Driven from Within

by Michael Jordan

  HOWARD “H” WHITE What holds people back? Sometimes it’s the fear of succeeding, and they don’t even know it. There is a part of us that is so self-conscious that it keeps many people from reaching a destiny that they don’t even know is out there.

  That’s the part we fight to overcome every day. I remember being at the gym with Michael, and there was this businessman, very successful. He wanted to get back in shape, and he’s laying on the board doing some inverted situps. The guy starts talking about how he’s getting cramps, and he stops. Michael tells him he has to find a way to get past the pain if he really wants to get back into shape. The guy walks around a little while, comes back, and finally does another set.

  Then Michael said, “The mind will play tricks on you. The mind was telling you that you couldn’t go any further. The mind was telling you how much it hurt. The mind was telling you these things to keep you from reaching your goal. But you have to see past that, turn it all off if you are going to get where you want to be.”

  Michael was telling this guy about Michael Jordan. He was describing the things that hold all of us back, those things Michael found a way to get past.

  I’VE MADE SOME, I’VE MISSED SOME. THAT’S NOT TO SAY I WASN’T NERVOUS. THAT’S ALWAYS GOING TO BE THERE. BUT FEAR? NEVER.

  THERE WAS NEVER ANY FEAR FOR ME, NO FEAR OF FAILURE. IF I MISS A SHOT, SO WHAT?

  Maybe even a shot that could have won a game. I can deal with that. If I don’t miss the shot, then I don’t miss it—we win. I can rationalize the fact there are only two outcomes: You either make it, or you miss it. I could think that way because I knew I had earned the opportunity to take that shot.

  I had put in all the work, not only in that particular game, but in practice every day. If I missed, then it wasn’t meant to be. That simple. It wasn’t because the effort wasn’t there. It wasn’t because I couldn’t make the shot, because I had taken the same shot many times in every situation. As soon as the ball went up, there weren’t any nerves because I had trained myself for that situation.

  I was as prepared as I could possibly have been for that moment. I couldn’t go back and practice a little harder. I knew I had done the right things to prepare myself for that situation. One way or another, I knew I was prepared to be successful. Now, if you know you haven’t prepared correctly, or you know you haven’t worked hard enough, that’s when other thoughts and emotions creep into your mind. That’s stress. That’s fear.

  It’s the same process for doing anything, anywhere in life no matter how big or small the stage. Whether it’s running a corporation, taking a test in second grade or taking a shot to win a game, at that moment you are the sum total of all the work you have put in, nothing more and nothing less. If you are confident you have done everything possible to prepare yourself, then there is nothing to fear.

  THERE’S NO STRESS IN LOSING UNDER THOSE CIRCUMSTANCES. IT JUST WASN’T MEANT TO BE.

  THERE IS NOTHING I HAVE TO DO FOR BRAND JORDAN TO CONTINUE TO GROW OTHER THAN TO CONTINUE BEING MYSELF.

  I WANT TO ALLOW WHATEVER IS GOING TO HAPPEN TO HAPPEN AT ITS OWN RHYTHM.

  TINKER HATFIELD I didn’t have preliminary discussions with Michael about what he wanted to do with the Jordan XIII. I just had this flash of consciousness about him being a predatory cat. He was so explosive, yet so deceptively passive at times, which was when he’d steal the ball from somebody. He was so smart that he’d trick people into thinking he wasn’t quite paying attention. That’s how cats are.

  I started talking to Michael about watching him play, and this cat thing popped up in my head. I was talking about this black cat, and that’s when he said, “How did you know? How did you know that’s my nickname among my close friends?” I didn’t know. I just watched him play the game and noticed the similarities.

  About two years before the XIII came out, my friends started calling me “Black Cat.” They felt I was like a panther. I would sneak up on people and attack before they could react. It was one of those things Tinker picked up from my world. I loved it. I thought it was a great example of the way I played the game.

  In the big games, I didn’t attack the same way every night. I’m a poker player. I like to see the other guy’s cards first. Early in the game, most guys are going to give you signs about how they are going to play. The hype is so high that they become overly aggressive. They end up showing their cards early. I liked to sit back and see what direction the game was going. “OK, I kind of thought you’d play that way, now let’s see if you can handle the way I’m going to play.”

  THEY HAD NO IDEA WHAT I WAS GOING TO DO.

  NO ONE EVER KNEW HOW I WAS GOING TO COME OUT AT THE BEGINNING OF A GAME.

  You knew it was coming; you just didn’t know when it was coming or how it was coming. But you could be damn sure it was coming.

  It was so easy for me to find ways to motivate myself. It didn’t matter whether it was the seventh game of a playoff series or the 60th game of another season. I know it’s easy to be analytical after the fact and come up with all these wild theories, but my driving force, my passion, was to impress people with what I could do.

  That got me through those dog days. It wasn’t about scoring titles, or any of those kind of accolades. The most important thing I learned from my father was the passion to prove what I was capable of doing. It was just that simple. It’s not brain surgery. If I go to New Jersey for Game 56, we were probably expected to win the game by 30 points in those days. But that never dawned on me.

  IT WAS THE IDEA SOMEBODY MIGHT BE SITTING THERE WHO HAD NEVER SEEN MICHAEL JORDAN PLAY.

  I thought about that person who had never experienced the excitement or entertainment I could provide. That would be the thought that drove me to play that game. My motivation might come from somewhere else the next night. I had to search out and find reasons to play every game at a high level.

  I WOULD WAKE UP IN THE MORNING THINKING, “OK, HOW AM I GOING TO ATTACK TODAY?”

  I never knew what my motivation would be until sometime during the day. It wasn’t as easy as I went along because I had accomplished so much. I had to trick myself. I almost had to find a test within the test.

  Sometimes it was about a coach who was going to create some special defense designed to stop me. Even Phil Jackson, in the later years, started trying to challenge me. He’d say, “MJ, you’re not going to be able to do your post-up move tonight because you’re playing against a bigger guy.” Says who? That’s what you say—That’s not what I say. So I would use that as motivation, and that became the fuel for that night.

  I always looked at it as if Phil was trying to challenge me, not that he was criticizing me. Tex Winter used to criticize me all the time. Tex would tell me, “You’re probably the worst passer I have ever seen.” I’d say, “Yeah, but I’m probably the best scorer you’ve ever seen. So why would I pass it?”

  I look at these kids today, and they don’t know how to trick themselves. They don’t even understand the need to find a way to get yourself ready to play at the highest level every night.

  People don’t realize this, but the Gatorade ads helped the Nike ads. Those Gatorade ads were the ones that families and kids connected to. As much as Nike did, Gatorade brought me into the family. It showed a very genuine side of me, playing with the kids and families. No other commercials did that. In all honesty, “Be Like Mike” was similar to the Mean Joe Greene spot. How many times did you have to see that commercial with Joe Greene to get the connection between a big monster of a guy and that little kid? He was an iconic guy who played aggressively with a killer instinct. Same exact thing.

  UP UNTIL THAT POINT, I WAS CONNECTING WITH THE BASKETBALL ENTHUSIAST, THE GUYS AND GIRLS WHO KNEW THE GAME.

  Gatorade connected me to the kids. Kids could relate. It was like a cartoon. That’s why there are a whole lot of kids who might not have seen me play at all, but they remember that commercial.

  SO WE CAN CONNECT.

  TINKER HATFIELD The
back stories just kept getting more rich and interesting. The XIV was revisiting Michael’s passion for cars, in this case a Ferrari he had at the time. The idea for the XV was the X-15, which was the fastest plane ever flown. The X-15 set all kinds of speed records in the 1960s. It was a rocket plane that was a forerunner to the U.S. space program.

  It became the inspiration for the aggressive, sharp-edged, unusual shape of the shoe. The idea was to pay respect to Michael because he was like the X-15, the best there ever was. That shoe became all about the design of that plane.

  MICHAEL WASN’T PALYING, BUT HIS GAME, THE MEMORY OF HOW HE PLAYED, WAS STILL FRESH.

  Everything was in its place. I came from a small town. No one knew who I was. Everybody was getting well-publicized, but I had to lie to get that status. Once I did, there were people who thought I was too good to be true, so they challenged me, which was right in line with how I went about everything. I didn’t get tarnished by national attention or success at a young age. I didn’t experience the spoils. I always felt like I had to prove myself, one way or another.

  WHEN I DID GET ATTENTION, I WANTED TO SHOW PEOPLE THAT I DESERVED IT.

  I never felt like it was enough to be noticed. That approach carried me through my entire career. That was my strength.

  I NEVER LOST THE DESIRE TO WORK HARD, SET GOALS AND ACHIEVE. THAT NEVER WENT AWAY FOR ME.

  At Washington, Kwame Brown said I was hard on him, and I was because I never believed he had ever tried to push himself. He had developed bad habits, and I don’t believe in bad habits.

  OUR CULTURE NEEDS TO SEE EXAMPLES.

  You can hear about how somebody played, or read about the best way to achieve success, but people need to see examples.

  UNTIL THEY SEE, THEY WON’T DO.

  It’s easy to talk about what Jerry West did, but it’s not as easy to see what he did.

  Tomorrow’s kids are going to have to see someone playing hurt, see someone practicing the day after winning a championship. We have to provide examples so they can relate to that ideal. Otherwise, they will get bad habits. If we lose that gap, then it starts to fade away, and 20 years from now you will never see someone play sick, or get out on the floor with a sore ankle.

  GEORGE KOEHLER He really loves the game. If you sit with Michael and watch a basketball game, you would think he was going to break the television. He screams, he yells. It’s amazing how astute he is. He knows the strengths and weaknesses of every player on the floor. It was part of his preparation as a player, it went into that computer in his head and stayed there.

  It was the same in Washington. He didn’t come back to play. He came back to evaluate the talent. He wanted to go back to the front office and be more efficient.

  HE WANTED TO LOOK THESE GUYS IN THE EYE, PUSH THEM TO SEE IF THEY WOULD PUSH BACK.

  He wanted to see a player’s work ethic. He wanted to know if they showed up on time. It was all to learn about the league. It had nothing to do with his ego. He didn’t miss the limelight.

  I saw guys sitting on the training table for two weeks with a sprained ankle. Michael had a back spasm one day, and we literally had to carry him off the floor and drive him home in a truck because he couldn’t move. They gave him heat treatments and cold treatments all night long, and he played the next night.

  He had fluid drained off his knee, I don’t know how many times.

  ONE NIGHT HE HAD 22 CC OF FLUID DRAINED. DO YOU KNOW HOW MUCH THAT IS? AND THAT’S BEFORE THE GAME.

  He came dressed to do business every night. He wasn’t wearing jumpsuits and Timberland shoes, looking like a thug. Michael showed up wearing a $3,500 suit because he was going to work. There’s no changing him.

  CURTIS POLK What did he have to gain? Others made it seem like coming back was all about competitiveness, or that Michael missed the spotlight, or thai he had the itch and it had to be scratched again. I think it would be unrealistic to say there wasn’t some small percentage of all that in his decision. But his children really hadn’t seen him play at a time when they could understand who he was and appreciate what he had been able to do.

  Michael really valued the job with the Wizards, and he thought playing was the best way to evaluate the talent. The only way Michael felt he could really translate the work ethic that was his legend was to have them live it every day rather than just hear about it. The practices were amazing. But that first year before he finally had the knee surgery, the tendinitis was really bad.

  TINKER HATFIELD

  I ACTUALLY DESIGNED THE XVI, BUT IT WAS MY INTENTION TO BRING ALONG ANOTHER DESIGNER AND HAND IT OFF.

  WILSON SMITH TOOK THE ORIGINAL SKETCHES, WHERE WE WERE STUDYING THE SPAT IDEA. WE WERE BEING QUITE CONTRARY TO THE XV BY CREATING A SPATTED MARCHING-BAND KIND OF SHOE.

  I was looking for a way to shift back, kind of what Michael had done. I didn’t really think much about the pressure while we were doing all these shoes, until after Michael retired the second time. People were yet again questioning whether we should be doing any Air Jordan shoes. There were all kinds of people who felt, once more, that we were done with Jordan shoes. To Mark Parker and [Nike co-president] Charlie Denson’s credit, they said we should keep moving forward.

  We were doing that year after year after year. Without realizing it, the process was taking a toll on me. This shoe was not only expected to be a big moneymaker for Nike, but the entire shoe business relied on the next Jordan shoe to drive people back into the stores.

  The XVII was inspired by jazz. The shoes became the most expensive ever in the line. There were all kinds of questions to answer. What do you do when you switch design régimes, and Michael is more distanced from the game? Well, they brought in Mike Phillips, the musician. He wrote music for MJ, and there were events built around his music. The shoe had jazz notes molded into them. The story was about improvisation, which is what jazz is all about.

  IT WAS LIKE, WELL, IT’S NOT THE SAME ANYMORE, SO YOU HAVE TO IMPROVISE A LITTLE BIT.

  You could probably say those three shoes [XVII, XVIII, XIX] maybe didn’t move the needle on the dial like some before, but you also can safely say they did well. I think in their own way, those shoes were successful by virtue of keeping the lineage alive and pushing design.

  It didn’t dawn on us that the XX would be the opportunity to blow it back out of the water again. You have to give Gentry Humphrey credit for being the first one to recognize the unique opportunity to get MJ and myself back involved.

  IT ONLY TOOK ME ABOUT FIVE SECONDS TO SAY YES, AND I GOT MY GROOVE BACK.

  I forced the issue with Michael, and he gave me his time and energy. I think we met more on the XX than any other shoe. In a way, he was forced into this reflective mode by the notion that it was time to tell some of these stories that would remind people of the legend, but at the same time turn some young people on, as well.

  The shoes we created over the years were not contrived from a temporary fad or flavor-of-the-month thing. There is a pure foundation. I am most critical of the design work when I see someone throwing elements onto shoes just to make them look cool.

  THERE HAS TO BE A SOUL TO THE PROCESS.

  THERE HAS TO BE A REAL STORY.

  TINKER HATFIELD

  MICHAEL IS SUCH AN ICON AND SUCH A LOFTY IDEAL THAT I’M SURE IT’S A LITTLE INTIMIDATING TO WORK ON HIS PRODUCTS. IT’S A TOUGH GIG. THAT’S LIFE.

  BEYOND

  I BELIEVE IN LEADING.

  If we come up with a creative direction at Brand Jordan that we feel showcases our personality and matches up with how we want to be represented in the market, then that’s the direction we take.

  IT’S PURE. IT’S HONEST.

  It’s not a gimmick. Nothing about the Jordan brand has ever been a gimmick. We have earned the respect of our consumers because they know we aren’t following the latest fad to grab a quick buck. When you see a Jordan product, it’s genuine. From the quality of the product to the messaging in the commercials, nothing is contrived.


  IT’S REAL.

  When I talked about how many times I failed on the basketball court, people could relate to that. We weren’t trying to portray Michael Jordan as being infallible or perfect. I did fail. We were being honest about who I was, not only as a basketball player, but as a human being.

  For the XX, we asked, “Who is going to be next? Who is going to come along and take Michael Jordan’s spot.”

  In one way or another, just about everyone is going through that kind of search. The idea that it could be you is something all of us can relate to when we think about our goals. It doesn’t have to be someone else getting all the accolades. It could be you.

  THE PRODUCTS, COMPANIES AND PEOPLE WHO STAY TRUE TO WHO THEY ARE USUALLY END UP BEING AROUND FOR A LONG TIME.

  The ones that lose their way by jumping on one fad or another, or trying to be something other than what or who they are, don’t last long. If you are trying to make your way through a maze, and your decisions come from the inside, from your gut, nine times out of ten you won’t find yourself running into a wall. But if you rush into something, make decisions to appease somebody else, or chase the easy dollar, then you are going to find that wall.

  We follow what we feel at Brand Jordan. It’s an innate ability to calculate from the inside out. Products and people that have been calculated and packaged can be replicated because there’s no mystery. It’s packaging, style over substance. But the products and people that last, they started from somewhere else.

  You can’t use gimmicks and hope to duplicate something real. I can’t walk around a commercial set wearing a hooded sweatshirt and combat boots. That’s not who I am.