by Sam Smith
Jackson didn’t understand, Armstrong thought as he sat there. He liked the coach, thought him intelligent and funny. He liked playing for him. But he also knew his friends. Hopson, to whom Armstrong had grown closest, had a big ego; he had been Big Ten Player of the Year and was the leading scorer with the Nets. King had been a big college star who thought he should have been the No. 1 pick in the 1989 draft. Levingston had even clashed in Atlanta with Dominique Wilkins because he wanted more of Wilkins’s shots. These guys were all high first-round draft choices and believed themselves capable of starting—capable, in fact, of being stars. Jackson had to see that, if not in their play, then at least in their pleas. Armstrong saw that no good was to come from the meeting.
Jackson, for his part, understood only too well how large a percentage of the league’s players saw themselves as stars. All of them had been stars before joining the NBA, but on this level you had to accept your role. He saw Armstrong as salvageable, but he wasn’t sure about Hopson and King. He worried that the three spent considerable time together, on the team plane and bus and on the road. A few weeks later, Jackson approached Armstrong. “There’s too much negativity going on with those guys and it’s going to poison you,” he warned. “You might want to join another group.” Armstrong would stay friendly with both, but on the team plane he began to move in an open area with some of the other players, and would continue to for the remainder of the season.
The breaks certainly were coming the Bulls’ way as the team headed for Philadelphia, the 76ers being another team with injuries when they met the Bulls. The Bulls hadn’t played well on the road, going just 2–6 against winning teams. But Rick Mahorn was out with an injury, and the 76ers had just traded Mike Gminski for Armon Gilliam. Jackson thought this was to the Bulls’ advantage because Gilliam was what the players called a black hole: Once you threw the ball in to him, nothing ever came back out. Barkley likely would have to play more power forward, which he liked less.
The Bulls’ own good health—they hadn’t lost a starter to injury yet, they would have a league-low four player-games missed through the All-Star break and just twenty at the end of the regular season—was partly due to their youth, but Jackson felt it was also partly due to the offense. It left less room for the out-of-control rushes to the basket that can cause injury. Jordan laughed when this theory was relayed to him. “P.J. comes up with some wild stuff,” he said.
The Bulls had finished their pregame shooting and were returning for the regular pregame meeting to go over the scouting report on the 76ers when Charles Barkley walked into the Bulls’ locker room wearing his coat. It was about 6:40. Game time was 7:30. Barkley had just arrived and hadn’t gone to his own locker room yet. The Bulls required all players to be at a home game by 6:00 P.M. or be fined. Philadelphia coach Jim Lynam had dropped a similar rule because Barkley never adhered to it.
“A great, great player, maybe unstoppable,” Jackson said as he watched Barkley talking with Jordan. “But he’s got no discipline, none. You can’t win with a player like that.”
This night, Jordan most certainly was a player you could win with, scoring 40 for the third time in the last six games. Philadelphia drew within 1 late in the game, but Armstrong hit a jump shot to put the Bulls ahead by 3 and then Bill Cartwright hit two straight jumpers to hold off the 76ers. It was an important win, almost a crucial one, the coaches felt. The Bulls needed to defeat a good team on the road, something they hadn’t done since the Utah and Boston games two months earlier. Philadelphia may have been hurting, but it counted.
The Bulls then went home and defeated the Hawks, with all five starters scoring in double figures. Grant, Pippen, and Cartwright each got 10 rebounds, and Paxson and Cartwright hit the crucial shots in the last two minutes when Atlanta closed a 16-point deficit to 1.
A trip to Charlotte was next and was relatively easy for all but Jordan, who was always greeted there like a returning war hero. He rarely got his afternoon nap before the game because he had to receive old friends, much as the pope might. In the game, the Bulls pulled steadily away and led by 19 early in the third quarter before letting the Hornets close to within 7 with nine minutes to go. So Jordan put on a show, scoring 12 of the Bulls’ last 14 points.
Then the Bucks came down to Chicago for the Bulls’ last home game before going on the road for nine of their next ten over the twenty-five days leading into the All-Star break. Milwaukee had defeated Chicago at home in December, but the Bucks were struggling now and a little beaten up. They’d surrendered first place after almost a month atop the Central Division; they were now a half game behind the Bulls and in third place.
Jordan and Pippen applied their own kind of accelerant, stealing the ball and feeding one another for slams. They pretty much just looked for one another on the court these days, as neither much trusted Cartwright and they only viewed Paxson as a bailout in case of emergency. They combined for 19 points in the third quarter as the Bulls went up by 10 and never led by fewer than 6 in winning 110–97.
The Bulls had now won six straight and would face teams with losing records in four of the next five before another western trip. They weren’t playing that well, the coaches knew, but their defense and overall team athleticism was enabling them to escape with wins after those impressive spurts. It was still early in the season and still a time for development. They were in good position as the race headed toward the halfway point.
But Jerry Krause, for reasons that were unclear to the team, insisted on dumping gasoline onto the fire.
There was a growing tide of resentment on the team about the Bulls’ pursuit of Yugoslav Toni Kukoc. Everyone had heard the stories about what a super player he could be, but they saw Krause’s obsession with him as a pipe dream, and one that was costing them money. The Bulls had offered Kukoc a firm $15.3 million for six years. They were being careful to keep about $1.8 million available under the salary cap so they could sign him if he decided to come to the NBA. This left the Bulls with one of the lowest payrolls in the league. Pippen was demanding a new contract and Jordan, too, wanted more money, although he was not sure how he could get it. Paxson and Cartwright were unsigned. The players naturally weren’t thrilled that the Bulls were offering millions to an untried European who might take one of their jobs.
The team sent Jordan a half-dozen tapes of Kukoc so Jordan might see how talented Kukoc was. Jordan refused to watch them.
Krause traveled to Yugoslavia in December to meet with Kukoc and give him a deadline, the first of Krause’s three trips overseas and the first of at least five “final” deadlines for Kukoc to make a decision. The Bulls said he must make a decision by the end of January.
But the 6-10, 200-pound Kukoc could not be persuaded to make up his mind, and the January deadline would pass without a decision. Pippen could barely be contained as reports circulated regularly in the media about offers to Kukoc while his own negotiations weren’t moving. Jordan remained displeased, even telling Falk to try to work out a trade if the Bulls signed Kukoc. Jordan also believed Kukoc would fail because of the incredible pressure that would fall on him the way the Bulls had built up his ability, and the promise he’d heard that Kukoc would be made the starting point guard; he told Reinsdorf the Bulls should trade Kukoc’s rights and get something for them. But Jordan also doubted Kukoc would come to the Bulls, especially after Krause’s visit.
“What a guy to send if you’re trying to get a guy to come here,” Jordan said laughingly in the locker room. “He’s gonna think everyone over here has doughnut crumbs on their face.”
To Jackson, though, it wasn’t a joke. He saw the resentment growing on his team, not only toward Kukoc, who he felt could be a solid player someday, but toward the organization. And he began to think Kukoc was just using the Bulls to increase his bargaining power with teams in Italy and Spain. Krause asked Jackson to call Kukoc and assure him that he would get a fair chance for playing time. Jackson reluctantly agreed, but Krause was having p
aroxysms after the call.
The translation wasn’t exact, but Jackson, after listening to Kukoc hesitate in his intentions, got fed up. “Listen, kid,” he said. “Enough of this. Either shit or get off the pot.”
The Bulls went to Orlando on January 16 to open a four-game, eight-day trip, but the game would matter little. It was sunny and the evening was balmy as the team bus rolled up to the arena, but it would be the desert everyone would soon be thinking about. Some thirty minutes before the game was to begin, word flashed that the United States had begun bombing Iraq. The Persian Gulf War had begun. The usual pregame tape of that night’s opponent was slipped out and everyone watched the TV news reports. Jordan has an older brother, Ronnie, stationed in Germany, and he figured Ronnie might be called. “We’re gonna kick their asses,” Jordan said as the first reports of the beginning of hostilities passed on the screen. “We’re gonna show them they can’t mess with us.” It wasn’t a unique response, and his thoughts clearly continued as his words trailed off. Emotions were stampeding away everyone’s concentration on the game.
It would be a period of ambivalence for Craig Hodges. He’s a Muslim and was sympathetic to elements of the Iraqi cause, but he knew he had to remain quiet to protect his family. Actually, he was quite popular on the team, and he often debated religion and politics with Paxson and Grant. He believed this was Armageddon. “We’ve been in it for a while, but this is just the physical manifestation,” he told Grant. He said he was ready to die if necessary and wasn’t worried because he knew he had lived a good life. Hodges was a student of black history and often tried to rally his teammates, but he found it wasn’t easy to gain sympathy among blacks who were doing so well.
Hodges had become a follower of the controversial minister Louis Farrakhan. When Hodges was playing in Milwaukee, he had tried to get his teammates to attend a Farrakhan rally. He was the only one who attended. Less than a week later, Hodges was traded to Phoenix, and word got back to Hodges sometime thereafter that the Bucks were worried he might try to start some kind of black-nationalist movement among the players. Hodges wasn’t sure what to believe.
Although Hodges shielded his politics from public view, there was concern, too, in the league office as plans were made for the All-Star weekend. Hodges’s appearance as defending three-point-shooting champion was being greeted with very little enthusiasm. League officials were worried that with the nation at war with a Muslim nation, Hodges might say something embarrassing if he won. There was talk of asking Hodges not to mention Allah in any postgame speech if he won.
Hodges was very tolerant and was a source of enthusiasm for the team. Jackson thought long about working him into the lineup more to take advantage of his passion and drive. He could be encouraging while remaining a good sport, so he was often the subject of kindly ridicule for his beliefs. Some players called him “the Sheikh,” and one time on the team bus after the war had started, a player farted and Jordan, militantly chauvinistic throughout the campaign, yelled, “Hey, Hodg, that’s a bad one. Is that one of them Muslim farts?”
Hodges thought his detractors foolish, for he had studied the Koran and believed the end was near; he said the Koran offered symbols of the end that were evident in this struggle. He believed Ronald Reagan was the devil, noting that there were six letters in his first, middle, and last names, and that the address of his California home had been changed because it was 666. But Hodges preached nonviolence and respect, often leaving teammates to wonder whether he made more sense than the government, which was at war.
It was undeniably hard for anyone to concentrate on the game. Orlando led by 7 late in the third quarter and the game was tied with about nine minutes left when former Bull Sam Vincent completed one of the most extraordinary sequences for a point guard anyone could remember: He went seven straight possessions without letting anyone else on his team touch the ball. After Vincent missed three shots and committed four turnovers, the Bulls were ahead by 10, and they would win 98–88. Soon, Vincent would lose his starting job for the rest of the season to Scott Skiles, his college teammate.
The outbreak of hostilities in the Middle East and what it could mean remained in the players’ thoughts throughout. Before the war, Saddam Hussein had threatened to send out assassination squads if the United States attacked his country. During the first time-out, Hodges looked around the stands and said to Grant, “You know, the General [Jordan] is considered a national treasure. If they’re going to try to get anyone it would be him.” Grant and Hodges moved a few steps away from Jordan. The word spread in later time-outs, and by the time the game was over Jackson was standing next to Jordan shouting plays and advice while the other players leaned away.
The Bulls moved on to Atlanta the next day; thanks to their charter plane, they were unaffected by the newly tightened airport restrictions that would force most teams to spend hours in airports before their flights. Jackson, an antiwar activist from the sixties, wanted to make a statement, but felt he had been blackballed once for his activism and couldn’t take the chance again, especially when this was the last guaranteed year of his contract. “I’m trying to figure out how to do something without it being too public,” he said. He was frustrated and angry. He felt it was no more possible to win a war these days than to win an earthquake. For now, though, he’d concern himself with the Hawks.
Some of Jackson’s players had the war on their minds, too, after an off-day in Atlanta. Several of them went to see the Martin Luther King, Jr. Center, and Cartwright said later his palms were sweating when he got to meet Mrs. Coretta King. “The first time I’ve ever been nervous like that meeting someone,” he said. The visit had been set up by the TNT cable network as a media event, but the media and team officials were cleared out and only the few players who went, including Cartwright and Hodges, got to see Mrs. King. She wanted to talk with them about the state of black America and the war. Why, Mrs. King wondered, did the U.S. government pick January 15, Martin Luther King Day, as its deadline to begin a war in the Persian Gulf, a war in which, she noted, more than 50 percent of the combat troops—those most vulnerable—were black. It was a question Craig Hodges had raised, too.
For most of the team, a day off in Atlanta meant far less lofty thoughts. Atlanta is one of the players’ favorite towns for its night spots, especially some of the X-rated kind. Knowing this, Tim Hallam, the team’s PR director, thought he’d have some fun. He knew Cliff Levingston wanted to go to one of the strip bars so popular among the players here. He also knew Jim Durham, the Bulls’ longtime play-by-play announcer, was a devout Southern Baptist who usually adjourned to his room early to meditate and read the Bible.
“Cliff,” Hallam said as the bus rolled toward the downtown Marriott, “I think J.D. would like to go tonight.”
“Great,” said the gregarious Levingston, and he turned across the aisle to Durham. “Hey, J.D.,” said Levingston, “we’re going to the Gold Club tonight. Want to come?”
“Uhhhh, no, I don’t think so, Cliff,” said Durham.
“Aw, c’mon, you’ll love it,” said Levingston, flashing his characteristic inviting grin. “They stick their titties right up there in your face.”
“Well, no,” protested Durham. “I’m kind of retired from that kind of stuff.”
Behind the pair, fellow broadcaster John Kerr, Durham’s best friend, and Hallam were holding their sides trying to keep from bursting out hysterically.
“Okay,” said Levingston. “But it’s gonna be great.”
The game turned out not to be so great for the Bulls, who were up by 10 midway through the second quarter, but were overwhelmed by Atlanta’s fast break and led by just 1 at halftime. Jackson admired the job Bob Weiss was doing as coach of the Hawks, a team of disparate parts Weiss was somehow getting to play together. As Collins had with Jordan, Weiss’s predecessor, Mike Fratello, had told team management they’d never win with Dominique Wilkins because he was too selfish. Fratello was fired after the 1989�
��90 season and replaced by Weiss, who had Wilkins rebounding more, had turned Moses Malone into a reasonably agreeable role player to the surprise of everyone in the league, and had gotten Spud Webb to become an offensive threat at point guard. Weiss used perhaps the only system of leverage left to men who coach athletes who earn three times their salary or more: If the players wouldn’t do what he asked, he’d cut their playing time. “The two most important things to athletes,” agreed John Paxson: “playing time and money.”
The Hawks gradually took over the game in the third quarter and then blew out the Bulls early in the fourth to win 114–105. Jordan scored 30 and Grant had 10 rebounds again, but the bench was outscored 47–20, and Jackson grew more and more frustrated as the game went on at the 29–15 disparity in free throws. And even though Jordan took 28 shots, lead referee Darell Garretson and his crew sent Jordan to the free-throw line just twice in the forty-one minutes Jordan played.
The Bulls trailed by 13 points with fifty-nine seconds left; still, Jackson called three time-outs. Jackson resented Garretson’s sometimes abusive behavior toward Jordan on the court, and he told his assistants, “I’m going to make him stay out as long as I can.”
At the broadcasting table, Kerr, a former NBA coach, joked about the coach who was about to die and uttered his last words: “Hey, I’ve got one time-out left.”
Garretson was considered something of a little dictator and seemed to resent star players like Jordan, although Jackson admired his ability to call a solid professional game. But Jackson hated to see Garretson get a Bulls game because of Garretson’s conflicts with Jordan. It was the second Bulls game this season for Garretson, and the Bulls had lost both. The first one had been in Milwaukee in December and that one, too, had angered Jackson because Garretson’s son was on the crew and Garretson spent much of the game telling his son where to stand. Jackson was among the most quarrelsome coaches in the league, spending much of the game debating calls, but often with a sense of humor that kept him from getting assessed too many technical fouls. When Wally Rooney called a foul on B.J. Armstrong for bumping John Salley in a Pistons game, Jackson leaped up and yelled: “For God’s sake, Wally, he’s a hundred and six pounds.”
