by Sam Smith
Houston has an inordinate number of night spots that attract pro athletes, and many in professional sports believe that the Houston police single them out for persecution and prosecution. The Bulls management warns players to avoid the Houston night scene, cautioning that they are targets to be picked off. The players quickly learn that there is a different culture in Texas, where someone once said the people think Hanukkah is a duck call.
The Bulls arrived in Houston late on Wednesday, January 2, for Thursday’s game, the rule in the NBA being that teams always travel into a city the night before a game when they aren’t playing. Everyone managed to stay out of trouble—at least until the game was under way.
In the 1989–90 season, Jackson’s first, the Bulls took one of their worst beatings in Houston, falling behind by 20 points in the first quarter. It wouldn’t be that much different this time as the Bulls got swept up by a half-dozen straight Rockets’ fast breaks to fall behind by 8 at halftime and then 20 after three quarters. In the Bulls’ defensive scheme, either Jordan or Pippen has to drop back to pick up the fast break, but neither did in the second quarter against the Rockets. Both drove to the basket and left the rear unprotected.
Jackson was unusually angry afterward. When he saw Jimmy Sexton, Pippen and Grant’s agent, walk into the locker room after the game, Jackson exploded. “Media only!” Jackson demanded. “Out of there.”
Sexton looked around somewhat stunned, trying to explain that he just wanted to tell Grant and Pippen where to meet him after the game. Across the locker room, Jordan was sitting in front of his stall talking with heavyweight champion Evander Holyfield; Jackson issued no such demands to either of them.
Later, Grant simmered while having dinner with former Houston great Calvin Murphy. Grant had taken 10 shots in the game; Jordan and Pippen had combined for 40. Murphy told Grant he’d never reach his potential playing with someone like Jordan. And that was like throwing gas on a smoldering fire; Grant said he had tried, but it was difficult watching Jordan and Pippen score so much while he was denied the opportunity. Early in the season, he’d tried to score more and drawn Jackson’s wrath. “I understand my role,” Grant explained, “and it’s not like I have a big ego or anything. But with the talent and skills I have, I’d like to score a little more. People look at numbers and stuff like that and don’t understand about good defense and running the floor and setting screens. I feel like I can help this team with more chances to score.”
During the game, when Grant had cut under, toward the baseline, in front of a man who was screening him, instead of over, behind the man, Jordan had screamed that Grant was going the wrong way. “Get out of my way,” he yelled. Grant, weary of Jordan’s outbursts, demanded, “Why don’t you shut up for a change and play?” It wasn’t much of a comeback, but it was probably a declaration of independence from Grant, who rarely talks on the court.
“What can I do now?” Grant would ask Murphy later. “I already asked to be traded and they signed me to a new contract. Why would I be asking to be traded now?”
The Bulls, though, still had Grant’s contract on their minds. His importance grew as King’s promise faded, and since his new three-year deal was his second contract, he would be a free agent—and the Bulls would have no claim on his services—as he approached his twenty-ninth birthday after the 1993–94 season. So even as Sexton and his partner, Kyle Rote, Jr., talked with Reinsdorf regularly that season about extending Pippen’s contract, Reinsdorf would invariably bring up Grant. “You know,” he’d say, “we’ve got to do something with Grant’s contract.”
Sexton, though, knew Grant’s feelings. “Don’t even tell me what they offer,” Grant had said. “I just want to get out of here in three years.”
But the real fury on that frosty January night was coming from the Houston side. The Rockets’ star center, Akeem Olajuwon (soon to change the spelling of his first name to Hakeem), had been taken to the hospital after colliding with Bill Cartwright’s elbow. This was not a rare occurrence around the NBA; two seasons earlier, Cartwright had been fined—although the fine was later rescinded when none of the acts were determined to be intentional—after putting Greg Kite and Fred Roberts out of action with elbows to the face and delivering lesser blows to Robert Parish and Isiah Thomas. Thomas was so enraged that he began strangling assistant coach Brendan Malone when Malone tried to keep Thomas from going after Cartwright on the court during the game.
Cartwright plays with his elbows away from his body. As he drives to the basket, he’ll often lead with his elbows. It’s not an uncommon practice, but because Cartwright is awkward opponents find it difficult to get out of the way. It was one of the hidden advantages the Bulls believed they had with Cartwright, who had already held fifteen of twenty centers under their season scoring average. “Guys don’t want to go in there against him because they don’t know what to expect,” said Jackson. Although the injury to Olajuwon’s eye would result in his missing two months, the blow clearly was from incidental contact. But given Olajuwon’s importance to the team and Cartwright’s reputation, the Houston management was enraged.
Houston’s general manager, Steve Patterson, called the league’s director of operations, Rod Thorn, to demand that Cartwright be suspended, and Patterson later released a series of tapes to the national media showing Cartwright knocking out several players. After Roberts had been KO’d by Cartwright, Bucks coach Del Harris had compiled such a series of tapes; the Bulls figured that’s where Patterson was getting his material, since Harris had coached in Houston and now saw himself in a blood feud with the team ninety miles to his south. Later in the month, Kite would again take a blow from Cartwright and would need stitches in his chin, and the Bucks’ Jack Sikma would miss the fourth quarter of a Bulls win with a bloody nose.
“Guess Who’s elbow?” Sikma offered after the game.
That would lead to more outraged calls to Thorn. Thorn called Cartwright.
“This has to stop,” Thorn said. “Would you consider wearing elbow pads?”
Cartwright was astounded. He’d played the same way his entire career, and he believed pads would inhibit his game as well as send up a red flag for the referee.
“I’ll give it all the consideration it deserves,” Cartwright told Thorn.
Thorn called Jackson. Would Jackson ask Cartwright to wear elbow pads? No, Jackson said, Cartwright didn’t want to and the Bulls were not going to ask him to. And anyway, Jackson added, it seemed as if players were trying to undercut Cartwright to gain an advantage and were walking into these accidents themselves. Thorn said he’d be watching because the outcry was getting louder and louder.
“What’s the big deal?” offered Grant. “He gets us like that in practice all the time.”
In the fourth quarter of that loss to Houston, John Bach began doodling on the board the coaches use to draw plays during time-outs. He drew a series of headstones with the names “Olajuwon,” “Kite,” “Roberts,” “Parish,” and “Thomas.”
On top, he labeled it “Cartwright National Cemetery.”
The Bulls returned home to face the decimated Cavaliers next for the third time in just over a month. It was getting so bad in Cleveland that the Cavaliers had picked up a CBA player named Henry James and he led them in scoring. “Who are you?” Jordan asked him during one break in the play. The Bulls scored just 14 points in the first quarter and trailed by 5, but were ahead by 11 before the second quarter was over and sailed to a win that was largely due to 18 points and 8 assists from B. J. Armstrong off the bench. But the performance only served to frustrate the baby-faced kid further.
A month earlier, Armstrong had gone to Krause asking to be traded. It wasn’t quite a demand, but he said he was vastly outplaying John Paxson in practice, so he deserved to start. If the Bulls didn’t care for his play, they should trade him.
Krause told Jackson, who bawled out the sensitive Armstrong, sending him into a depression that lasted several weeks. Jackson tol
d Armstrong there was more to the game than what you did in practice, that he was missing the whole point. He was supposed to provide leadership and scoring for the second team. “I’m not going to turn this team over to your game,” Jackson told him. “You dribble too much and you’re mostly looking for your own shot. John knows how to get us into our offense. You want to start, but you’re not even close. You don’t play the defense we want and you don’t want to help others get their shots. That’s why Jordan and Pippen don’t want to play with you.”
Armstrong figured that was it for him with the Bulls. He’d lost considerable confidence as a rookie as he found himself, for the first time in his point-guard life, without the ball; it was hard enough to try to run the complicated offense without being run off the ball by Jordan, who didn’t care much for rookies. “I never knew where I was supposed to be or what I was supposed to do,” Armstrong said. “I wondered, ‘Could I play in this league?’” But he’d run the Bulls’ summer-league team and made the all-league squad, and he felt he was ready to take over. It wasn’t happening, though, and he thought he’d be better off elsewhere.
He’d have to get in line, it seemed.
Perdue went to talk to Jackson. He wasn’t playing much, a few minutes per game between DNPs (did not play—coach’s decision), so he finally decided to talk to Jackson. Jackson told him that it was a case of improper matchups and that he’d get his chance.
“They must think I’m stupid,” said Perdue, who wasn’t. He’s mostly known for having the biggest feet in the league. He moves slowly and one expects him to sound like Gomer Pyle, but he’s got a quick wit. Later in the season, as fortunes changed for him, a Bulls’ minority owner told him he was making Krause look good. “And don’t you think I’m sick about it,” Perdue quipped. But Perdue figured he had time on his side. He’d heard Cartwright talk more often lately about getting out after the 1990–91 season, about finishing his career back home in California now that he was about to become a free agent.
“Then they’ll have to use me,” said Perdue. “Meanwhile, I figure there are worse ways to make a living.”
Even Michael Jordan was beginning to get tired of his role.
A reporter had stopped him at practice. Rod Thorn had called and wondered if the reporter would ask Jordan to call him. He wanted to find out if Jordan was going to participate in the slam-dunk contest at the All-Star game in Charlotte, and Thorn couldn’t reach Jordan. Of course, this wasn’t unusual. When Jordan won the league’s Most Valuable Player award in 1988 for the first time, he ignored dozens of phone calls from the league about attending the awards ceremony. He was playing golf.
“I’ve been getting his messages,” said Jordan, “but I’m not going to call him. I know what he’s up to.”
Thorn wanted Jordan for the contest because the game was in Charlotte, and, of course, because Jordan was the premier symbol of not only the NBA but its high-flying, acrobatic game. But Jordan had long ago decided his dunking-contest days were over. He’d won in 1988 in Chicago and figured all he could do now was lose, since he was expected to win and do it more spectacularly each year. He’d rather play golf.
He’d gone through a dance like this with the league in 1989. Jordan didn’t want to compete in the contest, so he told Thorn when he called—as a way to get him to stop bothering him—to raise the prize money to $20,000; it had been $12,500. Thorn called back a few days later and said, “Done.” Jordan was stunned. “I’ll think about it,” he said. Besides the possibility of a fall from his dunking throne, Jordan had always found himself weary after the All-Star weekend, and had not played well in the succeeding games. It was time to let some kids come out of the bullpen and have a start, Jordan felt. But the league announced that Jordan had agreed to participate. Jordan called the Bulls; he needed the team to say he was injured so he couldn’t compete. No problem. Within a few days of the All-Star game, Jordan turned up with a minor injury and the Bulls said they didn’t want to risk Jordan exacerbating the problem.
The league compromised in 1990. Would Jordan come to the three-point-shooting contest? Sure, he’d try. He thought that might be fun, and certainly less pressure. He would find out differently. Jordan had been shooting more threes that season and hitting them, but he was nervous for the contest and posted an all-time low score of five points. He’d had it with All-Star-weekend contests.
In many ways, Jordan had had it with basketball.
“Five more years,” he eagerly told teammates early in January. “Five more years and I’m out of here. I’m marking these days on a calendar, like I’m in jail. I’m tired of being used by this organization, by the league, by the writers, by everyone.”
Being a pro basketball player wasn’t much fun for him anymore. Everyone wanted something. He had so much, everything but time to get away and do as he pleased. He was handsome, rich, and personable. Picasso had once said they could take his spit and frame it as great art; Jordan was viewed the same way on the basketball court. Every time he moved, people stared. But the sweet life was seeming all too sour suddenly. He was kicking ass across the NBA landscape, but also hauling boxcars full of doubt and resentment.
This was no longer the Michael Jordan who had a “love of the game” clause in his contract that allowed him to play any time he wanted without club permission. It had long disappeared in collective bargaining, and Jordan didn’t play much basketball out of season anymore—just a few charity games for other players so they’d come to his, and for his shoe sponsor. A few incidents early in his career began to change his love for the game. “I quickly learned it’s just a business and you get as much money out of it as you can and then you get out,” Jordan found himself saying this January. He was feeling like one of Bach’s mercenaries. Also, he was feeling more and more embittered toward management. “They’re not interested in winning,” he would say. “They just want to sell tickets, which they can do because of me. They won’t make any deals to make us better. And this [Toni] Kukoc thing. I hate that. They’re spending all their time chasing this guy.” Jordan felt the media were demanding too much of his time and sniping at him. He felt his teammates were becoming too heavy a load to carry. And now he had two children at home. It all was becoming just too much. All he wanted to do was play golf.
Sidney Moncrief understood. He was one of the great NBA players in the 1980s, but he had retired after the 1988–89 season. Now he was back, playing for the Atlanta Hawks, whom the Bulls would meet in a few days. He’d seen some tapes of Jordan and could see a lot of himself in the look in Jordan’s eyes.
“You play ten years and the games mount up, the travel, the winning, the losing, everything,” said Moncrief, regarded during his prime as not only a perennial All-Star but an eloquent spokesman for the game. “I would say it hit me after year eight. Especially if you’re playing a lot, you start to feel it. You keep playing. You deny you don’t have the desire anymore. But you find yourself becoming more critical of everything around you, your teammates, the coaches, the front-office people, the press. You’re probably not as mentally focused for the entire year as you need to be. You tend to go in and out mentally, and everything around you seems to distract you a little more. I took that year off and I didn’t watch any basketball. I played tennis and golf and I was on my own schedule for the first time in ten years. I had knee problems, so I’m not the player I was, and I have a lesser role and I can’t say I don’t miss playing thirty-five, forty minutes per game and scoring twenty, twenty-five points. But I feel totally different about everything after a year away. I realize what a privilege it is to play in the NBA and how really nice it is. I think now I’ll stay around three or four more years.”
Jordan wasn’t feeling nearly so sanguine about life in the NBA, and his talk about five more years masked even deeper doubts. He had gone so far as to discuss with David Falk whether he could quit after the 1990–91 season, at least for a year. “There are two problems, though,” he said. “One is my endor
sements. I told him I’d do it if he could find a way to keep my endorsement money coming. Of course, the Bulls would probably sue. But I’m more worried that if I quit for a year, I’ll never want to come back.”
The game against the Nets at home on January 8, a win in which the Bulls led by 24 in the third quarter, wasn’t very pretty. The excitement came afterward. Jordan had scored 41 points and former Bull Jack Haley, who mostly waved a towel on the bench for a season in Chicago, said, “Michael always seems to get up for me.”
But Jordan would create a new bench insurrection with his comments after the game. The Nets had cut a 24-point deficit to 10, and Jackson had to put Jordan back in the game to stanch the bleeding. Jordan was seeing red.
“Our bench guys are not going out there looking to improve on the game,” Jordan complained to reporters afterward. “They’re mostly looking to improve on their statistics instead of learning to play with each other and get some kind of continuity. They’re playing as individuals and that’s something they need to change.”
The principal reserves, Armstrong, King, Hopson, Levingston, and Hodges, saw it otherwise. When they were on the floor, they felt, they ran the system, but Jordan and Pippen wouldn’t. They played 12 to 15 minutes, but in two or three shifts that was just a few minutes on the court at a time, and hardly enough chance to get into the flow. And all they got for it was criticism.
But they didn’t like what they heard from Jackson, either, when they demanded a meeting with the coach after Jordan’s outburst. Jackson told Levingston and Hopson (the loudest complainer in the meeting), “You guys are either stupid or just incapable of being on the floor together. Because nothing happens when you two are out there together.
“And life,” Jackson continued, “just isn’t meant to be fair. There are different rules for you guys and Jordan and Pippen. They are here to take the shots and you’re not. You’re here to fill roles and that’s what you’re expected to do.”
