Driven from Within

by Michael Jordan

  That first month he had a 13-game hitting streak, and he was hitting over .300. Could Michael have been functional on a big league team? Maybe. Could he have made $6 million a year? No, that’s absurd. But for picking up a baseball bat for the first time in 14 or 15 years and playing one year.

  I THINK IT WAS PRETTY PHENOMENAL.

  Just look at what he led the team in that season. He led that team in RBIs with the bases loaded, and RBIs with two outs and runners in scoring position. He might have batted .202, but he found a way to hit when it mattered most.

  If he had played the second year and improved from .202 to whatever, who knows what might have happened? Michael being Michael, if he had been able to get to .250, then he would have thought he could get to .270 and eventually .300. Could he have done it? I don’t know, but I wouldn’t have put it past him.

  I’VE NEVER BEEN WORRIED ABOUT ANYONE’S PERCEPTION ONE WAY OR ANOTHER. I’VE NEVER ALLOWED ANYONE’S OPINION TO DEFINE ME. I’M COMFORTABLE WITH WHO I AM. I TRUST MYSELF.

  TINKER HATFIELD We would take high-speed footage of players, then slow it way down. It was really the first time I looked at the degree to which Michael’s shoe would deform as he moved on the court.

  Michael had become this prototypical new player. He was like Dr. J, in that he was as quick as a little guy, but he also was good-sized.

  WITH ALL THAT MASS MOVING AROUND, AND MICHAEL BEING ABLE TO CHANGE DIRECTION SO QUICKLY, HE WOULD TORTURE HIS SHOES. HIS FEET WERE INCREDIBLY MESSED UP, JUST DESTROYED BECAUSE OF THE FORCE.

  When we slowed down the footage of him playing, you could see his shoes twisting and turning—they would elongate and stretch or roll over. I remember going back to my own high school days, playing football. I would get new shoes fairly often, and I remember feeling faster because I had new shoes. I remember how quick it made me feel.

  I thought, why don’t we take the kind of torsional rigidity you get from a football shoe and put it into a basketball shoe in the form of a stiffer plate on the bottom. Why don’t we transfer that rigidity, and see if it doesn’t make the player a little quicker by retarding or even stopping the rotational deformity. The idea was to put a carbon fiber plate on the shoe, which no one had done before.

  If we had a carbon fiber plate sitting just inside the outsole, why not let it peek through in a few spots so you can see the technology. It would look cool, as well as enhance performance.

  The only place in footwear that carbon fiber had been used before the Jordan XI was in speed Rollerblading. They were making bucket-like shapes on the uppers, which were bolted to the in-line skate. The whole idea of stiffening up a shoe torsionally started there.

  BEFORE THE XI, MICHAEL’S SHOES COULDN’T LAST MORE THAN A SINGLE GAME.

  They were toast. Technically, we were on to something that had never been done before. But inside Nike, I was being asked why I was spending so much time on the development of a shoe that no one knew for sure Michael would ever wear.

  I will give [Nike co-president] Mark Parker credit. I used to say that if you really wanted to do well in the Nike environment, you needed to do good work, but you also needed a rabbi. You needed somebody to help counsel you, but also someone who would be your protector. Mark Parker was that guy for me. He would kind of call off the dogs and give me room to work, even if he didn’t necessarily agree with the idea.

  FRED WHITFIELD I was working for David Falk at a NCAA regional basketball game. We were trying to sign Jerry Stackhouse. Falk calls me and says, “Fred, get yourself to Indianapolis.” I’m thinking, the game is Sunday, and I need to see Stackhouse. He said, “Quit asking questions.” So I jump on a plane, and they tell me MJ’s coming back.

  I WAS SHOCKED.

  TINKER HATFIELD I had jumped on the design early because I knew all the new technology was going to take too long on normal timelines. We had a couple pairs of the XIs to wear-test just before the playoffs. Michael had seen some rough samples, and now we had a playable version. I put them in front of him, and Michael got the biggest grin on his face.

  IT WAS LIKE THE JORDAN X HAD NO LONGER BECOME A FACTOR IN HIS LIFE.

  He said, “I’m going to wear these in the playoffs.” I said, “No, Michael, we’re not selling these now. We’re not selling them until November.” He didn’t care. We were able to make enough of them to get Michael through the playoffs. What was I going to do, wrestle him for them?

  Ahmad Rashad was around Michael’s house a lot in those days, and he’s a smart guy. I had known Ahmad from the University of Oregon, where we were both athletes. But he went off the deep end over the shoe. That very first playoff game, Ahmad is courtside on-camera, with players warming up in the background. The arena is filling up. Ahmad finished with his opening comments, reached down and pulled up the shoe.

  He said, “Michael is feeling great, but more importantly he’s got these new shoes with patent leather.” No one at Nike had any idea. I’m watching on television, and my jaw just dropped.

  So we went back and filmed him again, and compared that high-speed footage with the footage of the previous shoes.

  WE COULD SHOW THAT THE XI ACTUALLY MADE MICHAEL QUICKER.

  It actually worked. The patent leather was a robust material that didn’t stretch very much, and it was lightweight. The carbon fiber plate kept the shoe from contorting when he stopped. That shoe became one of the all-time favorites.

  IT WAS ALL ABOUT HAVING FAITH. MICHAEL HAD FAITH IN ME, AND I HAD THIS WEIRD FAITH THAT HE WOULD COME BACK.

  THE XI REPRESENTED ANOTHER NEW BEGINNING

  We were coming off a bad year where I had left baseball and we flopped in the playoffs. They said I was too old.

  The same focus Tinker took into designing that shoe, I took into the summer and then right into the next season. Physically, I had a baseball body, and I had to spend the summer transforming my body back into a basketball body. In baseball, you work from your fingers to your shoulders. In basketball, it’s chest, shoulders and legs, without a lot of wrist, fingers or forearms.

  My forearms were so different by the time I came back to basketball that I had no control over some of my shots.

  MY RHYTHM WAS TOTALLY OFF.

  One night I could score 55, the next night I might score 20, and my shooting percentage was horrendous. The night I scored 55 against New York in Madison Square Garden, I was 21-for-37. The next three games I was a combined 26-for-67.

  At the end of the season, I realized I had to retrain my body to get those muscles to respond. The day after we lost to Orlando, I was in the gym.

  I HAD DOUBTS. WHAT HAD I LOST?

  What added fuel was the media saying I was a step slower, that the game had passed me by. That’s all I needed. I played every day, and it was brutal. I treated everybody like the media. I got into a couple fights. I even fought with Steve Kerr in practice that year.

  WHEN I CAME BACK, I DIDN’T HAVE TO TELL ANYONE ANYTHING. I SHOWED THEM.

  I let my actions speak for me. I didn’t have to tell Steve Kerr what his role was on those Bulls teams. I didn’t have to tell Scottie or Dennis what I expected of them. They could see what I expected of myself went beyond the normal expectation.

  My expectation was excellence each and every time I stepped on the court. Whether it was practice or a game, I was there to win. I didn’t have any other agenda, and they knew that.

  GEORGE KOEHLER To this day, I don’T think anyone appreciates how seriously ill Michael was in Game 5 of the 1997 Finals against Utah. In those days, Michael never really left his room. So we’d all be in there close by, to pass the time. We all ordered room service, and Michael didn’t order anything. Then at the last minute, he ordered a pizza from a local joint. If I’m not mistaken it was a pepperoni pizza. Nobody ate the pizza except Michael.

  At two or three o’clock in the morning, Michael wakes up with an upset stomach. So he calls Chip Schaeffer, the trainer, who gives Michael something to settle his stomach. After the antacids, they gave him sl
eeping pills. Nothing works. He felt like throwing up, but he couldn’t throw up. And he’s getting hot and cold flashes.

  All of this could have been attributed to the flu, or whatever. Now it’s early in the morning, time to go to practice. So now they give him a laxative. He’s too weak to go to practice, so he skips the shoot-around.

  Michael tries to sleep, but he can’t sleep. We get on the bus to go to the game at 3 P.M. and he’s just a rag doll. He has no energy. He still hadn’t thrown up. And he still hasn’t slept.

  NOW HE’S GOT ANTACIDS, SLEEPING PILLS AND LAXATIVES IN HIS SYSTEM.

  At 5 o’clock, an hour before the game, he can’t stay awake. So he pumps himself full of coffee. He goes out and plays, and we all know what happened. He plays 44 minutes, scores 38 points, brings Chicago back from 16 points down, hits a key three-pointer to put them ahead, and the Bulls win.

  But at halftime, he’s just drained.

  IF YOU HAD SEEN HIM, YOU WOULD HAVE THOUGHT THERE WAS NO WAY THIS GUY COULD WALK BACK TO THE COURT, MUCH LESS PLAY.

  Michael always drank Gatorade to fill himself back up with fluids. So one of the locker room kids went to get some Gatorade. Two cans come back, but it’s not Gatorade. It’s Gatorload, the stuff you are supposed to drink after you are done playing. Michael didn’t even realize what he was drinking.

  He hasn’t slept in more than 36 hours, he’s got pepperoni pizza, all the medicines, sleeping pills, who knows how many cups of coffee, Gatorload in his body—anybody else would have been in the hospital. And Michael should have been in a hospital. Nobody else would have been out there playing, much less been able to make a pressure shot and walk off the court.

  Michael was so dehydrated after the game that he could hardly move. He looked like he was dead. He was barely conscious. I had seen the whole show to that point, and I am still amazed by what he did with what he had to deal with. That’s just who he is, and it’s hard for people to understand the depth of his will.

  HIS WHOLE LIFE IS A COMPETITION—EVERY ASPECT OF HIS LIFE. AND HE’S GOING TO WIN. IT’S JUST THAT SIMPLE.

  TINKER HATFIELD Michael has a feel for the fashion, and I was quite intrigued by that. People don’t expect athletes or jocks to be designers. I certainly wasn’t on the level of Michael Jordan, but I could understand this meshing of two sides that don’t normally go together. Over time, as he got more and more comfortable with me, our conversations become shorter, not longer, because we were on the same wavelength.

  MAYBE ONE OF THE REASONS THINGS HAVE WORKED OUT AS WELL AS THEY HAVE IS THAT WE EACH HAVE INTUITION TO GO ALONG WITH SOME SKILLS.

  I think we were able to work from that foundation. After a while, we still met often, but we no longer needed to talk about design direction for hours and hours. We could have a little argument about one direction or another, and often he would say, “I don’t completely agree, but I trust you. Go ahead.” That was important for the relationship because Michael doesn’t trust a whole lot of people, even to this day. Somehow or another, we were making some kind of connection.

  ROD HIGGINS When he first came into the league—he’ll probably curse me for this—he used to wear Wrangler blue jeans. Can you imagine the Michael of today wearing Wrangler blue jeans? And he’d have penny loafers, or something like that. That’s where he’s evolved from, country boy to city businessman.

  TINKER HATFIELD

  MICHAEL HAD PREDICTED THAT PEOPLE WOULD START WEARING XIs WITH SUITS AND TUXEDOS, AND THAT’S EXACTLY WHAT HAPPENED.

  We had talked about how being classy was part of our design philosophy. There were a couple of shoes that were a little wild, but the idea was to be unique and innovative, while maintaining a certain kind of restrained class. Even if the shoes weren’t normal looking, they still had to have a classic feel.

  Strategically at the time, Nike Basketball was going in one direction with foam posit, Shox, big air bags in the shoes, and Charles Barkley was being portrayed as a caricature. With Jordan, we wanted to be leading in a more sophisticated way. We didn’t use Shox, we didn’t use visible air, we didn’t throw big straps on the shoes with lots of bells and whistles. We kept them high tech and high performance, but with sophistication.

  WHEN IT CAME TIME TO DO THE XII, I HAD TAKEN A DRAWING OF A WOMAN’S FASHION SHOE AND TURNED IT INTO A BASKETBALL SHOE WITH A HEEL AND TOE.

  That’s how the XII got started. That shoe had an even more improved carbon fiber shank, so it had really good lateral stability. We didn’t use patent leather, but we had a kind of lizard skin look to the leather that made the leather stronger. That shoe became a real asymmetrical medial-lateral story, looking like it was a high heel shoe from the fashion world. It was clearly aggressive, yet still sophisticated. That was the first shoe in the whole series that was purposely asymmetrical. We wove the carbon a little different to make it interesting.

  I have to give Michael some serious design credit. We wanted to start using his number, 23, so we put it on some prior shoes. Then he said, let’s change that up and put the number on there in a different way. It was his idea to spell out the number two on the tongue.

  THE FACT THE INSPIRATION FOR THE SHOE WAS REALLY VERY FEMININE NEVER BOTHERED MICHAEL, BECAUSE HE’S SO FIXATED ON STYLE.

  He doesn’t care where it comes from. Style is style. If it comes from the women’s side, that’s fine. In fact, he has worn small narrow wristbands on his watch that look feminine. If he wants that thinner, lighter look, he doesn’t care that somebody might think it looks like a girl’s watch.

  He’s unfazed by labels like that. Michael’s brand of leadership has always been to be cautious with his words, but bold with his non-verbal statements. That’s the way he played, too.

  FRED WHITFIELD When he started wearing the baggy shorts, everybody wanted to wear baggy shorts. When he started to wear short socks, everybody wanted to wear short socks. But it was his style. No creases in his dress pants? Michael noticed that women’s dress slacks didn’t have creases. So when he started getting his suits done, he made sure they didn’t have creases, because to Michael they just flowed better.

  I will never do anything that isn’t authentic or representative of me. So there was no way I was going to agree to any ads that had any relationship to snakes, which is what they wanted me to do for the Jordan XIX. I’m scared of snakes. I can’t even watch them on television. If anybody drops a snake near me, somebody’s going to get hurt.

  The same thing happened when I showed up to do the commercial about the virtues of failure. The idea of not being afraid to make mistakes, or using negative outcomes to create positive ones was great. But the attire they picked out for me to wear was outrageous. They wanted me to come in wearing a hood with a darkness about me. They wanted this intimidating look: big black boots, jeans, and the hood pulled over my head.

  First of all, I would never go to a game dressed that way. If you are trying to show me going to a game, then you need to show me wearing what I would wear to a game. It was a big deal, and no one wanted to give in. I ended up wearing exactly what I wore to the filming, because there was no way I would put on the wardrobe they had selected.

  THE WHOLE THING BOTHERED ME.

  I felt like the marketing people were trying to misrepresent who I was, or trying to mold me into something else. There is no way I am going to allow anybody to do that. If I am in a commercial, then I am going to be portrayed as the person I am, and certainly not someone created in a marketing meeting to appeal to the latest fad. That’s not me. That’s not Brand Jordan.

  Don’t try to change me to appeal to these new kids coming in wearing sweats to games with all their chains, their jeans, their hoods. No. The arena for me has always been a place of business.

  I was taught to conduct myself in that manner from Day 1. At North Carolina, we had to wear suits, jackets, ties to the games. And I believed in that approach. No one ever saw me going to a game in jeans or sweats.

  MY FATHER ALWAYS SAID, “THE FIRST IMPRESSION YO
U MAKE IS IN THE WAY YOU ARE DRESSED.”

  “If you dress like a bum, then they’re going to treat you like a bum. If you dress like a hoodlum, they’re going to treat you like a hoodlum. If you dress like a businessman, they’re going to respect you and treat you like a businessman.” From then on, all I wore were suits and jackets. That is me.

  I can’t say that I never read articles or listened to what people said about me, but I have always been confident about who I am.

  IF OTHERS HAD A NEGATIVE OPINION ABOUT SOMETHING I SAID OR SOMETHING I DID, THEN THAT WAS THEIR OPINION. IT WASN’T GOING TO AFFECT ME.

  If I felt a certain way about my skills, or the way I played the game, then I dealt with those feelings, and I knew what I believed. No one is going to sway me or my beliefs about those very fundamental parts of who I am. That confidence came well in advance of the sixth championship. It started back in high school. I took on a me-against-the-world mentality. I was confident in the knowledge of what I could do on a basketball court.

  TO THIS DAY, I STILL FEEL LIKE I CAN PLAY THE GAME.

  The reality is that I can’t jump as high or be as agile as I once was. But my knowledge of how to overcome deficiencies remains strong. I know I can’t play at the level I once played—I’m not that stupid. But that confidence will never dissipate. It will always be there.

  GEORGE KOEHLER A lot of my friends ask me why Michael isn’t still playing. I say, for one thing, he’s 42 years old. But Michael can still do what he’s always done. I think he’s going to be able to do it at 50. For 10 or 15 minutes, he’s as good as he’s ever been. I’ve seen it in spurts in pickup games.

  HE MIGHT BE A STEP SLOWER, BUT IF HE WANTED TO GET BACK INTO PLAYING SHAPE, FOR 15 MINUTES A NIGHT HE COULD STILL BE MICHAEL JORDAN. AND WHEN YOU SEE IT HAPPEN FOR THOSE 15 MINUTES, THE HAIR ON THE BACK OF YOUR NECK STILL STANDS UP, BECAUSE IT’S COOL.