by Sam Smith
The last was met with silence. The talk was over.
“Well,” Jackson thought to himself, “at least now he’s been warned. He knows, and we’re going to stick with this. We’ll see what he does.”
Jackson, like his predecessors, admired Jordan’s skills, although he refused to compare him with players of previous eras. He would only say that Jordan was among the best in the game in his own era. Jackson was not a man of hyperbole.
He had once thought he was going to be a man of the Lord, telling coach Red Holzman when he first arrived in New York after being drafted by the Knicks in 1967 that he intended to become a minister. Jackson’s father was a Pentecostal minister and his mother was an evangelist. They embraced the then mystical and charismatic Pentecostal wave sweeping some of the upper Midwest. Jackson remembers attending services where the congregation would speak in tongues, and his mother always preparing him for the apocalypse. Their house was without TV or any conveniences, and Jackson’s family did not believe in conventional medicine.
The Jacksons did believe in competition. He vividly remembers playing games with the family on Saturday nights at the dining-room table. He would become a great athlete, excelling in baseball and then basketball in Montana, where he was raised, and then in college basketball for Bill Fitch at North Dakota. He would score, but he became celebrated for his defensive play, his long arms always flailing about. They were so long, in fact, that Fitch would do a little trick to impress pro scouts: He’d have Jackson sit in the middle of the backseat of a conventional automobile and open both front doors without getting up. Jackson had an odd gait, which was later aggravated by hip fusion surgery that gave him an awkward look compared with the smoother, more graceful athletes who mostly populated the game. At Knicks practices, the players would usually be watching out for Jackson, who played hard, though seemingly out of control. This is perhaps one reason that Jackson has remained the Bulls’ biggest supporter of Bill Cartwright.
Jackson rarely watches entertainment shows on television and rarely reads the sports pages; you’re more likely to find him watching the debate over a civil-rights bill, as he did in his Stadium office only minutes before the start of the first game of the NBA Finals, or sitting with a New York Times crossword, one of his favorite pastimes on the road. He has a playful wit—he once explained after a low-scoring game in Atlanta the night after President George Bush had spoken there that Bush’s defense buildup had caused so many missed baskets—and he can be absentminded and evasive.
He enjoyed a fairly successful eleven-year career in the NBA, mostly with the Knicks, though he’s remembered as much for his actions off the court in the turbulent 1960s and early 1970s as for anything on the court. He grew a beard and became a vegetarian; he went to Earth Day and antiwar rallies; he wrote a book entitled Maverick in which he talked about his drug use and his teammates’ karma; he experimented with mysticism and spiritualism and was a veritable storehouse for the era’s “isms.” He believes that because of his reputation he was blackballed from coaching jobs for years. He coached five years in the CBA and attained great success, winning a title in Albany in 1984 and Coach-of-the-Year honors in 1985. But he couldn’t attract much interest from the NBA.
Jerry Krause tried to bring him to Chicago as assistant coach in 1985–86 when Stan Albeck was coach, but Jackson came to his interview with a beard that made it look as if he was eating a muskrat and wearing a big Ecuadoran straw hat of which he was very proud; it had a big bird feather looping out of the brim, and Jackson tried to tell Albeck a story about the tropical bird from which it was taken. Jackson’s long, bony face was nearly black from the sun of Puerto Rico, where he was then coaching, and his hair was still longish.
“Er, no, I don’t think so,” Albeck would tell Krause.
Jackson was about ready to give up. He’d been coaching in the CBA for four years by then and he was wondering if he’d ever get a shot at the NBA. Maybe it was time to join the establishment and get a real job.
“Most of them had long given it up,” Jackson said of his sixties radical friends. “They all explored until they found out you’re not going to make money and you’re going to be an outcast, so they fell in line and joined the establishment. But I never had to. I always had this basketball life of not having to pay the piper.
“I’d done some TV and coaching after my playing career was over [in 1980] and I had this business in Montana [Second Wind Sport and Fitness, an athletic club] and I came back to basketball on my own terms [in 1983 with the Albany Patroons of the CBA], I was living in Woodstock, and that’s not only a great place for a person to enjoy freedom, but it’s an open, mind-expanding place where they’re doing mental work and creative physical and artistic things, although I realized I wasn’t coming out of the CBA unscathed. I knew I would have to conform somewhere.”
He decided to quit basketball after the summer of 1987. He knew the world of basketball could exist comfortably without him, for Jackson had been taught about being humble all his life. The reminder was always there on his father’s desk, a cardboard figure with small feet and a big balloon for a head. The message Jackson constantly received was not to have too big a head, for then one couldn’t fill one’s shoes.
“I had a talk with my wife and I decided I had to put myself in God’s hands and quit,” Jackson recalled. “I’d given it three or four years, but it was time to get on with my life. I had kids growing up who were going to college and I also had to be a provider, so I had to look at another line of work.” Jackson decided either to pursue a law degree or to go back to school in counseling psychology, which had been his college major.
Then, in October 1987, Bulls assistant coach Gene Littles was hired by the expansion Charlotte Hornets as director of player personnel. With the season about to begin, the Bulls’ list of available assistants was small, since most were already under contract for the season.
At this time, a friend of Jackson’s was looking for him and had called the Bulls because he knew Jackson had interviewed with them once. The call rang a bell with Krause, who called Jackson about the job after head coach Doug Collins agreed to take on the one-time flower child.
“That’s how lucky and happenstance life is,” said Jackson. “I recognized this was my last opportunity, so I had to stick my head down and put on my zoot suit and shave down to a mustache and be ready to step back into the establishment. It was something I knew I could do. I was a fraternity guy [Sigma Alpha Epsilon] and a college campus leader [he was listed in the 1967 Who’s Who of American College Students] and I knew how to behave establishment if I had to. I knew all the rules. I was a good minister’s son and had lived in suits when I was a kid. It was no problem to step back in. It was time to conform. I didn’t have to stay an outcast forever.”
When Jackson was a player, he admired the Bulls for their defensive strength. But just as the current team relied on one or two players on offense, so had the Bulls teams of Jackson’s era: The team was built around their great forwards, Bob Love and Chet Walker. Jackson believed basketball could be nothing but a team game, and when he came to New York in 1967, he told Holzman he thought the Knicks were selfish and poorly coached under Holzman’s predecessor, Dick McGuire. But Holzman’s emphasis on team play would eventually catch on and lead the Knicks to two titles.
It would also catch the attention of Jerry Reinsdorf, a Brooklyn boy who, when he purchased the Bulls, said he would watch then-coach Kevin Loughery’s style before deciding whether to make a coaching change.
“Kevin Loughery has to be able to convince me that he can coach a basketball team like Red Holzman,” Reinsdorf said at the time. “The New York Knicks of the Red Holzman era epitomized the way basketball should be played. Total unselfish basketball. That’s going to be Chicago Bulls basketball.”
Loughery thought Reinsdorf was a meddling buffoon, and kept running plays for Jordan. He was fired at the end of the 1984–85 season, not only for his headstrong ins
istence on using Jordan, but for allegedly losing a game on purpose to get a better playoff seeding; the home crowd—on Fan Appreciation Day, no less—taunted the Bulls with shouts of “Tulane, Tulane” as the team left the floor, a reference to the Hilane University team accused of shaving points.
Jordan didn’t think much of Reinsdorf’s theories either. All he knew was that when he came to the Bulls, Loughery was largely responsible for making him a superstar. Jordan insists his first season and his first coach made all the difference.
Jordan was rookie of the year in 1984–85, averaging 28.2 points per game, but more importantly, he was being shaped into the dominant individual player in the game by Loughery. Loughery immediately turned the offense over to Jordan. “I feel like I was able to relate better with him than any coach I’ve ever had,” said Jordan. “He was a player’s coach. He liked my game and wanted me to be the leader. I didn’t want to do that, didn’t feel I should with veteran guys around, Dave Corzine, Caldwell Jones, and Steve Johnson. I just wanted to get along.”
But Loughery, emphasizing a one-on-one style for Jordan that mirrored his own play in the NBA, put Jordan in a position to demonstrate his skills and gain confidence.
“The truth was, I didn’t know how good I’d become or what I could do against pros,” said Jordan. Jordan never really thought much about the NBA other than as another place to play, and never really cared for the game, even after several years in the league. He said he rarely watched games, thought they were boring, and doubted he’d ever come to an NBA game after his retirement. But Jordan said that Loughery’s decision to allow him to test his individual skills proved to him that he could be a great player. “And that’s the most important thing in this league, confidence,” said Jordan.
When Loughery was fired in 1985, Stan Albeck was brought in. But the bushy-haired coach would have a hard time getting along with Jerry Krause. Krause didn’t care for Albeck’s coaching techniques, although Albeck was generally regarded as highly knowledgeable about the game. Albeck routinely threw Krause out of team meetings; he deeply resented what he perceived as Krause’s meddling, and in succeeding years, when he went to coach at Krause’s old school, Bradley, Albeck compiled embarrassing stories about Krause, which he’d feed to Jordan, who would pass them on to the rest of the team.
When Jordan broke his foot in the third game of the 1985–86 season and insisted on rejoining the Bulls earlier than the team wanted him to, Albeck got caught in the cross fire between Jordan and Krause. Management wanted Jordan on the bench, since he had already missed more than fifty games and could hardly help the team; Jordan accused Krause of not wanting to win so the team could get a better draft pick. A deal was finally made that allowed Jordan to play a limited number of minutes per game. When Albeck left Jordan in a game for an extra three minutes once because the Bulls were within striking distance of a win, Krause told Albeck that if it happened again he’d be fired. A few games later, with Krause’s words ringing in his ears, Albeck pulled Jordan with thirty seconds left in the game and the Bulls down by 1. Jordan seethed. After the Bulls dropped three straight to Boston in the playoffs—despite a record 63-point game from Jordan—Albeck was fired.
Jordan had never heard of Jackson when Jackson came to the Bulls, and he didn’t know anything about the Knicks of the seventies, but he did have an astute eye for the game and he believed that era had ended. “The players today can do things they couldn’t do twenty years ago,” Jordan said. “The game isn’t played any more like Tex Winter taught it or even P.J. [Jackson]. Those concepts don’t work against bigger, faster players who jump higher. You don’t need that with players who can create.”
Jackson thought otherwise. Just a few weeks after joining the Bulls as an assistant coach under Doug Collins in 1987, he was sitting in a coaches’ meeting, explaining that his Knicks teams had played so well together because of their philosophy of teamwork.
“We had a rule of thumb in New York,” Jackson said: “A star makes the players around him better. That was our belief. That was the measure of what a star was, Frazier or Reed picking up for you, covering you defensively, allowing you to play harder because they could intimidate an opponent, Walt with his quick hands and ability to make a pass to you, and the same with Dave DeBusschere.”
Collins listened for a few seconds. He didn’t disagree with Jackson, but he knew Jordan wouldn’t see it quite that way. To anyone who would listen, Collins would complain of his inability to get the Bulls into a running game. “Do you know who’s the biggest obstacle to us running?” Collins would ask. Then he’d offer a thin, weak smile and shake his head. “Michael Jordan, that’s who. He won’t let go of the ball.”
But Collins had no power to do anything about it by then—Jordan had little or no respect left for his coach. During a preseason scrimmage before the start of Collins’s second season with the Bulls, Jordan angrily left practice accusing Collins of intentionally misstating the score in a practice game so that Jordan’s team would lose. Collins quickly tried to smooth over the argument, and the next day at practice even kissed Jordan in front of the media to show they were friends again. But Collins had already made his fatal error.
Jordan knew he had behaved badly, even childishly, but despite his seeming sophistication in dealings with media and public, Jordan was often like a child searching for discipline, pushing matters as far as he could until someone came forward to punish him. Jackson was quick to catch on, and would use Jordan’s need for a father figure to his own advantage; he would not tolerate Jordan’s childish fits. But when Collins caved in so quickly to Jordan’s admittedly puerile tantrum, Jordan realized two things: He could do what he pleased without threat of punishment, and he could no longer respect his coach.
The power struggle between Jordan and Collins was never more evident than in the 1990 playoffs against Detroit. In the fifth game of the conference finals, Jordan attempted just 8 shots; the Bulls lost, and were eliminated at home in the next game. Questions flew at Jordan and Collins after the game, only to be met by the standard response about double-teaming tactics. But Collins and Jordan knew otherwise. The coach had told Jordan he was shooting too much; he had taken 31 percent of the team’s shots in the first four games. Collins felt more players had to be involved in the offense for the team to be effective. Jordan, who usually took such suggestions as criticism, took only 8 shots just to make a point.
It was all about pride. Despite his fame and acclaim, Jordan still sometimes reacted like the high school sophomore who failed to make the varsity basketball team; he still remembers not wanting to cheer for that team even though his close friends were playing. “I guess I wanted them to lose to prove that they had made a mistake by leaving me off the team,” Jordan recalls, and years later he still felt the same way. Even as a young pro, Jordan conceded once, “I thought of myself first, the team second. I always wanted my teams to be successful. But I wanted to be the main cause.”
That pride had driven him to his extraordinary accomplishments. Jordan takes being guarded by only one man as a personal insult. He torched Cleveland for 69 points in the 1989–90 season when the Cavaliers insisted on single-teaming him throughout the game. A reporter asked during the 1990–91 season who defensed him the best. “No one, really,” he said. “Everyone uses two or three players to guard me.”
But which player is the toughest? the questioner persisted.
“I don’t really ever see one guy,” Jordan said again, “but I’d guess you’d have to say [Joe] Dumars, but one guy really never plays me.”
Jordan even got into a brief public debate with the Cavaliers after that 69-point game when several Cleveland players said it was no big trick to score a lot of points if you’re taking 37 shots a game, as Jordan did.
“I wouldn’t be shooting so many times,” Jordan shot back, “if I weren’t open.”
Tales of his competitiveness are legendary around the Bulls. When former teammate Rod Higgins beat him
in Ping-Pong when both were rookies in 1984, he went out and bought a Ping-Pong table and became the best player on the team. He took up golf in college and was playing to a reported 6 handicap by 1990. He’d play games of cards with the ferocity of Mike Tyson going for a knockout. He hated to lose and took it personally.
One unforgettable demonstration of his competitive drive was in 1988 against the Utah Jazz. Jordan stole a pass and got out ahead of the field to dunk over guard John Stockton to a thundering roar. Even on the road Jordan’s dunks are cheered, especially in Western Conference cities where the Bulls make just one visit a year. Utah owner Larry Miller was sitting at center court in the first row and yelled to Jordan as he passed by, “Why don’t you pick on someone your own size?”
A few sequences later, Jordan again made a steal, but this time was closing in on a basket guarded by 7-0 center Mel Turpin, Jordan sped up just a bit and appeared to grab hold of Turpin’s shirt, boosting himself up and dunking over the powerful center.
Running back to his defensive end, Jordan turned to Miller and yelled, “He big enough for you?”
And so when Phil Jackson explained to Collins his theory about superstars and team play and sharing the ball, Collins just stared and said, “Why don’t you go out and tell Michael that?”
“Okay,” Jackson said earnestly, “I will.”
So Jackson confronted Jordan, who still knew Jackson only as an odd-looking man who moved as if he had left the hanger in his suit, and told him about the Knicks and Frazier and what stars should do and how they had to help their teammates.
Jackson remembers Jordan saying “Thanks” politely and walking away. Jordan remembers rolling his eyes afterward and thinking Jackson was nuts. “It’s a hell of a lot easier to make Earl Monroe look good than it is Brad Sellers,” he thought.
But now, in 1990, Jackson was in charge. Jordan was dubious, but he liked Jackson and had come to respect his knowledge of the game and the way he handled the team. “He’s the coach,” Jordan would say after meeting with Jackson. “I’ll follow his scheme, but I don’t plan to change my style of play. I’m sure everything will be fine if we win, but if we start losing, I’m shooting.”
