. In December we suspended him for two days for his offensive comments about NBA commissioner David Stern and other league officials. Dennis’s erratic behavior and his disappointing performance were especially troubling because we were already missing center Luc Longley, who had injured his shoulder while bodysurfing in California. We’d arrived in L.A. on a Saturday for a Sunday-night special at the Forum. Sunday afternoon I got a call from Luc: “Coach, I screwed up. A rogue wave caught me while bodysurfing and I separated my left shoulder. Sorry, mate.” I gave him a pass and told him to get the medical attention he needed. We’d cover for him while he mended.

  Things went from troublesome to worse. During a game in Minneapolis in January, Dennis was struggling for a rebound with the Timberwolves’ Kevin Garnett when he collided with a courtside photographer and ended up kicking him in the groin. The NBA suspended him for eleven games, which cost him more than $1 million in lost income and fines. By the time he returned, Michael and Scottie had lost patience with him. “All I know is that Dennis doesn’t give a damn about most things,” said Scottie. “I’m not sure he’s capable of learning any lessons from his suspensions. I don’t expect him ever to change because if he did, he wouldn’t be the Worm, the personality he has invented for himself.”

  The Bulls went 9-2 with Rodman out, and the players were adjusting to the idea of going for the championship without him. “We can be better with Dennis, we know that,” Michael said. “But we can survive without Dennis, we know that, too. Our will to win is just as great without Dennis.” When asked what advice he’d give Rodman on his return, Michael said, “I’d tell him to wear pants all the time.”

  Most of the players liked Dennis because he was our court jester. In Native American culture he would be known as a heyoka, which means “backward-walking man.” Heyokas—also called tricksters—not only walked backward but also rode backward, wore women’s clothes, and made people laugh. Dennis had a way of making everybody lighten up when things were tense. How could you get down on yourself when there’s this crazy guy on the team who had dyed his hair with a big yellow happy face?

  But Dennis also had a dark side. Once when he didn’t show up for practice, I went to his house to see how he was doing. When I arrived, he was splayed out on his bed—nothing but a mattress on the floor—in a daze, watching videos. He’d gone on a bender the night before and was almost incoherent. I decided I needed to stay in much closer touch with him than I’d done in the past, especially since we’d let go of Jack Haley, who used to keep tabs on him between games. I suggested to Dennis that he start working with the team’s psychologist, and he agreed to give it a try. But he refused to go to the man’s office, so they held their first session in a shopping mall.

  Other coaches had treated Dennis as if he were a child and tried to force him to submit to their will with rigid discipline. But that tactic had failed miserably. My approach was to relate to him as an adult and hold him accountable for his actions the same way I did everyone else on the team. He seemed to appreciate this. Once he told reporters that what he liked about me was that I treated him “like a man.”

  Shortly after Dennis returned from his third suspension of the season, Steve Kerr and Jud Buechler came to me and asked if the players could welcome Dennis back into the group with a special trip. Their idea was to borrow a bus the day after our game in Philadelphia on March 12 and return for a light practice the next day before our game that night with the New Jersey Nets. I agreed because I thought it would help weave Rodman back into the team faster—not to mention the fact that the Nets had the worst record in the league.

  So the next day Dennis and his band of happy warriors set off in a bus they’d rented, which was plastered with promo photos for Howard Stern’s movie Private Parts. The next morning I was eating breakfast with the coaching staff at the Four Seasons in Philly when the bus rolled up right in front of us and unloaded the players who were laughing, messing around, generally having a good time. I was thinking, This is going to be the worst practice we’ve ever had. I was right. The players were so out of it they could barely stand up, so I called off practice after forty minutes and told them to rest up for the game, which we lost, 99–98. But in the end it was worth it. Making Dennis feel as if he were part of the team again was more important than another W in the record books.

  After Dennis and Luc returned to the lineup, the Bulls roared back. Scottie was in his prime, orchestrating the action so well that Michael later dubbed him “my MVP.” Michael was more relaxed and settling into a less energy-draining style of play, with more medium-range jumpers and less one-on-one aerial theatrics. But most of all the players had the look of champions. No matter what calamities befell them, they felt confident that they would find a way to deal with them together. There’s a Zen saying I often cite that goes, “Before enlightenment, chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment, chop wood, carry water.” The point: Stay focused on the task at hand rather than dwelling on the past or worrying about the future. This team was getting very good at doing that.

  —

  Unfortunately, the Rodman reprieve didn’t last long. In late March he sprained his left knee and was sidelined until the end of the regular season. The team was headed for a big road trip to the East Coast at the time, and I was worried that if Dennis was left to do rehab on his own in Chicago, he might backslide again. So we devised a
plan for him to stay at his agent’s house in Southern California and finish rehab there.

  It seemed like a reasonable idea. We assigned Wally Blase, a young assistant trainer, to escort Dennis to his agent’s house in Orange County and make sure he did his exercises every day. Before they took off, I called them both into my office and instructed them to go directly to California without any side trips. Then I gave Wally an eagle feather to seal the deal and told Dennis jokingly, “Take care of Wally and make sure he wears a condom.”

  “All right, bro,” Dennis replied.

  This was pre-9/11, and our security team figured out a way to get Dennis and Wally on the plane without going through the gate. So Wally’s first inkling that this was not going to be a routine trip came when they were buckling up and the pilot announced that they would be landing in Dallas–Fort Worth in two hours and twenty minutes. Dallas–Fort Worth! Yikes! thought Wally. They hadn’t even left Chicago and they’d already broken the first rule. Wally asked Dennis what was going on. “Don’t worry about it, bro,” he said. “I talked to my agent. We need to visit my mom in Dallas and take a look at the house I just bought her.”

  Rodman’s plan sounded plausible. But when they arrived at the baggage terminal, two white stretch limos filled with scantily clad women were there to greet them. After visiting Mom, they cruised the Dallas clubs all night with the ladies, then returned to their hotel suite. Wally fell asleep on the couch.

  The next morning Dennis woke Wally up at eight thirty. “Get up, bro,” he said. “You can sleep when you’re dead.” They went to the gym, where Dennis worked out like crazy. Over breakfast Wally asked him when their flight left for California. “Not today, bro,” Dennis replied. “Ever been to a NASCAR race?” It was the grand opening of the Texas Motor Speedway that day, and a top model Dennis had the hots for was going to be there. So they rented a helicopter and flew to the speedway to avoid traffic. When they landed, Dennis said, “Let’s go meet the king, Richard Petty,” and dragged Wally off to the VIP suite in the infield.

  By the third day Wally was losing it. He told Dennis that he was going to lose his job if they didn’t get to California soon. But Dennis wasn’t ready to leave Dallas. “C’mon, bro,” he said. “Yesterday was a bush-league race. Today’s the real race.” So they headed to the speedway again. Exasperated, Wally called his boss, head trainer Chip Schaefer, and reported that they were still in Dallas. “Don’t worry about it,” said Chip. “At least he hasn’t gotten into any trouble.”

  The next day they finally made it to Southern California, and Wally thought things might slow down. But as soon as they landed, Dennis wanted to take a look at his new Lamborghini. While they were at the garage, Dennis handed Wally the keys to his other car, a yellow Porsche. “Have you ever driven a Porsche?” he asked. Wally shook his head. “Don’t worry about it,” Dennis said, and the two of them took off through the streets of Orange County as if they were competing in the Daytona 500.

  It was one excellent adventure after another. One day they went to The Tonight Show and had their picture taken with Rodney Dangerfield and the band No Doubt. Another day they met with movie producer Jerry Bruckheimer to discuss a possible role for Dennis in Armageddon. Another day they went to an Anaheim Ducks game and had their pictures taken with some of Wally’s hockey idols. “It was like the movies Get Him to the Greek and Almost Famous all rolled into one,” says Wally.

  By the end of it, Wally and Dennis were so tight we often took Wally on road trips to be Dennis’s buddy. The next year, during a break in the championship finals in Utah, Dennis said he was tired of boring Salt Lake City and rented a jet for them to go to Vegas. What Dennis didn’t tell him was that he’d planned this jaunt as a birthday party for Wally and had invited a bunch of his friends, including actress Carmen Electra, singer-songwriter Eddie Vedder, and hockey legend Chris Chelios. “It was the night of my life,” says Wally.

  Wally, who’s now head athletic trainer for the Atlanta Hawks, understood Dennis immediately. Yes, he’s messed up and insecure, Wally says, but he’s also “one of the nicest human beings you will ever meet.” Dennis’s greatest achievement, in Wally’s view, was his ability to create the “perfect scenario for a professional athlete.” “He’s the only pro athlete that people expected to go out and party with strippers,” he says. “Joe Namath did it and was chastised in New York, and Michael Jordan got caught gambling on a golf course, and everybody was hell-bent for leather. But with Dennis, moral ineptitude was part of his deal, and he created this persona that made people say, ‘Oh yeah, that’s perfectly normal.’ It’s genius when you think about it.”

  That may be true, but I think the secret of Dennis’s appeal was the playful way he bucked the system. This made him an inspirational model for people, young and old, who felt themselves to be on the outskirts of society. I got many letters from special-education teachers who told me that their students who had ADHD loved Dennis because he was successful in life despite his debilitating condition. To them, he was a true champion.

  —

  What a strange year! Even though we were missing several of our stars for part of the season, we managed to finish with a 69-13 record, tying the 1971–72 Lakers for the second-best record ever for an NBA team. But Dennis and Toni were still recovering from injuries, and the team lacked the cohesiveness we’d enjoyed earlier in the year. One positive addition: In the final weeks of the season, we picked up six-eleven forward/center Brian Williams, aka Bison Dele, to give us more muscle inside. Williams played a key role backing up Luc and Dennis throughout the playoffs.

  The first two rounds were uneventful. We swept Washington 3–0, and pushed past Atlanta in five games after losing home-court advantage in game 2, the first time any team had beaten us at home during the playoffs in two years.

  The next round—the Eastern Conference finals against the Miami Heat—turned out to be a clash of two radically different basketball cultures. The team had been taken over by Pat Riley during the 1995–96 season and, with Alonzo Mourning at center and Tim Hardaway at point guard, had the makings of a classic Riley team. Much has been made of my rivalry with Pat over the years, particularly in the New York tabloids. But the main difference between us is philosophical, not personal. Riley has had a great deal of success with his bruising, old-school approach to the game. Like Riley’s Knicks, the Heat were physical, aggressive, and primed to foul you on every play as long as they could get away with it. Our approach, on the other hand, was freer and more open. We played intense defense but specialized in stealing the ball, cutting off passing lanes, and pressuring ball handlers into making mistakes.

  At first it looked like it was going to be a walkover. We breezed past Miami in the first game, 84–77, led by Jordan, who had a spectacular 37-point, 9-rebound performance. A key factor in the game was the defensive shift we made at halftime, putting Harper on Hardaway and Michael on three-point specialist Voshon Lenard. Next we wrestled our way to a 75–68 victory in game 2, the lowest-scoring playoff game in NBA history. In game 3 we devised a way to counter Miami’s strong-arm defense by spreading out the triangle offense, making it difficult for the Heat to clog up the lane. And we danced to a 98–74 win.

  During an off day, Michael decided to play forty-six holes of golf, and he had one of his worst starts ever in game 4, hitting only 2 of 21 shots from the field, as Miami glided to a 21-point lead. Michael nearly put us over the top in the fourth quarter, though, scoring 20 of our 23 points, but we ran out of time and lost, 87–80.

  The most important moment came late in the third quarter when Mourning slammed Scottie and gave him a knot on his forehead as big as a golf ball. Michael was enraged and declared that game 5 was going to be a personal grudge match for him. “When my teammate got a knot on his head,” he said, “I got a knot on my head.”

  Michael started making Miami pay right away in game 5, scoring 15 points in the first quarter. But the rest of the
team had to step up when Scottie sprained his foot in the first quarter after another collision with Mourning and was out for the duration. Toni, who had struggled early in the series, replaced Scottie and hit 6 points in the first quarter to widen the Bulls’ lead. I was particularly pleased by the reserves, who outscored Miami’s bench, 33–12, led by Brian Williams, who put down 10 points, and Jud Buechler, who made some key stops on defense. The final score: Bulls 100, Heat 87.

  Riley was humbled by the loss. “Dynasties get better as they get older,” he said, adding that he thought the Bulls were “the greatest team in the history of the game since the Celtics, when they won 11 in 13 years.” This was the fourth time one of his teams had been knocked out of the playoffs by the Jordan-led Bulls. “We all have the misfortune of being born at the same time as Michael Jordan,” he added.

  —

  The Utah Jazz weren’t convinced. This was the team’s first trip to the championship finals, but the Jazz had some potent weapons: power forward Karl Malone, who had beaten out Jordan for the MVP award that year, and point guard John Stockton, one of the craftiest ball handlers in the game. The Jazz also had a wily outside shooter, Jeff Hornacek, who’d averaged 14.5 points per game that year. Our biggest concern was the Stockton and Malone trademark screen-roll, which had often bedeviled our team in the past. But I also wanted to contain Malone’s inside game. Karl’s nickname was “the Mailman” because he supposedly always delivered. He was big, aggressive, and difficult to manage under the boards, even for Rodman. So I put Luc Longley on him early in the series, hoping that he could slow him down with his size.

  In game 1, however, it wasn’t Malone’s drive that decided the game but his restless mind. With the score tied 82–82 and 9.2 seconds to go, Malone was fouled as he battled for a loose ball under the basket. As he went to the line, Scottie whispered in his ear, “The Mailman doesn’t deliver on Sundays.” Karl missed the first shot. Clearly rattled, Karl bounced his second attempt off the rim into Jordan’s hands. I expected the Jazz to double-team Michael on the last play, but instead they let forward Byron Russell go one on one against him, not a good idea. Jordan faked out Russell and put in a jumper to win the game, 84–82.