by Larry Bird
Michael gives back in a lot of little ways that probably don’t get into the newspapers. He’ll help out a sick kid or something, and he’ll do it quietly, not because he wants the publicity but because it’s the right thing to do. Michael would be the kind of guy you’d like to hang around with. He’s a fun guy, and he likes golf. What else do you need? Now that Michael is retired, we’ll probably see each other two or three times a year, at a golf tournament or some charity thing, and that will be enough. There’s no question our approach is a little different. If I call a country club and say, “Hey, can I come over and play golf?” there would be people all over the place, wanting stuff. But if I have my friend call the club and have him say, “I’ve got a guest here, and I’d like to come over,” which I’ve done, then we go over and play and get through there without it being too bad. When Michael wants to play, he has someone say, “I’m calling for Michael Jordan, he wants to know if he can play golf at your club.” Well, when that happens, you better be ready for the circus that is going to go along with it. If you are Magic, you can handle it, no problem. If you’re me, you’re going to run from it as fast as you can.
I’m sure it’s hard for Magic now that he’s not playing. He loved the limelight, and it’s never really the same when you retire. He has always been attracted to the whole idea of show business, and good for him. I think he’s doing well, and he’s happy, and he wants to be the greatest businessman in the world, and from what I understand, with the movie theaters he’s opened up in the city of Los Angeles, he’s on his way. Someone told me Magic wants to be an agent too. I hope not. He’d be very tough. I’d rather not be across the table from him. I’m just glad that his health is holding up, and he’s able to enjoy his family.
I’ll never forget the day I found out Magic was HIV-positive. I got a call from his agent, Lon Rosen, and I was just sick about it. Really sick. We had a game that night, and for the first time in my life I didn’t feel like playing. Lon told me Magic wanted me to know before it all went public, so I said, “Is he there? Can I talk to him?” It turned out Magic was at the doctor’s, so I said, “Listen, I need to talk to him.” I waited a little while, and I called him back, and he sounded all right. Hell, he sounded a lot better than I did. I told him I couldn’t believe it. I wanted to see him. The last thing I wanted to do was go out and play basketball.
The whole thing was so incredibly mind-boggling to me. I kept trying to shake this sick feeling I had, but I couldn’t. I got to the Garden for the game, and everyone wanted to know how I felt and did I talk to Magic? I wouldn’t talk to any of them except to say that my heart and prayers were with Magic and his family.
Of course we had to play the game. We were playing Atlanta, and we were up by 15, and they came back and beat us. I didn’t care. My mind was somewhere else. I talked to Magic once or twice over the next couple of weeks, but it still wasn’t real to me. None of us knew too much about HIV then, and I think we all thought he was going to die. It was so hard to believe that someone that fun, someone that alive, could be so sick. There was never a dull moment with Magic.
Once he got on his medication and continued to feel good, I knew Magic was going to make a comeback. When you are forced to retire before you are ready, I’m sure it’s hard to put the basketball behind you. For me, it was different. I only planned on playing twelve years or so, and I played thirteen. Besides, my back was so bad I knew I could never play again. But Magic still had ideas about playing. So the first thing he does is take over as coach of the Lakers. Magic is a spur-of-the-moment guy. I’m sure two days after he said he’d coach the team, he was saying to himself, “Now what have I gotten myself into?” No wonder he didn’t like it, and no wonder he didn’t do as well as he would have liked. Coaching is not some spur-of-the-moment decision. I agonized over whether I wanted to do it for almost two years. That’s why when people were comparing my decision to coach to Magic’s, I didn’t put much stock in it. It was two completely different situations, with two completely different people approaching it two completely different ways.
Magic still wanted to play when he took over as coach. I’m convinced that if Magic wanted to coach, and put his mind to it, and forgot about all this other stuff he’s doing and really put the proper time into it, he’d be a good coach. But Magic thought he could get out there and play with these guys and practice with them and all that. You can’t. It doesn’t work.
When I decided to coach, I spent a lot of time thinking about Michael Jordan. I knew, like every coach in the league, that he was standing in the way of my team and a championship. I knew I had to figure out a way to turn that all around. For years, Michael had been playing mind games with Reggie Miller. He complained about Reggie in the press all the time. I would have loved it if I was Reggie. It’s hard for me to speak for him, but I would thrive on it. I’m sure there were a lot of guys in the league who hated me. I didn’t care. That was good. It was even better. Reggie does his fair share of talking, and he’s rubbed a number of guys the wrong way. If my guys want to say something to someone else out there, that’s fine. There were a few of our guys talking junk. But it’s like I tell them: “If you’re gonna talk it, make sure you back it up.”
I always liked how Michael handled himself. He talked it better than anyone, without crossing the line. But there was something he did during my first season that surprised me. ESPN had just come out with a new magazine, and Michael did an interview with them. He said playing against Reggie Miller drove him crazy, and he compared it to “chicken fighting with a woman.” He said Reggie’s whole game was based on flopping, and he claimed Reggie had his hands on him all the time, “like a woman holding your waist.” The comments caused a big stir, and they were very embarrassing to Reggie, and all of a sudden everyone was talking about how Jordan hated Miller.
I really did feel bad for Reggie. Of course I’m going to feel that way, because he’s my player. I didn’t think Michael should have said all those things. I understand it’s the way he felt, but it seemed totally out of character for him. He knew that he and Reggie were going to meet up again. Just play. Settle it on the court. But I guess it’s something he just wanted to say, for whatever reason. Here you have probably the greatest player ever in the NBA, and everybody looks up to him, and when Reggie has children they’re going to ask him about Michael Jordan. That’s why I felt bad for Reggie. But as bad as I felt for him, I really did like it, because I thought, “We’re going to play these guys in the playoffs, and Michael is going to be guarding Reggie.” Well, come playoff time Michael didn’t guard him. And it ticked me off.
I brought up all those things Michael said to Reggie as soon as we got to the Eastern Conference Finals. If someone said something about McHale, I always brought that up to him, as a teammate. I wanted it to motivate him. I know it would have motivated me.
Before we got a chance to play Chicago in the playoffs, we had to get through Cleveland. The Cavaliers made me nervous. They were well coached, and they gave us problems. I never knew what a guy like Shawn Kemp would do, which made it hard to prepare. When he was on, he was a scary player. I was worried enough about that series, but then Rik Smits came up to me on the Friday before regular season ended and said, “Coach, my uncle just died. I need to go home.” I said, “Okay, we have our last regular-season game tomorrow night on the road, you can miss that, go home, and be back by Sunday night.” But Rik says, “Coach, I’m from Holland, remember? It will take me a full day to get over there.” I’m thinking, “Oh my God, we’ve got a playoff game Thursday.” I said to Rik, “How close an uncle is this?” He said, “Coach, he was just like a father.” So I told him, “Then you go. If anyone on this team has someone that is close to them that dies, I expect them to go. Don’t worry about the team. I’ll handle it.” The timing was horrible, because Rik was coming off an injury, he wasn’t in great shape, and he needed the work, but it was out of my hands. I brought everyone in and sat them down and told them the situation. It got
even more complicated, because Rik’s uncle died on an oil rig, way out in the ocean somewhere. His body was out there two or three days, and Rik didn’t know when they were bringing him in. Finally I said, “Rik, you’ve got to pay your respects to your family and get back here.” He missed three days, flying back and forth to Europe, so that left us Tuesday and Wednesday to get ready for Cleveland. During our shootaround the day of the game, we had to go like crazy. But the guys were together on this. They understood. We won that first game 106–77 and I started breathing a lot easier.
We eliminated Cleveland in four games. We had New York next, and the big story there was Patrick Ewing was coming back from his broken wrist. I knew how determined Patrick was to win a championship, so he was the one that caused me worry against the Knicks. But our guys were focused on one thing—beating the Bulls—and they took care of New York more quickly than I ever would have guessed.
After we knocked off the Knicks, Mark Jackson got all fired up and started shouting, “Bring on Chicago.” I felt the same way. I really liked our chances. Of course, right before our series Michael started laying the groundwork for his mind games. He told Rick Carlisle what a great coach he was. He told Rik Smits how much he enjoyed playing with him during the All-Star game. I jumped right on it. I wanted our guys to know he was fattening the calf.
The Bulls won Game 1 by putting Pippen on Mark Jackson, and just suffocating him. It took away Mark’s ability to post up, and it hurt us because he had to eat up more of the shot clock to get rid of the ball. Pippen has such long, gangly arms, and he’s a superb defender. Mark had seven turnovers in that game. The other change Phil Jackson made was that he put Ron Harper on Reggie, and Jordan on Chris Mullin. It definitely disrupted us, no question about it. But I still believe that if Reggie had been able to come out and score 30 or 35 points, they would have changed things around real fast.
Unfortunately for us, that didn’t happen. Even so, we played pretty well in the first half. But then we started breaking down, and Michael took over. That was the one thing I was concerned about. I felt if we hung in until the fourth quarter, then anything could happen. Even Jordan doesn’t hit every shot. But if you give him an opening early on, he’s going to go for the kill.
In Game 2 Michael dropped 41 on us, and we lost again. At that point everyone was writing us off. They were saying we were being outplayed, outcoached, and we were overmatched. I’m sure it looked that way, but I knew it wasn’t over. I also felt that the officials needed to recognize what was going on out there. I said I would have liked to see how Michael Jordan would make out if Pip-pen was guarding him the way he was guarding Mark Jackson. I said it because the Bulls were getting away with too much. I know the Chicago Bulls get their share of calls, especially Michael, but Pippen was just manhandling Mark Jackson. It was over the line. I didn’t say a whole lot, but then Sam Smith from the Chicago Tribune came up to me and said he was writing an article about how much Pippen was getting away with. He said he wanted to talk about it. I said, “I don’t really want to say much. How about you say it for me? Then you can save me some fine money.” Well that got Phil Jackson going. So now everyone is talking about the officials, and I just put my two cents in here and there. I put out just a little bit—just enough.
There’s no question the referees have changed since when I was playing. I’ve always felt the referees have tough jobs. Just let them do their jobs, and if you really do get upset about something, then realize you can get away with more by just talking to them. Cursing and swearing at them doesn’t work. The problem now is that the referees let their egos get into it a lot more than before. They carry themselves differently. They want to be part of the show. Earl Strom, one of my favorite officials, was part of the show, but he never lost control of the game. And when it came right down to it, he was going to make the call because it was a real foul, not because Michael Jordan is a superstar and nobody should touch him. Earl was fair that way. If you were the twelfth man, and you got clobbered, you got the same respect as the star.
Who knows if it made any difference, but we did get our share of calls in Games 3 and 4. Just before we tapped off for Game 3, I told my guys I still thought we were a better team than Chicago. I reminded them we hadn’t lost home court yet, and if we won the next two games at our place, we were right where we needed to be. We won both of those games, mostly because our guys finally started playing physical, and because they played like they finally believed they belonged. Reggie, meanwhile, was heating up. He was playing on a sprained ankle, but there was never any question whether he’d go or not. This was the playoffs.
Reggie probably hit the biggest shot of his career in Game 4. We were down to the final seconds, and he pushed off Jordan, spun, and nailed the jumper. The game was in Market Square Arena, and the place just exploded. It was pandemonium. But I just stood there. The reason I didn’t show any emotion was because I had seen the six-tenths of a second go up on the clock when Reggie shot it, so I was waiting to see what they put on the clock. I’ve seen Chicago win too many games on last shots with six-tenths of a second. I felt at that point we were going to win, but I can’t show emotions out there. It’s like another game we had in April that season. We were down eight against Atlanta, and made a great comeback, and Reggie hit this unbelievable shot. It was one of those amazing, lunging, turning, falling-out-of-bounds-and-I’ll-toss-it-up jobs. That put us into overtime. When the ball went through the net, Dick Harter was standing next to me, and I turned to him and said, “Can you believe that?” He said, “I don’t believe it either.” That’s all he said. So the guys come running back, jumping all around, and I said, “Okay, sit down. We’ve got a lot more minutes to go.” Because that’s my job, to make sure they stay focused on the game. As a coach, I know guys are looking at me to see how I react a lot of the time, so they don’t need me jumping around. Somebody’s got to be calm. People kept talking about my lack of reaction to Reggie’s shot, but that was the kind of response my team needed from me.
As it turned out, Jordan got a shot off at the buzzer that missed. The series was suddenly tied, 2–2. What Reggie had done was huge, because he had deflated the whole Michael mystique. Just the idea that Reggie would go after the ball that hard, like he really wanted it, and didn’t think twice about going through Michael Jordan to get it, was just huge. I really believed we had the upper hand. Meanwhile, it was Bulls coach Phil Jackson’s turn to get on the officials. He said his team was robbed, and compared it to the Olympics in Munich in 1972. I thought that was ridiculous. I warned our guys not to get too happy with themselves. I warned them that Jordan would be out for blood. And we had another problem on our hands too. Jalen Rose, who had been playing really well for us in the postseason, was suspended for Game 5 by the league because they said he left the bench when a little shoving match broke out on the floor. I know it may have looked that way to people watching the game, but that wasn’t what happened. On tape, Jalen jumps up from the bench and looks like he’s running toward the court, but what really happened was I told him I wanted him to check into the game, and fast. I thought the way NBC covered it was bad. They’re supposed to report the game, but they made it sound like we committed murder. It was a big blow for us, to lose Jalen. I don’t blame it on him. It was my fault he wasn’t already in the game. I told him to go in right as all that stuff was happening. The way he took off, running down the court, it looked like he was going in to get involved, but the reason he went tearing off like that was because I was screaming at him to get into the game.
Coming into Game 5, I was thinking, especially with Jalen out, that this was the sort of game where you find out what your team is made of. I couldn’t wait to see who would step up and get the job done in Jalen’s absence. Who would emerge as the guy on our team who had what it takes? I couldn’t wait for that game to start. So what happens? We go out and we get killed in Game 5, by 19 points. I was so disappointed. I thought my team had understood the urgency of that game. I sat th
em down the next day and made them watch the first half of that game all over again. It looked like we were playing in slow motion.
I don’t know if they could tell, but their performance in that game broke my heart. Here was a team I knew we could beat, and we let them walk all over us. At that point I began wondering again whether our guys were slipping back into that mentality of “Nobody beats Michael.” That was really going to make me angry. We had nothing left to do but to go back home to Indianapolis for Game 6 and force a seventh game. Having Jalen back helped. So did the crowd. I’ve never heard Market Square Arena that loud. I liked what I saw in the first few minutes of the game, but I’ve found that’s not really a true indicator with our team. What does tell me something is when Rik Smits has a really good game, we almost always win. And Rik came ready to play for Game 6. He scored 25 points in 32 minutes, and he was 11-of-12 from the floor. But, when the game was over, the guy everyone was talking about was Travis Best.
I had been playing Travis Best in the fourth quarter, because he was having success breaking down Chicago’s defense with his quickness. On another team, it could have been a problem, because there’s Mark Jackson, who had been our leader all season, sitting on the bench for crunch time. But Mark was great. I didn’t have to say anything to him. He handled it so well, so professionally, and I know it wasn’t easy for him. But he knew it was all about winning. In Game 6 I went with Best for the entire fourth quarter. With the score tied 87–87, he beat Steve Kerr with a one-on-one driving one-handed runner. Then, in the final seconds, with our first option, Reggie, sealed off, Best took on Jordan, got a step on him as he drove toward the basket, and drew the foul. Travis is a really excellent foul shooter, and he hit them both. That put us up two, and Jordan had one last crack at it, but he slipped trying to take it to the lane. The Bulls were crying foul, but we didn’t hang around. I got our guys off the court and in the locker room before the officials changed their minds.
