by Sam Smith
But these would be mere speedbumps along the way as waiting for the playoffs and watching Jordan’s latest drama unfold were the principal activities.
In late March, North Carolina newspapers reported another $108,000 in checks from Jordan, this time turning up in the estate of slain bailbondsman Eddie Dow, who had been the “banker” at that October gambling weekend at Hilton Head.
Jordan, at first, was defiant. “The mistake,” he concluded, “was that it got to be a public knowledge situation. [But] I have a right to associate with whoever I choose.”
No, said the NBA, announcing it would conduct an investigation. On the day the Bulls were to play the Knicks, March 31, Jordan was called into the NBA’s Fifth Avenue offices and received what amounted to a warning and lecture: Be careful whom you associate with. And Jordan would be contrite afterward, answering reporters’ questions for almost two hours before the Bulls defeated the Knicks for their 11th win in the last 12 games.
“No one’s perfect—Michael Jordan, you, or anyone else,” Jordan said. “Sometimes you forget as a public person the things you have to take into account”
He realized he’d gotten off easy.
That behind him, Jordan took his anger to the basketball court with a late-season scoring frenzy, including asking to play almost all of the meaningless final game, and got his scoring average above 30 for the sixth straight season. The Bulls plowed through the end of the schedule and finished with a team-record 67–15 season mark and a chance to start all over again in the playoffs.
The opening-round Miami Heat would be the two-foot “gimme” putt for the Bulls. Will Perdue would score 16 points and grab 10 rebounds in the 113–94 playoff-opening win, which was led by Jordan’s 46 and prompted the Michael-and-the-Jordanaires queries again. But Heat coach Kevin Loughery, Jordan’s first NBA coach, chose not to double-team Jordan, allowing the games to become the basketball version of an easy putt for him. The Bulls then “bounced back,” in Jordan’s words, to pummel the Heat 120–90 in Game 2, as Jordan and Pippen combined for 63 points and 17 rebounds.
The Heat took an 18-point first-quarter lead in Game 3, but the outcome was never really in doubt. Just after halftime, Heat center Rony Seikaly told Bill Cartwright, “good luck in the next round.” The Heat were happy to have made it closer this time, losing 119–114, as Jordan put up 56 and Pippen added 31.
“I was geeked up,” Jordan explained.
June Jackson, Phil’s wife, said she never could remember her husband being so anxious before a playoff series. Grant said Jackson seemed more nervous than he’d ever been. No one really understood why, since fans and some media were saying the Bulls would go undefeated in the playoffs. But they began to understand Jackson’s concern early in Game 1 against the Knicks in the second round of the playoffs, when Charles Oakley was called for a flagrant foul for elbowing Cartwright and then at the end, when the scoreboard read 94–89 Knicks, putting the Bulls down 1-0.
After that hard foul, Jackson yelled to Oakley, who some had said played softer against his former teammates, “You don’t have to prove you’re a tough guy. We know it.” Oakley told Jackson he wasn’t trying to hurt anyone, but Jackson later found out Oakley was fined for talking to the other bench—a Pat Riley rule.
Jackson had heard about Riley’s penchant for control, like the time when the Lakers trained in Hawaii and Riley would have the rims repainted, for no apparent reason, before practice. But Jackson also was becoming an admirer.
“He’s got those guys playing hard and believing,” he warned his team. “That’s a dangerous combination.”
And, Jackson felt, the league and referees were allowing the Knicks to get away with more holding and pushing. The net effect was to slow the Bulls’ game, because such tactics rendered their triangle/movement offense ineffective and the Bulls became a team running in quicksand. They just had to make sure it didn’t envelop them.
But Jackson could see that this was becoming the kind of series that could wear his team out. Pippen had come up with a sore ankle in Game 1 and also was complaining about a sore back and left wrist. And then there was Xavier McDaniel. The fierce small forward with the shaven head had been a disappointment much of the season, but he matched Detroit’s muscle tactics in the opening playoff round to help New York get by the Pistons, three games to two. Curiously, Pistons center Bill Laimbeer predicted the Knicks would upset the Bulls if allowed to use the physical tactics they used in defeating Detroit. Few believed, but McDaniel was one. “If the officials let us play, we can beat them,” promised McDaniel, who also taunted the Bulls by saying that their supposed balance was hooey and that when there was trouble, it was Michael Jordan and everyone else. It was a notion long dismissed around the league, but McDaniel always was an instigator. The most famous picture of McDaniel was of him choking Wes Matthews during a fight and Matthews turning colors. And McDaniel never stopped taunting Pippen when he saw early in Game 1 how Pippen backed off after a hard forearm. “Quit whining and play the fuckin’ game,” McDaniel screamed at Pippen. Even teammates were beginning to worry, and no one would joke with Pippen about McDaniel’s tactics.
“We thought we might lose him,” Jordan told a friend.
The Bulls won Game 2, a pattern that would extend through the playoffs.
“We won every game we had to,” said Grant. “As the games went on, I knew we’d win any seventh game we had to, so we weren’t worried about losing. But we didn’t have enough to win like we did last year.”
The Bulls then seemed to take control of the series in Game 3 with a searing 94–86 win highlighted by Jordan knifing in for a layup late in the game—between McDaniel and Patrick Ewing and screaming “yeah, yeah,” and thrusting his fist at the pair as they lay on the floor after the basket.
But the Knicks won Game 4 in New York to even the series at 2-2. Jackson was thrown out by referee Dick Bavetta late in the third quarter and got the message. Jackson yelled at Bavetta, who is from Brooklyn, after some questionable calls, “You afraid they won’t let you go home,” and he was thumbed. “I knew then,” said Jackson, “it was going to be a seven-game series.”
And it would be, the home teams winning in the next two, the Knicks in dramatic fashion in Game 6, with Ewing hobbling back from a sprained ankle to lead a fourth-quarter charge, thus setting up the climactic seventh game in the Stadium. Suddenly, a sure second title was one game away from elimination. Jordan said afterward he was nervous and discussed the game with his father, who told him to come out fast. He did, scoring 18 in the first quarter and 29 by halftime, as the Bulls cruised into the conference finals against Cleveland, 110–81.
After that Game 7, Jackson’s mentor and former Knicks coach, Red Holzman, came by the Bulls’ locker room to congratulate Jackson. But the conversation turned to Riley and what a terrific job he’d done with the Knicks, how good a coach he really was. Jackson listened intently for some time, and then Holzman looked in his eyes.
“Phil,” he said, “you’re a good coach too.”
And Jackson would have to be. “At some time now,” June told Phil one night, “it’s going to come down to coaching.”
It didn’t seem like much would be needed against the Cavaliers, long a Bulls’ playoff victim and a passive 103–89 loser in Game 1 of the conference finals. “But they can all eat crow,” Mark Price said after the Cavaliers walloped the Bulls in Game 2 in Chicago, 107–81.
There had been much talk about the Cavaliers’ being too weak, but their defensive schemes confounded Chicago. They packed the middle, forcing passes over the top of the defense so that they could steal them, and shut off the inside penetration the Bulls desire. They made up for their lack of talent to match Jordan and Pippen, who was still feeling the effects of the tussle with McDaniel, with heady play and aggressive switching.
The Bulls split Games 3 and 4 in Cleveland, losing 99–85 in Game 4 and hearing Pippen complain afterward about Jordan taking too many shots, hea
ring Armstrong rush to the defense of the bench, telling Jackson and Jordan to keep their critical comments private, and assistant Tex Winter publicly chiding Pippen: “If you’re not scoring, so what? Play defense, play the boards, make things happen.”
Same old Bulls, it would seem.
Then they returned to their 1991 championship ways, riding the Cavaliers out of the playoffs in the next two games and setting up the Finals that had been envisioned for the past two years.
Jackson was wary this time, but not as worried as he was against the Knicks. He believed the Bulls could force Portland into a halfcourt game, and force them into the poor shot choice they were known for. They’ll self destruct if we show them the way. Those words echoed from the March meeting and annoyed the Trail Blazers, who thought themselves much superior to the Bulls after defeating them twice in the 1990–91 season and then not making the Finals despite a league-best sixty-three wins. That should have been us, was their chant about the 1991 champion Bulls, and many around the league believed their talent superior.
“I’m a gestaltist on this,” said Jackson, who felt his team at a man-for-man disadvantage. “The sum of the parts can be equal to or greater than the whole. That’s the game of basketball. We don’t have a great rebounder, but Pippen and Jordan pick up the slack, and if guys box out and do the right thing, we can find a way to bridge the gap against more talented teams.”
Even without Jackson’s direction, the Bulls would do so. Once again Paxson, like he did in 1991 against Byron Scott, would be credited with shutting down a point guard—this time Terry Porter—one of the big keys to victory. But what he did was hatch a little plot with Horace Grant, calling for Grant to run back downcourt with him after every shot and then station himself inside of Paxson so that Porter’s penetration would be blocked. Paxson could then shut Porter down outside and help neutralize the Trail Blazers.
But there would be some stumbles. The Bulls smothered Portland in Game 1, 122–89, as Jordan, making quick work of almost a week of favorable comparisons between Clyde Drexler’s and his ability, scored 35 first-half points, with six three-point field goals.
The Bulls, playing to their pattern, then let a 10-point lead slip away in the fourth quarter of Game 2, and then lost in overtime, even with Drexler out of the game on fouls.
The Bulls won Game 3 in a rugged defensive effort, again refusing to fall behind in the playoffs, but lost Game 4 after blowing another fourth-quarter lead, the oddest excuse coming from Jordan, when he said the Bulls needed to find Cartwright more on offense with Portland employing small, quicker lineups. Advised of the remarks later, Cartwright offered a big smile. “What do you know,” he laughed.
But he wasn’t laughing, nor was Grant, as the Bulls slugged through Game 5, the game both teams knew would determine the series. Going home down 3-2, the Bulls knew it would be tough to win; going home ahead 3-2, they knew they couldn’t lose. So as they surged ahead early, tempers flared. “You’ve got to give me some help,” Grant yelled at Cartwright during a timeout. “Don’t you yell at me,” Cartwright shot back. “Shut up, Horace,” Jackson chimed in. “Relax, take it like a man,” said Pippen.
He had been yelling at Bulls management a few days earlier when Jordan’s retinue had taken all the remaining suites in the team’s hotel. But he appealed to his friend, Grant, and the Bulls went on to win 119–106, as Jordan scored 46 and thoroughly enjoyed the bench histrionics, this time with a wry smile. “He stopped getting on us so much this year,” related Grant.
So it was home for the celebration, which the Trail Blazers stalled for three quarters before a quartet of bench irregulars, led by Bobby Hansen, doused a 15-point Portland lead. Jordan, again winning the series’ MVP award unanimously, handled the rest of the game on the way to a 97–93 victory and that long-awaited second-straight title.
Although the victory would be marred by violence in the streets, Jordan would lead the Bulls back onto the court afterward for a victory lap in front of the home folks, this time without the tears of the 1991 victory, but just relief.
After streaming into the celebratory locker room for the second-straight season, John Paxson turned to Jackson and said, “What a long, strange trip it’s been.”
“It was,” agreed Jackson. “Last year was a honeymoon. This year was an odyssey.”
Acknowledgments
A few weeks following the end of the Bulls’ 1990–91 championship season, I called Horace Grant to confirm a piece of information for this book. I had taken all of the players and coaches aside early in the season to tell them I’d be working on a book this season, and Grant had only vaguely remembered.
“That’s right,” he agreed. “I guess it should be interesting after everything that happened.” Grant seemed to be thinking for a while, and then he finally said, “I don’t know if you’re going to write any things that make me look bad, but as long as they’re the truth, that’s okay with me.”
I relate this conversation only because it’s indicative of the way Horace Grant deals with people, but he was hardly the exception among the Bulls. It’s easy to come away from this season wondering how such a disparate bunch could win a title.
The Bulls won for reasons discussed throughout the book. But I would take exception with the notion that their behavior—often angry with one another and management—suggests that they were an unusual team. I suspect many teams in pro sports exhibit the jealousies, anger, and resentments that often occur in this story. And why shouldn’t they? Frankly, it’s unnatural to take twelve young men united only by their athletic ability, put them together for about eight months, pay them varying fortunes of money, give them one ball to play with, and then expect them to maintain some sort of storybook, harmonious relationship.
Athletes too often are depicted as something less than complete human characters. They’re supposed to be heroes and role models; they’re not supposed to have to stay up all night with sick children, face cranky mothers-in-law in for long visits or have angry or ailing wives. But they do. And they have the same problems everyone else has. It’s just that no one pays to see such problems or hear about them. Athletes are paid to perform. The Bulls did that as well in 1990–91 as perhaps any team in NBA history. But they also fought and feuded and were angry some days, giddy others. They ran the range of human emotions, although when the interviewers were around they mostly gave them what they expected to hear.
This book has been an attempt to look past that, to open the door to the locker room, take you on the team bus and plane, and let you sit with the players while they talk about their teammates, their coaches, management, and friends. Imagine your family with a reporter coming into your house to record everything that occurred during a year. Would some of the things that reporter heard surprise your friends and change the impressions they had of you?
That’s essentially what I did. Although I didn’t have access to the team plane or private meetings, I was able to piece together events that occurred there and elsewhere through relationships built up with this team. This is really a three-year project, that being the time I’ve covered the Bulls for the Chicago Tribune. I traveled with the team, saw virtually all their games, sat for hours in the locker room before and after games talking with players and coaches, met them at their hotels on the road and regularly after their daily practices. This book is the product of those sessions and literally scores of hours of interviews with most of the principals over that period.
A word about them: I cannot point to a player or coach among the Bulls whom I dislike. Some I found more interesting than others, like Bill Cartwright, Michael Jordan, B.J. Armstrong, Scottie Pippen, John Paxson, Craig Hodges, Will Perdue, and Grant. Some I didn’t spend as much time with, like Scott Williams, Cliff Levingston, Stacey King, and Dennis Hopson. But I never found any uncooperative or unattractive in any way.
I was routinely amazed by the ease with which Jordan handled himself in all public situations, his inordinate pat
ience with an adoring public, and his fascinating magnetism and charisma. I respected Cartwright’s grace, intelligence, and dignity, and Paxson’s ability to charm people and mean it. I enjoyed watching Pippen mature and remain playful, while Armstrong always was a kid you wanted to hug. Perdue always showed a remarkably perceptive side and quick, engaging wit. King rarely let his personal troubles, which extended beyond basketball, interfere with his commitment to a smile. And Hodges remained an encouraging beacon of faith for anyone who cared. Hopson was always a gentleman, like his old friend Brad Sellers, and Grant was a welcome port in stormy seas.
And a few words about some of the men who pulled the strings. I discovered managing partner Jerry Reinsdorf to be one of the most misunderstood men I’ve ever known, a guy whose heart and head were constantly at odds, with his heart winning more often than anyone would like to admit. The assistant coaches were a glorious bunch, especially the sagacious John Bach, a true renaissance man of the era. Which brings me to the head coach, Phil Jackson. When my agent read some preliminary parts of the manuscript, she remarked that Jackson was the hero of the story. I think he would be the hero in whatever story he was a part of. Every time I talked to him, I came away knowing something new or thinking about something I’d rarely considered before. I spent four years in Washington, D.C., covering Congress and the White House and never met anyone as interesting. He was calm and smart and funny, and often with a distinctly left-handed view of things. And he was as engaging to be with at the end of the season as he was at the beginning.
I’d also like to get in a few thank-yous, principally to literary agent Shari Lesser Wenk, who was a source of strength and encouragement throughout the year. I’d like to thank Simon & Schuster editor Jeff Neuman for willingly taking a chance and sticking with a first-time author and impressively living up to his title. I’d especially like to thank my Tribune editors, Jack Fuller, Dick Ciccone, Dick Leslie, and Bob Condor, for their support throughout the long season. There are several others who helped along the way I’d like to thank, like Gary Graham, George Andrews, Mike Imrem, Mike Conklin, Don Sterling, Mike Kahn, Jimmy Sexton, Bob Ford, Kent McDill, Dale Ratermann, Rick Pauley, Pete Vecsey, David Benner, Jeff Denberg, June Jackson, Dean Howe, the Bulls PR and executive staff, and especially my wife, Kathleen, for accepting the abnormal life of an NBA beat writer/first-time author and for keeping our son, Connor, from hitting the kill button on the computer.
