“It’s a weird thing to play sixty-five games without someone,” Steve Kerr said, looking back in 2012, “and then that person, who just happens to be the most dominant figure in the sport, just shows up, you know, and plays. It was an adjustment period for sure. And we were all giddy. We were all so excited because we knew we had a chance to win again.”
In their time alone with him, however, the team was adjusting to a new undercurrent of contempt. Kerr was stunned at the way Jordan seized control of the entire team’s mental state, for better or worse. “We had no idea,” Kerr said. “He was so intense… and condescending in many ways. None of us felt comfortable. On a daily basis, he would just dominate practice, not physically, but emotionally and in an intimidating fashion. He was going to make us compete, whether we wanted to or not, you know. There’s certain days where it’s like, you’re an NBA player and you’re exhausted. Every team goes through this. There’s just days and you’re gonna go and get your shots up, but you just need your rest. And Michael doesn’t need rest.… He doesn’t sleep, even today, he doesn’t need rest. And other guys do, and so on those days when people were tired, he would ridicule us and cajole us and… you know, just yell at us. It was tough. It was hard to deal with.”
To the basketball public, it had all the appeal of a storybook ending. The Bulls finished in fifth place in the Eastern Conference and had no home-court advantage in the playoffs. Still, they managed to oust the Charlotte Hornets in six games in the first round. Johnny Bach had been hired by the Hornets and sat on their bench, watching the series wistfully. Jordan greeted his old coach warmly.
“I would have loved to be there,” Bach said years later, looking back. “But it was not to be.”
Jordan had readily accepted Jackson’s account that Krause had necessitated Bach’s firing. That and the conflicts with Pippen had served to halt any thawing in his relationship with the GM brought about by the first three titles.
Chicago’s next opponent was the Magic. Horace Grant had joined Shaquille O’Neal in the Magic frontcourt, with Anfernee Hardaway, Dennis Scott, and Nick Anderson providing Orlando with athleticism and shooting to go with their power in the post. They had whipped the Bulls in the United Center shortly after Jordan’s return. This one would be a decidedly personal series, with Grant eager to give Reinsdorf, Krause, Jackson, and Jordan a good look at what they had, in his mind, always seemed to disrespect.
The Bulls played their way to a 91–90 lead in Game 1 in Orlando but lost on Jordan’s two late-game turnovers, one a steal by Anderson when all Jordan basically had to do was dribble out the clock, a flashback to his final game in high school. “Number 45 is not number 23,” Anderson said afterward, adding that Jordan didn’t seem as explosive as he had been before he left for baseball.
“We agonized a little bit for him this year when he went through the postseason drama,” Jackson said later. “But knowing Michael so well, I put my arm around him after that first game against Orlando when he lost the ball and said, ‘As many times as we won behind you, I never expected to see this happen. Let’s use it for our tool. Let’s use it to build a positive. You’re our guy, and don’t ever forget that.’ You never think you’ll have to go to Michael and talk about something like that.”
Jordan refused to speak with the press afterward. He showed up for the next game wearing his old 23, an unannounced jersey change that drew the Bulls a $25,000 fine from the league. The NBA also enforced its policy that required Jordan to begin addressing the media again.
“I didn’t take that in a harsh way,” Jordan would say of Anderson’s comment a few days later when finally forced to talk. “I set such a high standard two years ago, and in twenty games I haven’t lived up to that. And that’s what I’m going to be judged on. I have to live up to my own expectations.”
The Bulls won Game 2 to even the series and take away home-court advantage. They fully expected to take control back in the United Center for Game 3. Jordan scored 40, but he took 31 shots and seemed to forget at times that the Bulls had a team offense. Orlando took the critical game, but Jordan trimmed back his shot selection in the fourth game, which allowed Chicago to even the series. Asked about his future, as the reporters and camera crews packed ten-deep around him, he replied, “Everyone has an opinion about Michael Jordan except Michael Jordan. I came back for this season and next season, and from that point on, we have to evaluate it.”
From there, he missed shots, made miscues, and watched Grant’s play shift the series. Jackson had decided to double-team O’Neal while leaving Grant unguarded, figuring that if Grant made shots, they would only be two-pointers. It backfired. Grant answered Jackson’s strategy by scoring early and often, which emphasized a Chicago weakness at power forward. The Magic closed out the series, 4–2, on the Bulls’ home floor, and Orlando’s young players hoisted Grant to their shoulders and carried him off in celebration.
In the hallway outside, the Bulls coaching staff seemed numb with disbelief. Nick Anderson was right, Tex Winter confided. “Michael isn’t the same player.”
“He’s aged like everybody else has aged,” Jackson agreed later. “But he’s still Michael Jordan.”
Jackson predicted that Jordan would regain his touch and shoot better than 50 percent for the next season. “You can bet your bottom dollar on that,” the coach said. “Will he break through all the defenses that people bring at him, the double-teams and triple-teams? No. But he’ll probably start knowing where to pass the ball better. Michael lost perspective of where the passing would have to come from a lot of times.”
Jordan had needed the team-building of a full eighty-two-game schedule, Jackson said, looking back some weeks later. “He saw and heard the criticism that went on in the postseason. There was a lot of the blame game going on in Chicago, a lot of people whining and gnashing teeth. Michael’s going to use that for his strength.”
It was a profoundly humbling moment for Jordan, Steve Kerr recalled in 2012. “He gets the ball stolen from him at half-court by Nick Anderson. We had the game won. We lose that series. He had some phenomenal games and some very poor games, so I always thought it was the failure of the playoffs that drove him. But, I think baseball had to figure in there, too, because his last title was in ’93, so he goes two full years without feeling like he’s on top of the world.”
Failing his team had bruised his outsized pride. For years he had taken the Bulls’ fortunes on his shoulders and lifted them with brilliant performances in front of millions of adoring witnesses. Now it was his fall that was on display.
Chapter 32
TRAINING CAMP
MICHAEL JORDAN’S MUCH-HERALDED return had served to reveal mostly what he didn’t know. He hadn’t really known vulnerability, at least not on a basketball court. “The game taught me a lesson in the disappointing series I had last year,” he would admit that fall. “It pushed me back into the gym to learn the game all over again.”
Fans and media naturally shifted the blame elsewhere, onto Chicago’s offense. In the days following the loss, the sports talk shows in the city buzzed over the possibility that the triangle no longer worked for the Bulls. Even Tex Winter himself harbored doubts and badly wanted to know Jordan’s thoughts on the issue.
“With his impulsiveness,” Jackson recalled, “Tex said, ‘Phil, I’d like you to ask him, does he think we need to change the offense? Can we play this triple-post offense? Is it something we should plan on using next year? I want you to ask him just for me.’ So I did, and Michael said, ‘The triple-post offense is the backbone of this team. It’s our system, something that everybody can hang their hat on, so that they know where to go and how to operate.’ ”
“By that time, Michael had won three championships playing the triangle, so he had complete trust, in the offense and in Phil,” Steve Kerr explained. “You know, Phil would tell us in practice repeatedly, he’d say, ‘I don’t run the triangle for Michael or Scottie. Those guys will score, no matter what offense we run. I
run this for the rest of you guys.’ He would say that in front of Michael, and I think that was smart, because everyone knows, in some ways, that offense was restricting Michael’s abilities. If the goal was to try to get him 40 points, we could have just run plays for him and cleared out for him and he could have gotten 40 points. But we weren’t going to win that way, and Michael knew that already.”
Far more than the offense, the team’s future still hinged on a nagging question about Jordan himself: What if he up and quit again? It seemed pretty clear to some observers that his time as the game’s dominant player had passed. There was even speculation among some Bulls staff members that he might retire again rather than deal with the hassles of NBA life. This speculation intensified over the summer as Jordan became involved in the battle over a collective bargaining agreement between the NBA and its players. He had never shown the slightest interest in league labor issues, and had determined never to seek to renegotiate his contract with the Bulls. Yet, here he was, at the urging of David Falk, taking a leadership role in a renegade effort to decertify the players’ union and force the league into giving its players a better deal with more freedom to negotiate. The issue was eventually resolved, but it left the impression of a new Jordan, more aggressive in off-court issues.
Despite the public anxiety over his and the team’s future, the Bulls coaching staff remained quietly upbeat about their prospects. They saw that Orlando’s talented young team would be the main contender in the Eastern Conference, and if the Bulls hoped to win another championship they would have to match up with the Magic. Chicago needed to find a power forward, to strengthen their post play, and to find bigger guards to counter Orlando’s trio of Anfernee Hardaway, Nick Anderson, and Brian Shaw.
Krause’s first move was to leave fan favorite B. J. Armstrong unprotected in the upcoming expansion draft. A bigger guard to replace Armstrong was already on the roster—former All-Star Ron Harper, whom Krause had signed in 1994 to help fill the void created by Jordan’s retirement. A series of knee injuries had precipitated a decline in Harper’s athleticism since his days as a young superstar with the Cleveland Cavaliers. He had been frustrated with the triangle offense, but Jackson persuaded him that if he improved his conditioning, he would be a factor for the coming season.
Likewise, Jordan needed to retool both his mind-set and his workouts, in order to replace what Reinsdorf called his “baseball body” with a leaner basketball body. Jordan was scheduled to spend the summer months in Hollywood making the animated Bugs Bunny film Space Jam with Warner Bros. Surprisingly, the Bulls’ coaches weren’t worried about their main player spreading himself too thin in this new age of vulnerability.
“We didn’t worry about Michael,” Winter said. “We figured Michael could take care of himself.”
For the most part, his “gym” would be a temporary floor in the Hollywood studio he occupied while making his film. There, Jordan could work on his game yet be within reach of the film crew when he was needed to shoot a scene. For years, Krause had encouraged Jordan to make a greater effort at weight lifting, but Dean Smith had never been a fan of bulking up his players, an influence that had resonated with Jordan.
The more Krause talked about weight lifting, it seemed the more Jordan scoured the landscape for open tee times. But Orlando had gotten his attention. Krause had long wanted Jordan to work with team weight lifting director Al Vermeil, the brother of former Philadelphia Eagles coach Dick Vermeil, but Jordan eyed suspiciously anything suggested by the GM. Instead, he turned to Tim Grover, Juanita Jordan’s personal trainer. Jordan, Harper, and Pippen worked out every morning with Grover, referring to this group as the “breakfast club.” In time, the Bulls would come to be considered one of the best-conditioned teams in the history of the game. And Grover would soon be in top demand as the guru who guided the rebuilding of MJ’s body.
“I’ve never seen anybody work harder than Michael Jordan,” Grover said that fall. “He fulfilled his normal summer obligations—shooting commercials, making some personal appearances—and he shot a movie. But his conditioning program always remained his primary objective.”
For Jordan, the torturous off-season program was just the beginning of a yearlong effort to regain his earlier dominance in the NBA. As he neared his thirty-third birthday, he tried to prepare himself to face not only the game’s talented young players but the specter of his own youth.
“I’m the kind of person who thrives on challenges,” Jordan explained at the time, “and I took pride in people saying I was the best player in the game. But when I left the game I fell down in the ratings. Down, I feel, below people like Shaquille O’Neal, Hakeem Olajuwon, Scottie Pippen, David Robinson, and Charles Barkley. That’s why I committed myself to going through a whole training camp, playing every exhibition game, and playing every regular-season game. At my age, I have to work harder. I can’t afford to cut corners. So this time I plan to go into the playoffs with a whole season of conditioning under my belt.”
He needed to keep playing that summer, even as he spent long days on the film lot. Jordan arranged to set up a court and invited an array of NBA players to join him for pickup games between takes on the set. He had great fun with the summer competition. But by the time he wrapped the film, packed up, and headed back to Chicago for training camp, his focus was sheathed in an inexplicable fury. It would be woe unto anyone who stepped in his way.
The Anger
The first time Jim Stack suggested the idea Jerry Krause ignored him. He knew Jordan and Pippen would go nuts if they brought Dennis Rodman anywhere near the Bulls. And Jerry Reinsdorf? They all hated the Pistons, the thug-assed Bad Boys.
But Stack was pretty sure it would work.
“Jim Stack came to me early in the summer and asked me to look at Rodman,” Krause said. “When I put him off, he finally pleaded with me. He talked me into finding out if all the bad things we had heard were true. Without Jim’s persistence, we wouldn’t have looked behind all the rumors to see what the truth was.”
The deeper they investigated Rodman, the more Krause became intrigued. Friends, enemies, former coaches, former teammates—the Bulls contacted a wide variety of people about Rodman. Chuck Daly told them he would come to play and play hard. Krause still hesitated.
“Everybody in the league was scared to death of Dennis,” said Brendan Malone, the former Detroit assistant.
Reinsdorf was likewise cautious: Take it slow. A guy like that could wreck everything in a matter of days.
Rodman himself couldn’t believe it when he was first contacted. But Krause realized about halfway through their conversations that he liked the guy. Satisfied, Krause sent Rodman to speak with Jackson, who spent hours trying to read his attitude. Clearly, Rodman wanted to join the Bulls to play with Jordan. He even allowed the team to talk to a psychiatrist he had been seeing. The staff figured Pippen and Jordan would be a very tough sell, but the two of them thought it over. “If he’s ready and willing to play, it will be great for our team,” Pippen said. “But if he’s going to be a negative to us, I don’t think we need that. We could be taking a huge step backwards.”
Once Jordan and Pippen agreed, Krause traded longtime backup center Will Perdue to San Antonio for Rodman in early October, just days before training camp opened.
And like that, Dennis “The Worm” Rodman, the NBA’s thirty-four-year-old adolescent, became a Chicago Bull. He was looking for a two- or three-year deal in the neighborhood of $15 million. “I’ll put five million in the bank, live off the interest, and party my ass off,” he told reporters, which, as time would reveal, is exactly what he did.
In recent seasons, the Bulls had come to rely on a trio of centers, Will Perdue, Bill Wennington, and Luc Longley. Perdue could block shots, Wennington had a feathery offensive touch, and Longley, at seven-two and 290 pounds, had the huge body to go against giant forces like Shaquille O’Neal. None of the three Chicago centers constituted a complete force on his own, but collectively they forme
d what the press had taken to calling a “three-headed monster,” a patchwork solution assembled by the coaches. Perdue would be traded, and Rodman would be the power forward that helped out the surviving two-headed monster at center.
For help in handling Rodman, the team signed his teammate from San Antonio Jack Haley, and then brought in another former Bad Boy, James Edwards, to help out with the center chores. Later they would add yet another former Piston big man, John Salley, all as part of their Rodman plan. The Bulls coaches figured that with Jordan back full-time and committed to winning a championship, with Pippen, Longley, and Kukoc maturing, with Harper refurbishing his game, and with Rodman in town, they had just about all of the major pieces in place. The Bulls had long hated the Bad Boys, but now they were set to deploy a slew of them.
The only problem would be making it work. Rodman arrived in Chicago with his hair dyed Bulls red with a black Bull in the crown and his nails done in a layered Bulls motif. “I understand that they’re a little leery and a little cautious of having someone like me in here,” he said. “They wonder how I will respond to the team. I guess they’ll find out in training camp and during the preseason. I think Michael knows he can pretty much count on me doing a good job. I hope Scottie feels the same way.”
The wild saga of Jordan’s return had finally calmed in Chicago, but now the city found itself engaged in the next media whipsaw, the introduction of “The Worm.” Who could have foreseen that the Bulls’ fan base would fall so instantly and completely in love with the tattooed man? He arrived in town on the verge of bankruptcy and soon had a fistful of endorsement contracts and cash to throw around. Throughout its history, the city of broad shoulders had seen a steady parade of gangsters and curious madams, crooked politicians and honorable shysters, but Rodman was easily one of the most colorful customers Rush Street had ever known. As Jackson would soon note, his new forward was a clown of the first order. After all, who could fail to notice a guy who showed up for a press conference in a wedding dress?
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