“Man can still play,” said Jordan, shaking his head after the game.
Aside from the Golden Tripod, the committee had a few easy choices. Robinson and Ewing were locks, considering the dearth of quality centers. Karl Malone was a lock. Pippen had by then distinguished himself on the way to the Bulls’ championship, and he was a lock. Some committee members didn’t think quite as highly of Mullin as Daly did, but Mullin’s smarts and his ability to play both shooting guard and small forward turned the tide. He was in.
There was much discussion about Barkley, who had been charged with a misdemeanor count of battery stemming from the incident in Milwaukee after a game against the Bucks. Barkley contended that a group of men followed him for a city block, taunting him, and eventually one of them, a twenty-five-year-old named James R. McCarthy, walked up to him with a balled fist. Charles hit him.
Okay, thought some of the committee members, we can overlook that.
But then there was Charles’s presence at a nasty incident in the lobby of a Chicago hotel when teammate Jayson Williams had smashed a glass beer mug against the head of a Chicago man, who, according to the players, had advanced upon them in a threatening manner. Barkley wasn’t charged—as a matter of fact, Williams wasn’t, either—and the incident took on its sharpest focus years later when Williams was revealed to have a capacious dark side. (Williams pleaded guilty in 2010 to reckless manslaughter in the death of his limousine driver in an ugly 2002 incident that dragged on for years.)
Well, thought some of the committee members, we can overlook that, too. Eventually the “great-player” people won out over the “good-citizen” people, and Barkley was in. Let me go on record as saying I agreed wholeheartedly with the decision; in some ways, Barkley turned out to be the most important Dream Teamer.
But always there was the Isiah question. Nobody wanted to come right out and say that Jordan didn’t want him. At one point C. M. Newton stood up and said: “Wait a minute. We have a team that won two straight championships and a coach who coached that team, and we’re not taking the best player from that team?” Another committee member said: “Chuck won two championships. I don’t recall him winning them by himself.” The Isiah question was always the unspoken subtext, the piece of unpleasant flotsam wobbling just under the surface.
Isiah never called Magic directly, but he did lobby with Magic through Matt Dobek, the Pistons’ PR man. But Magic did not speak up for him, partly, Magic says now, because Isiah had questioned his sexuality after he revealed he was HIV positive. Magic discussed it in When the Game Was Ours, Jackie MacMullan’s bestseller about Magic and Bird.
“He questioned me when I got my HIV diagnosis,” MacMullan quotes Magic as saying. “How can a so-called friend question your sexuality like that? I know why he did it, because we used to kiss before games, and now if people were wondering about me, that meant they were wondering about him, too.”
(Magic confirmed all of it to me in 2011. Not that he needed to—unlike Barkley, Magic’s not the kind of guy to be misquoted in his own book.)
There was something else, too, one more Isiah misstep that committee members could use to justify his exclusion. As the seconds counted down on Detroit’s four-and-out loss to Jordan and the Bulls in the 1991 Eastern Conference finals, a few members of the Pistons got off the bench and walked off, deliberately passing the Bulls bench and refusing to acknowledge them, never mind congratulating them. To this day, people think that it happened at Isiah’s instigation. It did not.
“It was my idea,” says Bill Laimbeer, “and I don’t regret it for a minute. The Chicago Bulls were the biggest whiners in the world. They said things about us that went beyond the court, that we were dirty and bad individuals. We just happened to play a style of basketball that they didn’t like.”
Laimbeer also says that Daly pleaded with them not to do it. “He told us, ‘Take the high road,’ ” remembers Laimbeer. But they went low.
Though it wasn’t Isiah’s idea, he was next to fall in behind Laimbeer. He could’ve stopped and said, “Billy, we’re not doing this.” He was the captain, the leader, the best player. But Isiah didn’t do that, so it became an Isiah-engineered deal all the way.
Perhaps that figured in the committee’s ultimate decision. Perhaps it just supplied more justification to ignore a pariah who would’ve been ignored anyway. Perhaps it didn’t matter at all. But, ultimately, Isiah’s phone was not going to ring.
Ultimately, Jordan and Bird said yes, the former finally convinced that Daly, himself a member of the species Golfus degeneratus, would allow enough time for recreation, the latter convinced that he was more than a token. Bird knew he was retiring by then—almost no one else did—and he knew he hardly needed to burnish his image as one of the greatest players in history and one of the most important. But maybe at last he realized the significance of the whole thing. Maybe the thought of playing in the Olympics, which he had watched back in French Lick “on those old rabbit-ear antennae,” as he said later, seized his soul. Maybe he saw the Olympics as the logical capstone. Maybe he was tired of taking Magic’s calls. Maybe all of those things.
On September 21, Bob Costas hosted The Dream Team: The USA Basketball Selection Show on NBC. The USA Basketball committee had decided to pick ten NBA players and leave the remaining two roster spots open, thereby staging a de facto tryout that would take place over the 1991–92 season. In order, here’s how the players were announced: Magic Johnson, Charles Barkley, Karl Malone, John Stockton, Patrick Ewing, David Robinson, Larry Bird, Chris Mullin, Scottie Pippen, and—for ultimate suspense—Michael Jordan.
By that time, though, Jan Hubbard had listed the ten names in Newsday, and the show, the first production ever done inside the new NBA Entertainment facilities in Secaucus, New Jersey, was kind of a dud. It was supposed to be revelatory as well as celebratory, but really, the only true headline was: why wasn’t Isiah on the team? As various bits of Pistons news drifted across the airwaves, Barkley was blunt in his assessment: “Pistons! I hate those motherfuckers.” Yet moments later, with no apparent irony, he talked about how eagerly he looked forward to playing for Daly, further evidence of Daly’s tightrope mastery.
Shortly after the show, Magic released a statement through the Lakers’ public relations department that expressed his disappointment that Isiah was not on the team. “I sincerely hope the selection committee awards one of the final two remaining roster positions to Isiah,” it read. “I say this not because Isiah is my friend, but because I believe he will assist the team in winning the gold medal.”
Jack McCloskey, the Pistons’ general manager, resigned from the committee to protest its exclusion of Isiah, after which Hubbard exposed the fact that McCloskey had never spoken up strongly for Isiah when he could have. Thomas did not make a loud protest about his exclusion. In fact, Dennis Rodman, whom some reported as having gotten more consideration than Isiah—“If Rodman’s name came up at all, and I don’t remember that it did,” says Rod Thorn, “a dozen voices right away said, ‘Noooo!’ ”—complained louder. But Thomas was devastated. When he saw Matt Dobek at a wedding that summer, he said, “Your boy Chuck left me off.” Even Daly, always uncomfortable with the subject, conceded: “Can I guarantee that this will not affect them during the season? I don’t think so. I know Isiah is hurt. That’s not going to go away.”
Years later we discovered, though it was hardly a shock, that Magic’s support of Thomas was bogus, too, another example of why you should treat “official statements” from a team as fruit from the poisonous tree. In MacMullan’s book Magic says: “Isiah killed his own chances when it came to the Olympics. Nobody on that team wanted to play with him.… Michael didn’t want to play with him. Scottie [Pippen] wanted no part of him. Bird wasn’t pushing for him. Karl Malone didn’t want him. Who was saying, ‘We need this guy’? Nobody.”
There was an assumption by many that Thomas would be the eleventh player chosen nine months hence. But those in the know realized by then
that it was all over for Isiah, that he had lost out not only to his enemies but also to those who were supposedly his friends.
CHAPTER 15
THE CHOSEN ONE
Michael Seems to Have It All … But “All” Comes with a Burden
It was a Friday afternoon late in September, shortly after the announcement of the first ten Dream Teamers, and I was backstage at Saturday Night Live with Michael Jordan. If that sounds cool, which it was, you should also know that Jordan was probably sick of me, and, truth be told, I was a little sick of him, too. I had spent the last couple of months of the NBA season chronicling Jordan’s first championship run, which, since it bears repeating, took him seven arduous seasons. Jordan had appeared on the cover of Sports Illustrated for three straight weeks, still unprecedented. (As is the number of times he’s been on the cover—fifty-six at this writing, eighteen ahead of runner-up Muhammad Ali.) I had coaxed every morsel, exhausted every angle, tapped dry every well concerning Jordan and the Bulls’ season.
Chicago had won the championship in five games, finishing off the Lakers in L.A. on a Tuesday night, which gave me until Sunday to file my story. Jordan was supposed to meet me on Thursday but stood me up. Friday, same deal. To be honest, I didn’t really blame him, and I can only imagine that he was celebrating in his own way. Finally, on Saturday morning, he dragged himself into one of his downscale breakfast haunts in suburban Chicago, an hour or so late.
“Alarm clock malfunction,” said Jordan, sliding into the booth. “Can you believe I missed my first tee time? The official beginning of the golf season?”
We talked for a while, and I could see the relief on his face now that he had officially joined the list of winners that included Magic, Bird, and his hated rival, Isiah.
“Personally, I always felt that in terms of intensity and unselfishness, I played like those type of players,” Jordan said as he pushed waffles around on his plate. (He meant players who had won championships.) “Some people saw that, but many others didn’t. And the championship, in the minds of a lot of people, is a sign of, well, greatness. I guess they can say that about me now.”
On a Friday afternoon in September 1991, backstage at SNL, it was hard to believe that anyone else could own the world the way Michael did. He was more avatar than athlete, the center of his and many other universes, clowns to the left of him, jokers to the right. Months earlier he had vanquished the hated Pistons in the Eastern finals, then dispatched Magic in the Finals even as he joined him on the NBA’s Mount Rushmore. Part of the championship series turned into a lovefest between Magic and Michael, mostly at Magic’s instigation. “I told Michael, ‘We can’t be separated like this,’ ” Magic said. “ ‘I respect you too much, and I’m sure you respect me.’ ” Jordan wasn’t nearly as sappy about it—it’s hard to out-sap Magic—but he said: “Before, we hadn’t known each other as people. Then we got to know each other, and that’s when the friendship began.”
After the Finals, Jordan had disappeared, as he had in past Julys and Augusts, into the world’s finest fairways, sand traps, and clubhouses. But he reappeared with a vengeance in September. A week before his SNL appearance, he was toasted and roasted in an NBC special called A Comedy Salute to Michael Jordan, a benefit for Comic Relief and Jordan’s nonprofit foundation. The show was hardly Emmy material—neither would be his SNL appearance—but it did demonstrate conclusively that he had become America’s pet rock and its national hero around whom everyone could rally.
Then came the Dream Team announcement. That was followed by his annual black-tie gala in Chicago for the United Negro College Fund. The next day a seven-mile stretch of I-40 near his native Wilmington, North Carolina, was dedicated in his name. Around that time Marketing Evaluations Inc. released its Q-ratings, and Jordan was number one not only in the United States but also in Canada, meaning that he was more popular north of the border than hockey immortal Wayne Gretzky.
To recap, he had become an NBA champion, an Olympian, a humanitarian, a highway, and a cultural touchstone. That’s not a bad lifetime’s work, and it had taken Jordan all of three months.
Backstage at SNL, the younger cast members, some of them Jordan worshippers from their days in Chicago’s Second City comedy troupe, gravitated toward him, testing his capacity for horseplay, which was high. At one point Jordan pantsed the rotund Chris Farley, then snuck up behind him to block a shot that Farley tried to take on a small basket. When Dana Carvey missed a cue that led to Jordan’s botching a line, veteran Phil Hartman gave Carvey a withering look. “Dana, get it right,” Hartman said. “Michael Jordan’s a big, international star. You’re just a little comedy act.” (It’s hard to think about that scene without realizing that both Hartman and Farley are dead.)
Still, there was reality, and in his cramped SNL dressing room Jordan was tired and cranky. An enervating live-to-tape show awaited him in twenty-four hours; it was killing him that a beautiful Friday afternoon was going by and he wasn’t playing golf. There was a tap on the door and in came cast member Al Franken, now the junior senator from Minnesota. Franken was bearing a basketball, a sweatsuit, a few pieces of paper, and a sheepish grin.
“Uh, Mike,” said Franken, “I told you I wouldn’t ask you to autograph a lot of stuff, but …” Jordan looked up from the TV and asked, “But you want me to autograph a lot of stuff, right, Al?”
When he left Jordan confessed to having some trepidation about a sketch he was to do with Franken in the role of Stuart Smalley, a helpless self-help guru.
“That’s a funny character,” I said.
“You would like it,” Jordan said.
I was never sure what he meant by that; perhaps that it was a sketch attuned to fortysomething Caucasians, of which I was one at the time.
Rehearsals had been hard. The writers had wanted to do a bit about Jordan’s keeping Isiah off the Olympic team, but he wouldn’t go for it. He had missed one of his shots in a scene about carnival basketball, so the writers had cut it. (It seemed to me that it might be funnier to have Jordan play against type and be unable to hit any shots, but who am I to second-guess SNL sketch writers?) He wasn’t sure of his lines and was a little wooden when he did nail them.
We talked for a while, and the conversation turned to Sam Smith’s soon-to-be-released book, The Jordan Rules. I had read excerpts that were sent to Sports Illustrated, and though the book wasn’t nearly as negative as Jordan took it to be, it did eventually cause a sensation, as it laid out Jordan’s sometimes heartless competitiveness, expressed mostly in rage toward his teammates, who never quite knew how to act around him. (It also showed glimpses of his compassion and was clear in its depiction of his alphasuperstar status.) “I know what’s in there,” Jordan said. “I know it’s going to be negative.” He shrugged but looked angry, as if this were part of a continuing crusade of negative publicity against him. Jordan had been nicked here and there, but he had basically been on a seven-year honeymoon with the press—ten years if you count his time in Chapel Hill.
In The Jordan Rules, Smith wrote of a moment during the season when Jordan said to his teammates: “Five more years. 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.” That from a man who had a love-of-the-game clause written into his first contract that allowed him to play pickup anytime, anyplace.
I wasn’t aware of that quote then, but it struck me on that Friday afternoon that Jordan seemed to know what lay ahead, the burdens of fame. He was happy, of course, and felt vindicated that he had sent a message to all those who said he was just a shoot-first-second-and-third player who would never win. But he was wary, too, hardened, much less the happy-go-lucky kid who had taken the sports world by storm. That was inevitable, but it didn’t mean it hadn’t come along quicker than I thought it would. And it was a little sad.
On the way out, I knocked on Franken’s door and asked him what it was like to h
ave Jordan host. He thought for a moment and said, “It was like having Babe Ruth host in 1927.”
CHAPTER 16
THE SPOKANE KID AND THE OUTCAST
Isiah Sends an Olympic Message … and the Mailman Follows with a Special Delivery
John Stockton was a wide-eyed Gonzaga Prep kid back in 1978 when he journeyed to an AAU basketball tournament in Huntington, West Virginia. Stockton was not a recognized star, even in Spokane, and says today that his parents participated in AAU fundraisers “only because they were convinced it would be my last chance to play.” Stockton, who would later lead the NBA in assists, steals, and expressions of self-deprecation, loves to tell the story of a Salt Lake City television station interviewing a former grade-school teammate on the occasion of some Stockton milestone with the Utah Jazz. “The guy told him, ‘Stockton was really nothing special,’ ” remembers Stockton.
For the first eighteen years of his life (not to mention the final chapters, still to be played out), Stockton’s world was circumscribed by the city limits of Spokane, a town where people have their heads on straight, a town of sensible shoes, a town where his paternal grandfather, Houston Stockton, was a football legend. Stockton was small, 5′5″ as a high school freshman and barely six feet when he graduated. What made his career in basketball were his abnormally large hands and his abnormally large capacity for self-improvement. Stockton had a quiet confidence. He says he realized quite early that the battle didn’t always go to the biggest or the swiftest. “I felt that if you played the right way you could win,” Stockton says. “The other guys, when you looked at them, maybe they should win. But we can win.”
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