From the opening night loss in Boston, the Bulls rebounded with three quick home wins, then jetted to Atlanta for a Friday night game against the red hot and undefeated Hawks in front of 45,790 fans in the Georgia Dome. For some reason, Rodman was unusually talkative in the locker room before the game. At home, he always retreated from the open pre-game locker room sessions with reporters to lift weights and snack on a meal of take-out chicken or spaghetti. Then after home games, he rarely made himself available for comment. On the road, he had no place in the visiting team locker room to retreat, so he simply stuffed his head between a set of head phones, turned up the volume and waved off reporters who stepped up with interview requests. An inveterate studier of videotape, Rodman was one of the best-prepared athletes in the NBA in terms of scouting the opponent. He often used the pre-game hours to study his assignment for the evening.
But on this night in Atlanta, something prompted him to talk freely. “I like the way it is this year,” he said. “It’s more relaxed. If you lose, great. Whatever. It’s a more relaxed atmosphere. We’ve won the two championships. We ain’t going out there to kill ourselves trying to win 70 games.
“It’ll be more comfortable,” he predicted.
He was asked if the threat of terminating Jackson at the end of the season was management’s way of keeping the pressure on the Bulls to keep winning?
“There ain’t no pressure,” Rodman said. “Who gives a shit really? I’d just like to say, take me, Scottie and Michael and Phil to another team. Let’s just go play for the minimum (the NBA minimum wage is about $260,000 a year) and win a championship.”
“Would that be fun?” an interviewer asked. “Or is that too much work?”
“Would that be crazy?” he said. “You’d take all four of us and go somewhere else next year and win a championship.”
Immediately speculation centered on which team would offer the best accommodations for the four expatriate Bulls. “The Clippers, that would be close to the Los Angeles beaches that you love?” an interviewer suggested.
“Would that be crazy?” he said. “Go to the Clippers? All four of us?”
“That would be cool,” a writer pointed out. “You know they’d love you in Los Angeles. You’d be right there in Newport Beach. The one negative would be Clippers owner Donald Sterling.”
“He’d screw it up somehow,” Rodman agreed. “He would. Easily.”
“On the other hand, you could go to the Sacramento Kings,” somebody pointed out.
Rodman’s face immediately soured. “No,” he said, “we’d have to be L.A. boys.”
“The key would have to be that Scottie gets the big contract he deserves, and you, Michael and Phil would have to take big pay cuts,” a writer pointed out, referring to the fact that if the Bulls’ stars changed teams it would be nearly impossible under the league’s salary structure for them to make as much money as they made in Chicago.
“We’ll play for the minimum,” Rodman said. “Why not? That would be crazy. That would be great, though. Absolutely marvelous. I would tell them, ‘You guys got to sign Scottie.’ They should give Scottie something like $20 million, or give him something, a bunch of land or something. Something like that.”
“Buy him Pluto or the moon,” suggested Trib writer Terry Armour, sitting nearby.
“That would be great,” Rodman said. “You know Scottie’s bitter about this. Been with the Bulls all these years. But there’s no way they’re gonna pay him with a big deal. He’s gonna have to get the fuck out of Chicago.”
The thought of that brought the flight of fantasy back to earth. The Bulls without Pippen weren’t close to the same dominant team. That had been immediately obvious on opening night against the young Celtics when Chicago got a giant early lead only to lose the game at the end. Among his many skills, Pippen was a master at controlling the tempo of a game, keeping it running according to Chicago’s game plan. Without a doubt, Pippen’s absence put more pressure on all the Bulls, but especially Jordan, who would have to pick up the offensive slack, and Rodman, who was going to have to do more defensively.
Rodman was heading into the season hoping to win his seventh straight league rebounding title, something unprecedented. Then again, Rodman had turned 36 during the ‘97 playoffs. “I feel more fit than I did last year at this time,” he said after the excitement of the Clippers fantasy had died down, his voice dropping to almost a whisper. “Bodywise. Healthwise. The older you get the wiser you get. You learn how to take care of your body.”
He said there was no difference between 35 and 36, adding, “It just depends on if you maintain that level, that’s all. Age 40 will be a big difference. I don’t want to be playing until I’m like 40 years old. I don’t want to be even be playing when I’m 37, if I don’t have to. If we win the championship this year, it’ll be like, ‘OK, great.’”
It was pointed out to him that “no where can you earn the millions like you do playing basketball.”
“It’s good,” he said, “but who knows if you’re gonna keep making that money or not, especially with me. The only way I can make money from here on out is to stay with Chicago. I can’t go to another team and say, ‘OK, give me a million dollars.’ I mean that’s money, but it’s … But the idea of winning another ring with another team? It’s like, ‘Damn, another long-ass year? Ohhhh.’
“If we don’t win it this year, I can tell you right now there won’t be no more Chicago Bulls. I’ll tell you that right now. There won’t be no more Chicago Bulls, not like they are now. That’s the bottom line.”
There was a time in Rodman’s life when he faced giant concerns about what he would do after basketball, but no longer. His celebrity since joining the Bulls had brought an astounding flow of off-court opportunities. For the 1996-97 season, there had been Rodman’s “World Tour” show on MTV. It did reasonably well in the ratings, apparently because it appealed to rebellious teens. But it was still cancelled.
“You know what that was?” Rodman said of the show. “That was almost spontaneous. It wasn’t programmed to be a commercial type deal. It was, ‘Just go do something, and we’ll follow you with the camera.’
“What happened this year is that they got too many stupid ass shows that they brought in,” he said. “Now all of a sudden they had to fire a lot of people and cut back. They cut the show. But the shows they got now are just damn stupid. So I don’t even watch it.”
Taking the show’s place were the buckets of cash he has begun raking in on the pro wrestling tour. In one weekend alone during the summer of 1997, his take was huge from the World Championship Wrestling “Bash At The Beach” event, where he and Hollywood Hulk Hogan took on Lex Lugar and The Giant at Daytona Beach, Florida, in a pay-per-view event.
The money left him thinking of a long-term relationship. “You could easily do wrestling for the next 20 years and not do anything,” Rodman said. “Ric Flair is almost in his 50s. Hulk Hogan is in his 40s. Most of those guys started out when they were 18 or 19 years old. Then, when they get to the point where they have enough juice, they look like they’re 50 or 60 years old.
“The wrestling is easy. I can always make a couple of hundred thousand on that.”
“Is that the easiest money available?” he was asked.
“Absolutely,” he said. “The one thing about pro wrestling, everywhere they go, they’re packed. They can pack any stadium. Easily. People believe in it. People think, ‘Damn, this is really going on!’ But that other thing they got going on, that Ultimate Wrestling shit, did you ever see that? That is some crazy shit. That’s where they just go out there and beat your head in and kill. The hell with that. I’d rather go out there and make the money the easy way, bounce on your back a couple of times and try not to hurt people.”
He accused the NBA of being almost as orchestrated as pro wrestling. The league, he said, had made it imp
ossible for bad boys, like his old Detroit Pistons team, to operate. “The NBA won’t allow that,” Rodman said. “The NBA has gotten so soft now. It’s so predictable. It’s gotten to where you can’t do anything. It’s more of a business. It’s more like an orchestra being run by the hand of a conductor who says when this side plays and then when that side plays. So it’s a very good time to get out now. I’m happy that I’ve been in a good situation where I can make money and have a good time and the fame and fortune. I like to have that wherever I go. I’m not still here just to have that. I’d rather be a normal guy, a regular guy when I leave the game, not one of those guys who comes back to be an assistant coach. That’s stupid.”
Surprisingly, Rodman offered the opinion that the NBA needed to police the bad boy behavior off the court of young stars like Isaiah Rider and Allen Iverson and even old-timer Charles Barkley.
“Those guys shouldn’t do what they’re doing off the court,” Rodman said. “You have to be a father figure in the game of basketball. Like me.”
“You’re saying that you can be a bad boy, but still you have obligations to the game and to the fans and to be a role model for children?” he was asked.
“You can always be a bad boy,” he said. “But you know what? One thing people don’t realize about me, there are all these crazy things that I do, but you never, ever hear about me off the court doing these kind of things. Because I’m always under control. And nobody ever says anything about that.
“The sad thing about it,” he added, “I know how to have a good time. The atmosphere may be destructive or wild or calm. I know how to do that. I know how to control everything. The main thing many people want is for you to be out of control when you go out and party, when you’re out in restaurants and bars. I like to do that on the basketball court where it’s legal.”
The league had ordered Barkley to hire bodyguards to keep him out of trouble in bars. Perhaps Barkley should have considered Rodman a role model in that regard. Rodman had long made use of discreet guards when he was out and about. And he paid his bodyguards well. One of Rodman’s guards reportedly had purchased an $83,000 Porsche and a $23,000 Harley Davidson motorcycle. Not bad for an off-duty Chicago cop.
“Charles Barkley should think like you,” a writer told Rodman. “When he goes out to bars, people lay in wait for him, hoping to anger him and make him punch them. That way they can file a lawsuit against him.”
“I wouldn’t try to fight in a bar,” Rodman said. “I wouldn’t do it no matter what. That’s what a lot of guys go to bars to see. An athlete. The first thing they want to do is try to piss him off. I’ve been called many names from gay lover to homosexual to faggot. But it doesn’t bother me. At least I must be somewhat important for people to know about me.”
He was asked about the adjustment to being an actor in his first feature film, “Double Team,” which was panned by many critics. “I saw a lot of people saying, ‘That movie’s gonna suck. He’s a bad actor.’ But I don’t give a damn,” he admitted. “Shit, I never acted before in my life. I’m better than Shaquille O’Neal, I can tell you that. I’m a lot better than that.”
For his next film role, he said, “I’m gonna play Bad, Bad, Leroy Brown in Chicago next year. I’m gonna play a pimp. A big-time pimp. You know what I would be good at, though? That movie, Boogie Nights. I’d love to play in that move. I could easily do that.”
“So, Boogie Nights, II?” a writer asked.
“I’d love to do that movie,” he said, his voice rising. “I’d love to be in that.”
“What about The Wilt Chamberlain Story?” Daily Herald reporter Kent McDill asked mischievously. “Would you do that?”
“Shit,” Rodman said, struck by the thought. “Would that be great, though? He said he made love to what? Twenty thousand women in 12 or 13 years?”
“That’s a lot of sex,” one of the interviewers said.
“Yeah,” Rodman said, shaking his head. “That’s impossible. He said that to sell books.”
Rodman, perhaps, qualified as something of an expert on the sexual possibilities of the NBA lifestyle. Every bar he entered, it seemed that women he had never met before were eager to walk up, lift their shirts and offer their breasts for his inspection. There was even said to be a private photo collection of these revelations. As writer and Sun Times columnist Rick Telander pointed out in his anecdotal book, In The Year of the Bull, the mercurial Rodman was a “vulva magnet.”
What would Rodman be like at age 60? “A front man for the Mirage hotel and casino in Las Vegas?” he was asked.
“I don’t know.” Rodman said. “Hopefully I can live till I’m 80 years old. I probably can.”
Public office? Politics?
“Nothing,” he said. “I hope to be chillin’.”
“What about coaching?” a writer asked. “Nobody watches more videotape than you.”
“I don’t care,” he said. “I don’t want to be a coach. I wouldn’t even get off the fuckin’ bench. I wouldn’t even get off the bench, man.”
“Larry Bird used to say that he wouldn’t coach,” the writer reminded him. “A lot of people have said that.”
“Money talks sometimes to people,” Dennis admitted.
As nice as the talk was beforehand, Dennis Rodman had a miserable game that night in Atlanta. The numbers? Two points and three rebounds in Chicago’s 80-78 loss to Atlanta. Then in the game’s final 80 seconds, he missed two key free throws and was whistled for an offensive blocking foul that negated a basket by Jordan.
Then, afterward, he said the wrong things. “I just haven’t been playing,” Rodman told a swarm of reporters crowded around him. “The interest level is just not there. I’m all right physically, but mentally I’m just not into it … I’m more going through the motions right now. If I can’t get into it mentally, maybe I need to do something else.
“I shouldn’t have been playing tonight,” he added. “I told Phil that. It’s just one of those deals, you know. I gave no effort tonight. I had no effort. It’s very difficult to question my teammates. Nothing I can do about it, but I hope I can get through it.”
The comments immediately drew Jordan’s anger. “If that’s the case, go home,” Jordan said when reporters rushed across the locker room to relay the news. “If you’re not into it, you don’t need to be out there. Step aside and let someone else get in there and get the rhythm. Don’t pacify us.”
Just two hours earlier, Rodman had professed that the season was more relaxed than ever. Was he playing games? Perhaps, but those who knew him knew it was typical Dennis. He was merely expressing whatever he felt at the moment. The open book. He’d always been a conflicted sort of guy, and had done quite well by learning to have fun with those conflicts.
His teammates, however, didn’t always laugh along. Jordan was simply letting it be known that the Bulls didn’t have time for the crap. That was just one of the many reasons that Rodman seemed to enjoy being a Jordan teammate. He knew that when he popped up with something silly, Jordan would be there to bark him back into line. And if a quick tongue-lashing didn’t do the trick, Phil Jackson hadn’t hesitated to call Rodman into his office, where the coach, Jordan and Pippen could tackle him in a triple team.
“Dennis has to be disciplined,” Jackson explained privately. “You gotta discipline him, and sometimes he has to be disciplined like you’re a principal in a school. You bring him in and talk to him. And sometimes you have to discipline like you’ve got the sergeant at arms and the athletic director with you. I’ve brought Michael and Scottie in a couple of times to discipline Dennis. I have to bring them in because Dennis is one of the leaders of the team. And they’ll be in there, and Michael will say, ‘Dennis, as a leader of the team, these guys look to you for leadership.’ And that’s the one thing that always catches Dennis. Dennis really wants to be a leader, but it’s tough for him
because he leads from such a difficult spot. His leadership is really important to our team. You don’t think of it as leadership. You think of it as a detraction.”
Sure enough, Jordan’s words did the trick in Atlanta. Rodman regained his enthusiasm a night later against the New Jersey Nets and helped lead the Bulls to a win. In the aftermath, the team and the city wrote the incident off as just another quirky episode. Besides, they had little choice. “We need Dennis’ fire,” Jackson explained. “We need the desire, intensity, full-out play. The big thing is that Dennis has got to want to play. He’s going to have to feel that this is his business and it’s what he wants to do more than anything else, for us to be successful.”
Jackson acknowledged that there was some legitimacy to Rodman’s feelings. Any player still able to compete at age 36 held a certain dread for the grind of the NBA regular season. Jordan himself had often called it “monotony.”
Rodman had great respect for Jordan, but the two rarely talked. Rodman, though, wanted to make sure he ran out right after Jordan when the team jogged onto the United Center floor before a game. He always liked to be seen next to Jordan, to pose in photographs next to the star. Who could blame him? By just sharing Jordan’s spotlight, Rodman had made more than $30 million off the court in his first two seasons with the Bulls.
Blood on the Horns Page 17
