Had this happened to any other player, it might have changed the way he or she behaved toward people. But Michael knew who he was. He knew that no matter how well he played basketball, what really mattered was how good a person he was. Just because he was the most popular player in the league didn’t mean he could stop trying to improve or start treating people badly. His parents had taught him better than that.
While the Bulls weren’t the best team in the league, they weren’t the worst, either. With Michael leading the way, they finished the first half of the season 20–21.
In midseason, Michael was thrilled to learn he had been named to the NBA All-Star team. That had been one of his personal goals when he entered his first professional season.
But Michael was disappointed in the All-Star game. He played 22 minutes but took only nine shots. It seemed as if each time he was open, his teammates passed the ball the other way. When he did get the ball, the defense swarmed over him, and no one on his team came over to help out. After the game, Michael was mystified.
He soon found out what had happened. Some of the older players on Michael’s team were jealous of all the attention he was receiving. Before the game, they decided to “freeze him out” — not let him have the ball.
When Michael Jordan found out what had happened, he didn’t get mad; he got even. A few days after the All-Star game, the Bulls played the Detroit Pistons. Michael had learned that Piston guard Isiah Thomas was one of the players behind the All-Star game boycott.
Michael made him pay. He scored 49 points on a series of monster dunks, spinning drives, and soaring jump shots that left the Pistons shaking their heads. The Bulls won big.
Michael finished his first NBA season with a scoring average of 28.2 points a game. He also averaged 5.9 assists and 6.5 rebounds per game, remarkable numbers for any player. To no one’s surprise, Michael Jordan was named NBA Rookie of the Year.
Thanks to Michael, the Bulls had become one of the most popular teams in the league. Attendance at Chicago Stadium had nearly doubled, and they were favorites on the road, too. Moreover, the Bulls improved their record to 38–44, good enough to make the playoffs.
Yet what happened on the basketball court was not the most important event in Michael Jordan’s life that year. In midseason, Michael met Juanita Vanoy, a former model who was working as a secretary at an advertising agency that handled some of Michael’s endorsements. Soon, Michael and Juanita were spending all their free time together. A few years later, they married.
All the way around, it had been an eventful season for Michael Jordan. But even he couldn’t quite win games all by himself. The veteran Milwaukee Bucks bounced the Bulls from the playoffs in the first round, three games to one. Michael Jordan was disappointed but tried to put the loss behind him. He was already thinking about next year.
CHAPTER FOUR
1985–1987
Getting “Bull”-ish on the Court
In the off-season, partly because of the success the team had had with Michael, the Bulls were sold to a group headed by Jerry Reinsdorf, who also owned the Chicago White Sox baseball team. The Bulls fired coach Kevin Loughery and general manager Rod Thorn and named Stan Albeck and Jerry Krauss to take their places. The two men made some off-season changes in the team. They got rid of several players who gave less than their full effort on the court, then added power forward Charles Oakley in the draft and moved forward Sydney Green into the starting lineup.
Entering the 1985–86 season, Michael was optimistic. He hoped to lead the Bulls to a winning record and a good performance in the playoffs.
But the Bulls had some problems that even Michael Jordan couldn’t take care of. The team had a difficult time adjusting to a new coach, and some Bulls players were more interested in partying than they were in winning.
The team started off the exhibition season with eight straight losses. Then Quintin Dailey, who teamed with Michael in the Bulls’ backcourt, asked to be sent to a drug rehabilitation program. Soon after, Michael’s best friend on the team, Michael Higgins, was cut.
Despite all the changes and their poor exhibition season, the Bulls won their season opener against Cleveland, 116–115. Michael scored 29 points, including 7 in overtime.
The next night, the Detroit Pistons came to town. Late in the game, Michael drove to the basket. Detroit center Bill Laimbeer, known for his aggressive play, moved over to try to block Michael’s shot.
Laimbeer missed the ball, but he didn’t miss Michael, slamming him to the court. Michael’s teammates rushed onto the floor, and the game was stopped for several minutes before the referees could restore order.
Once again, Michael got even. For the rest of the quarter, he couldn’t be stopped. He finished with 33 points, and the Bulls won again, 121–118.
Despite all their problems and changes, the Bulls were somehow 2–0. Maybe Michael was right to be optimistic.
On October 29, the Bulls traveled to Oakland, California, to play the Golden State Warriors. The Oakland Coliseum was packed with fans anxious to see Michael Jordan. When the game got going, he did not disappoint.
In the second period, Michael made a move to the basket. Suddenly, he fell to the floor. When he stood up, he couldn’t put any weight on his left foot. His teammates had to help him to the locker room.
Michael missed the rest of the game, but the Bulls held on to win their third game in a row. Michael showed up at practice the next day on crutches. The team doctor diagnosed the injury as a sprained ankle.
But the pain in Michael’s foot wouldn’t go away. A week later, a CAT scan revealed a small break, and doctors placed the foot in a cast. They told Michael he would miss a couple months of the season.
Without Michael Jordan, the Bulls were not a very good basketball team. They lost four games in a row and were suddenly just as bad as they had been two seasons before.
The injury was slow to heal. As the Bulls dropped lower in the standings, Michael became frustrated and depressed. Coach Albeck and Jerry Krauss wanted him to travel with the team while he recovered, but Michael refused. He thought the team might play better if the players weren’t always looking over their shoulders at him, wondering when he would return. “They need to have their own identity,” he told reporters.
Unable to play, Michael decided it was time to make good on his promise to his mother. So instead of sitting around waiting for his ankle to heal, he went back to North Carolina and finished his degree.
Michael was finally able to return to action on March 15, 1986. He had missed a total of 64 games.
Bulls owner Jerry Reinsdorf wanted Michael to work his way back slowly, playing only a limited number of minutes in each game over the last few weeks of the season. He didn’t want to risk another injury. But Michael wanted to play, and play hard. He couldn’t stand to play any other way. Besides, despite their poor record, the Bulls still had an outside change to make the playoffs.
It took Michael Jordan several weeks, and several long arguments with Reinsdorf, to finally get his way. But it didn’t take him long to get the hang of basketball again. After being inserted into the lineup in the second quarter of a game against the Milwaukee Bucks, he took the ball straight to the hoop as soon as he touched it, dunking over seven-foot-three-inch Randy Breuer. As soon as Michael started playing full-time again, the Bulls started winning. By the end of the season, they had clinched the last spot in the playoffs.
Their first opponents in the playoffs were the great Boston Celtics, champions of the Eastern Conference and perhaps the best defensive team in the league. The Celtics were led by forward Larry Bird, the smartest and arguably the best player in the NBA. Celtic guard Dennis Johnson, considered one of the league’s top defensive guards, would be guarding Michael. No one gave the Bulls a chance.
But after sitting out for much of the season, Michael was well rested. His foot was completely healed, and he was at the peak of his game. The Celtics paid the price.
In game one, played
in Boston, Michael started out by hitting his first five shots. The Celtics double-teamed him every time he had the ball. That hardly slowed him down.
He scored over, under, and around every Celtic player who tried to guard him. He hit for an amazing 49 points — nearly half the Bulls’ total score. But after trailing by only two at halftime, the Bulls eventually lost, 123–104.
In game two, Michael was even better. He moved through the Celtics as though their sneakers were filled with concrete. If he was challenged out front, he slashed to the basket and jammed the ball. If a player tried to block his shot, he soared around him and laid in a reverse finger roll. When the defense backed off, Michael calmly canned a jumper. There was simply no way to stop him, and toward the end of the fourth quarter, he made it clear he was out to win.
With only seconds remaining and the Bulls down by two points, Michael launched a three-pointer. The ball rolled off the rim, but he was fouled on the shot. He sank both free throws to tie the game and sent it into overtime.
The Bulls let Michael work his magic. He and the Celtics traded baskets in the extra period. It was five-on-one and Michael was holding his own. At the end of overtime, the score was tied again.
In the second overtime, the Celtics finally pulled ahead and won, 135–131. But Michael had scored an unbelievable 63 points. No one in NBA history had ever scored that many points during a playoff game.
Even though they had won, after the game, the Celtics could only talk about Michael Jordan. Celtic captain Larry Bird was most effusive in his praise. “I couldn’t believe anybody could do that against the Boston Celtics,” Bird told reporters. “It shows you what kind of person he is. I think he’s God disguised as Michael Jordan.”
The Bulls and Celtics traveled to Chicago for game three. Despite the fact that he had home-court advantage, Michael Jordan couldn’t maintain his intensity. After his remarkable performance in games one and two, he scored only 19 points with 10 assists and 9 rebounds before fouling out with five minutes remaining. The Bulls lost, 122–104. The season was over, but one thing was clear — Michael Jordan was the most exciting player in the NBA.
Michael was doing things that no single basketball player had ever done before. It was as if the greatest players of all time had been combined into one person. His old hero David Thompson had always been considered the greatest leaper in the NBA, but Michael jumped just as well as Thompson. When Michael jumped, he seemed to hang in the air. Defenders went up with him, but they fell back to earth while he was still rising. Julius Erving of the Philadelphia 76ers had been considered the best dunker in the NBA, but not even Doctor J could do some of the 360-degree reverse slam jams Michael was now making. Magic Johnson of the Los Angeles Lakers and Larry Bird of the Celtics were considered the most complete players in the game, but now some people were saying that Michael could pass the ball, rebound, and defend as well as either man.
But Michael was not satisfied with his personal accomplishments. As much as he liked to score, he liked to win even more. He wouldn’t be satisfied until the Bulls were winners.
That summer the team had another new coach. Doug Collins stepped in and replaced Stan Albeck. Like his predecessor, Collins turned Michael Jordan loose.
When the 1986–87 season began, Michael picked up right where he had left off. In the exhibition season, he scored over 40 points nine times. Four times he scored over 50 points, and in one game he scored 61. Not since seven-foot center Wilt Chamberlain averaged 50.4 points per game in the 1961–62 season had any NBA player scored so many points.
Michael kept right on going in the regular season. With virtually the same lineup as the year before, the Bulls needed him to score as much as possible to have a chance to win. No one else on the team was as consistent a scorer.
Every time the Bulls stepped onto the court in 1986–87, the game featured a solo performance by Michael Jordan. Somehow, he seemed to keep getting better. Over the course of the season, he scored more than 30 points an amazing 62 times. In 36 of those games, he scored over 40 points; six times he broke the 50-point mark; and twice he hit over 60 points.
Opposing teams were helpless to stop him. Neither double-teams nor triple-teams made much of a difference. Michael often saved his best for late in the game, as if he relished the pressure. Several times during the season, he outscored the other team in the final quarter. In one game, against the New York Knicks, he scored the Bulls’ last eighteen points to help Chicago win by two, 101–99.
Michael cemented his status as the most exciting player in the NBA during the All-Star weekend at the Kingdome in Seattle, Washington. He participated in the slam-dunk contest and came away with his first slam-dunk title. He called his winning dunk the “Kiss the Rim” jam. The victory earned Michael $12,000, which he split among his Bull teammates.
Yet Michael was more than a scoring machine and human highlight film. He did whatever he could to help his team. When Bulls coach Doug Collins asked Michael to play forward sometimes so he could put another shooter into the guard spot, Michael readily agreed. In addition to averaging 37.1 points per game — third best in NBA history — Michael also averaged five rebounds and nearly five assists. His total of 236 steals was second best in the league, and his 125 blocked shots led the Bulls.
Still, when playoff time rolled around, it was the same old story. The Bulls played the Celtics again. Michael was magnificent, but Boston won in three games.
Some sportswriters around the league took delight in the Bulls’ defeat. They thought Michael Jordan, despite his obvious ability, was a selfish player. They referred to the Bulls as “Team Jordan,” as if the other players just didn’t matter.
Michael Jordan had accomplished nearly everything possible on the basketball court. Although he had collected both an NCAA title and an Olympic gold medal, one goal still eluded him: an NBA championship. Michael knew that until his team won a championship, there would still be some critics who thought of him as something less than a complete player.
And good as he was, not even Michael Jordan could win an NBA championship all by himself.
CHAPTER FIVE
1987–1990
“There’s Michael Jordan and Then Everybody Else.”
If Michael Jordan was ever to reach his goal of winning the NBA championship, he needed some help. The Bulls needed better players and someone else who could score. Center Dave Corzine, a former All-Star, was near the end of his career and soon would have to be replaced. Apart from Michael, Charles Oakley was the only Bulls player who was much of a scoring threat, and most of his points came on rebounds. Guard John Paxson was a good outside shooter, but he was unable to create his own shot. In short, there was no one to pick up the scoring slack if Michael slipped below his usual standards.
Moreover, the Bulls needed help on defense. Even when Michael Jordan did score 40 or 50 points, the Bulls sometimes lost. They couldn’t keep the other team from scoring. The Bulls just weren’t good enough to challenge for the NBA title.
Before the 1987–88 season, the Bulls finally got a little help. In the NBA draft, the Bulls selected forwards Scottie Pippen and Horace Grant. Grant was a big banger who could rebound, play defense, and post up under the basket. Pippen was more of a finesse player. Quick and aggressive on defense, Pippen always looked for the steal and was willing to dive after loose balls. On offense, he could run the floor and hit the jump shot.
When the Bulls opened the season, Michael worked to prove his critics wrong. Now that he had a surrounding cast, he became more of a playmaker, passing the ball, setting picks, and sometimes acting as a decoy.
The strategy worked. The Bulls jumped off to a 7–1 start. On occasion, Michael was as explosive as ever, hitting for 40 or more points in a game. But he was content to score much less if the Bulls could still win.
Keyed by the addition of Pippen and Grant, the Bulls surprised everyone and finished the first half of the 1987–88 season 27–18. When the NBA elite gathered in Chicago for the All-S
tar weekend, the Bulls were the talk of the league.
The Bulls’ impressive first-half performance gave Michael added stature in the eyes of his peers at the All-Star game. For the first time, they accorded him the respect his talent deserved.
Michael easily won the slam-dunk competition, and during the game the next day, his All-Star teammates deferred to him in front of his hometown crowd, feeding him the ball time after time. Michael responded with a spectacular day, hitting 17 of 23 shots, finishing with 40 points — only two short of the All-Star game record — and being named Most Valuable Player (MVP).
After the game, a reporter asked Magic Johnson how he ranked the best players in the league. Johnson looked at the reporter and smiled. “There’s Michael Jordan,” he said, “and then everybody else.”
Yet in the second half of the season, the Bulls started to struggle. Their youngest players, particularly rookies Grant and Pippen, hit “the wall,” a slump that most players face in their first NBA season. For a while, it was “Team Jordan” again.
Then the Bulls traded for Seattle guard Sam Vincent. Vincent gave Chicago a true point guard and some additional firepower. He sparked the club, Pippen and Grant got their second wind, and the Bulls roared to the finish line, winning 17 of their last 23 games to end the season 50–32. They were tied for second in the Central Division, only four games behind first-place Detroit. While the Bulls were still long shots to win the championship, for the first time since Michael Jordan had joined the team, they entered the playoffs expecting to succeed.
The Bulls played Cleveland in the first round. Chicago was favored to win the best-of-five series.
But many of the younger Bulls had never been in the playoffs before. When the first game started, they were nearly frozen with fear.
Michael Jordan: Legends in Sports Page 4