“Sometimes you give ‘em away in this game,” the coach said afterward, “and we certainly gave that away. We had some help. The referees helped us give it away, but that’ll happen sometimes on the road.”
“We played giveaway,” Tex Winter fumed. “It was ridiculous. In the long-term it’ll be good for us. This team’s had too much success.”
“It’s about as stunning a loss as you can imagine,” Kerr said.
Getting dressed afterward to head out for good times in his home town, Rodman complained, “We gave it to ‘em. If we had had the starting five in there, that game wouldn’t have been close at all.”
He wore a Sly and the Family Stone look, with a lime green paisley shirt, sunglasses tinted bright yellow, a leopard skin cap, and a thick necklace, which Jackson had commented before the game was heavy enough to use on a tow truck. Rodman began criticizing Jackson and stopped. “I don’t want to say nothing wrong,” he told the gathering of Dallas media in the locker room. “When you fuck around the whole fourth quarter and don’t put a team like that away, any team in the league can beat you. It was pathetic.”
Told that Winter had said the Bulls would learn from the loss, Rodman scoffed, “Man, we too old for this shit. What can we learn that we don’t already know? That’s kinda stupid, isn’t it? We been in this league for 50 years. Fuck. We know what the fuck we should do, just let us play.”
Asked where he was headed in his outfit, he said, “I’m gonna go out, have a couple of beers and party my ass off. I think it hurts worse when you lose a game like this. Go out have a couple of beers, and your girl says she’s not gonna have sex with you. That hurts. That means you’re double-fucked.”
Flanked by two body guards, Rodman strolled out of the arena past rows of fans chirping for an autograph. At the security entrance, he hopped into a limo. A few feet away the rest of the Bulls had gotten onto the team bus. Jordan, in the very back seat, was sitting quietly, his face resting in his palm. There would be no noise this night.
The next day, after watching the game film, Winter had an even darker concern. It looked as if the Bulls had quit down the stretch. “We had a complete collapse, the worst I’ve seen in all the time I’ve been with the Bulls,” the assistant coach said. “That’s 13 years. I’ve seen a couple of other collapses, but not like that. We’ve had games where I’ve felt like we’ve given up, where we were down and didn’t really come back, more so this year than any time in the past.”
The big loss in Miami earlier in the year had been one of those games, he said. “That’s concerned me. And then to see a world-championship ball club with all the experience we have collapse like we did … We just weren’t very smart. I think the guys feel badly about it. But this team has had too much success. They need to be humbled a little bit.”
It was pointed out that Jackson seemed to be the kind of poor sport who never took losing well. “I don’t think any of us do,” Winter said. “Winning is nice, but losing is just awful. There’s a big difference. Sometimes when you win, you’re still not happy because of the way you played. But, boy, when you lose, it’s just devastating. We’ve never lost much. It’s so hard to take losing when you’re not used to it. Once you get the habit of losing, it doesn’t bother you quite so much.”
“There’s some anger and disappointment,” Jackson agreed. “Most of the guys went out in Dallas and blew it off. They got rid of it that night and slept it off. We looked at the tape and put it to bed, buried it. It’s past.”
The Bulls assured that two nights later by playing what Winter would call their most energetic game of the season in rainy San Antonio. Jackson surprised nearly everyone by starting Kukoc against Spurs center David Robinson. An even bigger surprise was that it worked. Although Kukoc lacked the bulk, he had the quickness to give Robinson some problems, and the Bulls hopped out to a 10-2 lead.
The other Chicago concern was outstanding Spurs rookie Tim Duncan, but Jordan answered that on an early Duncan drive by swatting the rookie’s shot away. At the other end, Duncan returned the favor with a block of Jordan’s shot that sent the Alamodome crowd into a frenzy.
Undeterred, the Bulls closed the first period leading 27-17, having made up for their 35 percent shooting with nine offensive rebounds, including four by Rodman.
The Spurs used the second period to close the gap and pulled to 40-39 by intermission. But Kukoc opened the third by flashing in lane, taking a pass from Harper and dropping in a soft eight foot hook. With that momentum, the Bulls pushed their lead back to 51-41
Kukoc again opened the fourth with a whirligig finish in traffic that looked like it had been copied from a Jordan highlight reel. The Spurs pushed hard, but the Bulls shoved right back. Having learned his lesson two nights earlier, Jackson worked the officials furiously, prompting a fan to yell, “Forget it, Phil, they won’t let you come back.”
After outdistancing the Spurs by 10, the Bulls continued their burn through March, returning home to buzz New Jersey, then dipping down to win a big game in Indiana. They got a Friday night home win against Vancouver, then headed north into a snowstorm that left them circling for an hour over Toronto and reminded equipment manager John Ligmanowski of a few seasons back when the team jet nearly got flipped by wind shear in Detroit.
Once they landed, the Bulls found the young Raptors as problematic as the snow. Jordan shook hands with Toronto team captains Doug Christie and Dee Brown, then grinned broadly and hopped around during layup drills trying to awaken his legs. There were bags under Jordan’s eyes, the weariness weighing on his smile.
Just before tipoff Johnny Ligmanowski dispensed the gum which is so important to this team and even tossed a few pieces to press row. After the introductions, the Bulls lined up to slap hands and began their jumping, Watusi-like, while waiting to go on the floor. Pippen came over to the press table to get one final stretch while casting furtive looks at the Raptor dancers.
“Scottie, Toronto next year,” one fan yelled hopefully.
Pippen smiled and turned back to the gyrating dancers. Then the men in red circled Jackson for last-minute instructions, all of them chomping their gum in unison.
Kukoc opened the game with a rebound, and Jackson wasted no time before barking at him. At the offensive end Kukoc held ball on the perimeter.
“Here, here,” Jackson shouted hoarsely, motioning to Pippen inside.
Kukoc delivered the pass, “Now to the goal,” Jackson yelled. But Kukoc had anticipated and already cut, and Pippen hit him with the return pass for a nice two-handed jam.
Things were right in the Bulls’ world, at least for the moment. But that was all that Jackson wanted, for each moment to unfold in timeless beauty and simplicity. On the next possession, Jordan scored and danced away from the goal with the trademark Jordan swagger, that mix of elegance and gameliness.
Moments later, Kukoc would miscommunicate with Jordan on a pass, and the star’s anger would flash. He stood with palms up and open, questioning with frustration. Where was the ball? Then Jordan turned away, and Kukoc decided to pass. A turnover. Jordan answered with a daggerlike look and frowned darkly at Kukoc during an ensuing timeout.
The Raptors took advantage of Chicago’s confusion to forge a lead, but in the second period Rodman’s energy pumped the Bulls back on top. Later, when Rodman returned to the bench, Tex Winter followed him to his seat, to bend and tell him how fine the effort was. Rodman took the compliment without speaking, but his face showed the satisfaction.
In the third period, the Bulls expanded the lead to a dozen, but then came the loss of focus, just as it had in Dallas. Somehow, Jordan and his teammates managed to just hold on at the end, allowing the younger Raptors to make the final mistakes. Jackson smiled. The Bulls were living on the edge, but Pippen was back, and they were winning. And best of all, they were alive in the moment. Right where Jackson hoped they would be.
> “It was a nice run. Had to close out someday. Nobody wins ‘em all.”
—The Devil’s Advocate
11: Keeping the Faith
Dennis Rodman missed the free throw. That was nothing new. Since his earliest days in the league, his efforts at the line had always produced an adventurous array of bricks, clangers and airballs. As his misses went, this one wasn’t all that ugly, just a tad long, striking the back of the iron and coming back his way. He rebounded and punched the ball with a flick of his tattooed wrist, almost like he was serving a volleyball. It soared straight up, high into the rafters, where it reached the height of its ellipse and then dropped, right back beside him with a slam.
“That’s good,” Tex Winter explained later. “I like to see that. He loses his poise, so I call a technical on him.”
They were playing a game. Rodman was working on free throws after practice and had hit nine out of 10. “All right, the next one wins it,” Winter had told him, simulating a late-game situation.
Rodman missed.
He gazed off into an emptiness of despair.
“You’re one down,” Winter said, bringing him back to the moment. “Now you gotta get two.”
Rodman set his right toe on the line and squared up with his left a half step back. He hit the first, then came another miss, the one that had prompted him to launch the ball to the rafters. Winter stepped up, took Rodman’s hand and talked to him soothingly, calming his frustration. As he had done so often over his three seasons with the Bulls, Rodman bowed his head and listened.
On the fourth try, Rodman hit two in a row with Winter jumping spryly across the lane to retrieve the ball and toss it back.
“We keep doing that until he hits two in a row with the pressure on,” Winter explained.
The free throws finished, Winter directed Rodman over to the “Toss Back,” a target on a large stand. The forward threw the ball at the target, which consisted of webbing tautly stretched over a metal frame, and the target tossed the ball back. Winter invented the “Toss Back” years ago with the help of a machinist, for the express purpose of drilling players on passing fundamentals. Rodman was intimately familiar with it. He crouched and fired picture perfect chest passes at the target, picking up speed as the target fired the ball back. Then Rodman began using his muscled biceps to send the ball back to the target, working it almost like a speed bag.
It was a sweet scene. A Saturday morning in April. Practice was over. A 76-year-old assistant coach and a soon-to-be 37-year-old forward putting in extra work. On free throws. And chest passes, of all things. Youth league coaches around the country can’t get 12-year-olds to work on chest passes. It’s beneath their dignity, yet here was the dyed and tattooed eighth wonder of the hip world, snapping and stepping like the team captain of the junior varsity.
Winter stepped back and admired the form. Like many of his skills, Rodman’s chest passes were fundamentally pure. Even the forward’s free throw technique was perfect in practice, so good, Winter boasted, that you could use it for an instructional video. But in the games Rodman would get nervous and his right arm, supposed to be perpendicular to the floor, would flap out wide like a wing, and the shots would turn ugly. Winter’s entire efforts were aimed at quieting Rodman’s raging anxiety over shooting.
Bill Sharman, the great Celtic guard and free throw purist, had once worked with Wilt Chamblerlain, another horrific free thrower. Chamberlain, like Rodman, became an excellent practice shooter, but he never could quell the performance anxiety in games.
Finally even Sharman gave up on Chamberlain.
“I could never do anything with his free throws,” Sharman admitted later.
Winter, though, wasn’t about to give up on Rodman.
Forget the fact that they were both perhaps closing in on the final games of their lengthy careers. Winter lived to coach, and Rodman craved the work.
“He wants to be coached,” Winter said. “That’s the one good thing about Dennis. He likes the attention. If you ignore him, then that’s what bothers him. Sometimes I ignore him purposefully because I want him bothered a little bit. But generally I’ll talk to him and work with him.
“I work with him every day for about five minutes, particularly on his free throw shooting. I’m trying to get him a little more comfortable, a little more involved in part of the offense, in being part of the offense, as opposed to just kind of taking his eye off the ball, kind of being a spectator, just going into the rebound position and not worrying about where he is. Sometimes he goes into the rebound position, which is what we want him to do, but not when he’s supposed to be in some other spot to keep the offense flowing.”
The Bulls’ coaches knew that Rodman’s offensive involvement would be a key in the playoffs’ big games. Rodman, of course, wasn’t alone in this effort. Nearly every player on the roster put in the extra hours at virtually all of the little things. Their combined efforts made the team atmosphere a supreme competitive environment. If there was anything for Winter and the coaches to mourn about the end of the Jordan era, it would be the eventual dissolution of this competitive environment. “The practice sessions I like,” Winter explained, “working with them, as good as they are, as professional as they are, and the kind of money and notoriety they have, yet still seeing a willingness on their part to learn.”
The mix of toughness and integrity and grandfatherly charm had made Winter a favorite of many Bulls players and staff members. Nothing better illustrated that than the coach’s relationship with Rodman.
“Dennis will listen to Tex,” equipment manager John Ligmanowski said. “When Dennis got thrown out of the game the other night and wouldn’t get off the floor, Tex got up there and said, ‘Hey, you better get off the floor.’ He’ll listen to Tex, because here’s a guy 76-years old still working for a living.”
“Tex is a few years younger than my parents and a product of that Depression era,” Chip Schaefer explained. “To say that he is frugal would be an understatement. Johnny Bach used to call him penurious. I think that’s a very apt description of him. But I think Tex in a lot of ways is the way we all should be. He doesn’t like to see things get wasted. He takes that attitude at the dinner table, too. If there’s a little bit of meat on your bone, he may just pick up your steak bone and finish it off for you.”
“Tex saves shoe boxes, he’s so tight,” Ligmanowski said, laughing. “We had a meal one time when we were bringing in Larry Krystowiak. I think it was the first time we ever met Larry. Jerry Krause was there. Tex was there. Larry wasn’t finished with his food, and Tex goes, ‘You gonna finish that?’ Larry goes, ‘Yeah, I’m gonna finish that!’ That was funny. Tex thought he was gonna get a few scraps. Jimmy Rodgers one time got Tex this fork that he could put in his pocket and it extends out like an antennae.”
“Basketball is his absolute passion in life,” Schaefer observed. “That’s what keeps him going. There’s times when he’ll look tired, and I’ll wonder if he has the energy for it. Then all of a sudden practice will start, and he’s out here barking at these guys like he’s coaching the K-State freshman team and it’s 1948.
“Tex has three or four real passions in life. One of them’s basketball. Certainly one of them’s food. He really enjoys his finances. He pores over the business section of the paper as intensely as he does the sports section. He’s a real joy. I hope he keeps on going.”
“He’s an innovator,” explained Bill Cartwright, who had worked with Winter first as a player, then as a fellow Bulls assistant. “He’s a really unique person in this sport. He absolutely loves basketball. And it’s really fun to be around him, because whatever situation you see on the floor he can talk to you about it, because he’s seen them all.
“You recall that everyone used to wear those Chuck Taylors, those canvas Converse shoes,” Cartwright said, “and you talk to Tex, and he’ll tell you, ‘Oh
yeah, I knew Chuck Taylor.’”
Over his 51 seasons on the bench, Winter had been the head coach at five colleges—Marquette, Kansas State, Washington, Northwestern and Long Beach State —and had served as head coach of the San Diego/Houston Rockets.
It was at Kansas State in the late 1950s and early 1960s that Winter first got to know Jerry Krause. Winter’s teams were among the best in college basketball and even ranked at the top of the polls, and Krause was among the scouts who showed up to watch. “He was just a youngster out of college,” Winter recalled, “just working as a gopher really with the Baltimore Bullets. First he was just a statistician. Then he finally sort of got into the scouting phase of it. So it was his first scouting experience. I spent quite a bit of time with him, befriended him. I’d go over the games with him on the old 16 mm analyst projector and point out things and talk terms and talk the triangle, and so forth. He just liked the concepts involved. I was at Northwestern later, and I spent a lot of time with him. He’d come up to practice, and we’d go to lunch once a week. He said that he’d be a general manager some day, and when he was, I’d have to come and help him. When it finally came about, he said that I’d promised him I’d come and help him, which I didn’t. But I said, ‘Make it worth my while.’”
Krause pulled Winter to Chicago with a handsome salary, but he couldn’t find a head coach willing to listen to Winter’s advice. First, Stan Albeck declined to buy into Winter’s view of the game. Then came Doug Collins, who saw the triangle as unworkable in the modern NBA. In fact, Collins found himself with two assistants, Winter and Jackson, who had been hired by Krause, assistants he really didn’t want.
Blood on the Horns Page 29
