Sacred Hoops_Spiritual Lessons of a Hardwood Warrior

by Phil Jackson

  The playoffs were a different story. After breezing past Miami, we ran into our toughest opponent to date: the New York media. Former Knicks coach Pat Riley had a gift for waging psychological warfare in the papers, and I could see early on when he started complaining to reporters that Jordan was getting breaks from the refs, that this was going to be an explosive series. Riley’s strategy worked in the beginning. The combination of the Knicks’ brutal style of play, questionable officiating, and negative reporting in the press distracted the players enough to disrupt their game. I decided I had to take a more aggressive stance.

  The showdown came in Game 4 in New York. We were ahead in the series, 2–1, and the Knicks needed a win desperately. They started shoving with both hands and tackling dribblers without getting called. Horace compared the game to a World Wrestling Federation match, and Michael told me he thought the officiating was so bad it would be impossible to win. I began making a lot of noise on the sidelines and got thrown out of the game in the second half.

  There was something about Riley’s manner that brought out my irreverent side. The more self-righteous he got, the more flippant I became. At the press conference after the game, which we lost, 93–86, I said, “I think they’re probably licking their chops on Fifth Avenue where the NBA offices are. I think they kind of like that it’s a 2–2 series. I don’t like ‘orchestration’… it sounds a little too fishy … but they control who they send as referees and if it goes to seven, everybody will be really happy. Everybody will get the TV revenues and ratings they want.”

  Actually it was Riley who was licking his chops. My remarks, for which I was fined $2,500, gave him the perfect opportunity to work the media. “What [Jackson] is doing is insulting us basically,” he said the next day. “I was part of six championship teams. I’ve been to the finals thirteen times. I know what championship demeanor is all about. The fact that he’s whining and whimpering about officiating is an insult to how hard our guys are playing and how much our guys want to win. That’s what championship teams are about. They’ve got to take on all comers. They can’t whine about it.”

  The reporters loved that story line: former New York Knick leaves town and turns into kvetch. I hit back with a few zingers, but I realized Riley had staked out the higher ground and anything I said would only fuel the story. This was an important lesson for me. Though I didn’t agree with Riley’s characterization of me or the team, there was a grain of truth in what he said. We were the champions, and that meant we had to prove ourselves on every level. The best rejoinder to his remark would be to keep quiet and win the series.

  That’s what we did. Inspired by Jordan in Game 7, the team finally stopped playing New York’s slow, rough-and-tumble game and speeded up the action. In the first quarter, Michael set the tone when he chased down Xavier McDaniel, who had been beating up on Scottie Pippen throughout the series, and blocked one of his shots from behind. The message: you’re going to have to go through me to win this one. In the second half, our defense rose to another level, and the Knicks became disheartened. The final score was 110–81. Riley was gracious in defeat. He told reporters he felt we had rediscovered our identity in the final game. “They played like they are,” he said.

  The rest of the playoffs weren’t any easier. The Cleveland Cavaliers, another tough team, took the next series to six games, and the Portland Trail Blazers gave us a scare in the finals when they won Game 2 in Chicago. But we were able to take two out of three in Portland and finished them off in Game 6. Our bench, which had been struggling earlier in the playoffs, came through in that game. The starters had run out of energy, and we had fallen behind by 17 points. But in the fourth quarter a reserve unit, led by Bobby Hansen, who scored a key three-pointer, turned the game around and erased the deficit. For me, this was the sweetest victory because everybody on the team made a significant contribution.

  The celebration lasted all night. This was the first, and only, time we won a championship in Chicago, and the fans didn’t want to leave. After the ceremonies in the locker room, the players returned to the court with the trophy and showed it off to the crowd, dancing in a makeshift chorus line on top of the scorers’ table. Later that night, June and I watched our kids play a raucous game of pickup in the backyard. We fell asleep to the sound of basketballs bouncing on the blacktop.

  The next season I loosened up. Cartwright had sore knees and a bad back, and we were worried he wouldn’t make it to the playoffs. Paxson also had knee problems, and Jordan and Pippen had been worn down by playing in the Olympics. I excused them all from part of training camp, and we started off the season at a much slower pace. Our playbook usually contains a page of specific goals for the season. This time I left that page out. Everyone knew what the goal was: to become the first team since the 1960s to win three championships in a row. In large type on the cover of the playbook, I put the word I felt best described the upcoming season: Triumphant.

  We staggered through the season, finishing behind New York in the conference with a 57–25 record. But losing the home-court advantage seemed to energize the players. After winning a brutal six-game series against the Knicks, we faced Charles Barkley and the Phoenix Suns in the finals. They pulled out every trick; we even had to contend with Robin Ficker, a guerrilla fan who sat behind our bench and read excerpts from The Jordan Rules.

  The crucial turn in the series came in the final seconds of Game 6. The Suns were ahead by 4 with less than a minute to go. But Jordan picked off a rebound and drove down court to bring us within 2. Then with 3.9 seconds left, John Paxson put in a 3-pointer that won the game. I’ll never forget what he said afterwards: “You know, it’s just like when you’re a kid. You go out to your driveway and start counting down ‘Three, two, one…’ I don’t know how many shots like that I’ve taken in my lifetime, but this was the one that really counted.”

  In my mind, what was impressive about that shot was the pass from Horace Grant that set it up. Horace got the ball from Pippen near the basket and could have tried to muscle his way in for a dunk. But instead he read the court and found Paxson wide open on the periphery. It was a completely unselfish act. This was the player who, four years earlier, Michael Jordan thought would never be able to learn the triangle offense. But when the game was on the line, he did the right thing. Without hesitating he made a selfless play instead of trying to be a hero.

  In that split-second all the pieces came together and my role as leader was just as it should be: invisible.

  Ten

  COACHING MICHELANGELO

  The pauses between the notes—ah, that is where the art resides!

  —ARTUR SCHNABEL

  When I started working for the Bulls, nobody was more excited than my son, Ben. He worshipped Michael Jordan. He had a huge Jordan poster in his room, read anything he could find about him and talked about him endlessly at the dinner table. Ben’s dream was to meet his hero in the flesh.

  I mentioned this to Michael my first day on the job, and he made himself available to meet Ben, who was nine at the time. They met at a practice and when the excitement wore off, Ben became confused. “What do I have left?” he said. “I’ve already achieved my life’s goal.”

  Ben wasn’t the only person who felt that way about Michael. Jordan was a global phenomenon, and even his teammates were caught up in the mystique. He hated being told that he wasn’t as good as Magic Johnson or Larry Bird because he hadn’t won a championship yet. His drive to succeed put enormous pressure on the organization; the players felt guilty most of the time because they weren’t living up to Michael’s expectations.

  This created an interesting challenge for me when I became head coach. Like everyone else, I marveled at what Jordan could do with a basketball. He was Michelangelo in baggy shorts. But I knew his celebrity status isolated him from his teammates and made it harder for him to become the inspiring team leader the Bulls needed to succeed. Red Holzman once told me that the true measure of a star was his ability to make the peopl
e around him look good. Jordan still needed to learn that lesson.

  THE COCOON OF SUCCESS

  At first Michael and I took a wait-and-see attitude toward each other. I didn’t want to become too familiar with him, as other coaches had been, because I knew it would make it harder for me to win his respect. It wasn’t until we won our first championship, and he could see that the changes I had implemented actually worked, that our relationship opened up and we developed a strong partnership. Michael told me that my approach to the game reminded him of his mentor, University of North Carolina coach Dean Smith, which may have something to do with why we work so well together.

  From the start I told Michael that I was going to treat him like everyone else in practice; if he made a mistake, he was going to hear about it. He took it well. Being treated like one of the guys helped Michael feel more connected to the group, and vice versa. If he wanted to, he could easily set himself apart, but he isn’t built that way. The practice floor is one of the few places where he can be himself, and not Michael Jordan, Superstar. “I live a whole different lifestyle than the rest of the team, and that creates separation,” he says. “My job is to tie myself back to them. And to do that I have to hang with them and maintain that closeness—get to know what they like to do, tell them about what I like to do. I don’t want them to feel, ‘Well, he’s too great. I can’t be anywhere near him. I can’t touch him.’”

  Unfortunately, there wasn’t time for Michael do that in 1995. The craziness surrounding his return gave him and his teammates little chance to interact informally with each other. Most of the players only got to see him on the basketball court. The rest of the time he was sequestered at home or in his hotel room. This feeling of isolation was exacerbated by the fact that the makeup of the team had completely changed since his departure. Scottie Pippen, B. J. Armstrong, and Will Perdue were the only players who had worked with Michael before. He had nothing more than a passing acquaintance with the rest of the team. As a result, he seemed to them like a distant figure, mysterious and larger than life.

  THE ZEN OF AIR

  The first time we practiced meditation, Michael thought I was joking. Midway through the session, he cocked one eye open and took a glance around the room to see if any of his teammates were actually doing it. To his surprise, many of them were.

  Michael has always maintained that he didn’t need any of “that Zen stuff” because he already had a positive outlook on life. Who am I to argue? In the process of becoming a great athlete, Michael had attained a quality of mind few Zen students ever achieve. His ability to stay relaxed and intensely focused in the midst of chaos is unsurpassed. He loves being in the center of a storm. While everyone else is spinning madly out of control, he moves effortlessly across the floor, enveloped by a great stillness.

  Jordan doesn’t practice visualization regularly, but he often calls up images of past successes in his mind during high-pressure situations. More often than not, he’ll replay the last-second shot he took to win the 1982 NCAA championship as a freshman at North Carolina. Rather than cloud his mind with negative thoughts, he says to himself, “Okay, I’ve been here before,” then tries to relax enough to let something positive emerge. Jordan doesn’t believe in trying to visualize the shot in specific detail. “I know what I want the outcome to be,” he says, “but I don’t try to see myself doing it beforehand. In 1982, I knew I wanted to make that shot. I didn’t know where I was going to shoot it or what kind of shot I was going to take. I just believed I could do it, and I did.”

  Jordan’s thought process in the last seconds of Game 6 in the 1993 NBA finals is typical. We were behind by 6 points, and the crowd in Phoenix was going berserk. If we lost, it meant we would have to play the seventh game in the Suns’ arena—not a happy prospect. When I called a timeout to set up a play, the other players were tense and unfocused, but Michael was remarkably composed. “I could hear all the noise,” he recalls, “but I was thinking, ‘No matter what happens, this is only Game Six. We’ve still got Game Seven.’ I didn’t get caught up in the surrounding rigmarole. I focused on, ‘Okay, we’ve still got a chance to win this game. All we’ve got to do is get some kind of roll going, and I’m the one to do that.’ My focus was right there at that particular moment. But even then I was thinking that Game Seven was a possibility. So I had a cushion.” Jordan emerged from the huddle and ignited the surge with a driving layup and a critical rebound that helped us to win the game—and the championship.

  LAKOTA JORDAN

  In my mind, Michael is the epitome of the peaceful warrior. Day in and day out, he has endured more punishment than any other player in the league, but he rarely shows any sign of anger. Once he was upended by Detroit’s front line on his way to the basket and brutally slammed to the floor. It was a malicious hit that could have caused serious damage, and I expected Michael to be fuming. But he wasn’t. During the timeout that followed, I asked him if he was feeling frustrated. “No,” he replied with a shrug, “I know they’re going to do that when I’m in there.”

  Michael’s competitive drive is legendary. His typical modus operandi is to study the opposition carefully and figure out its weakest point, then go after it like a one-man demolition crew until the team crumbles. In his early years, Michael had so much energy he would try to win games singlehandedly, but often burned out by the fourth quarter. When I took over the team, I encouraged him to conserve his energy so he would be fresh when we really needed him. But getting Michael to hold back was nearly impossible. In 1991–92, he had to be carried off the court after injuring his back. He could barely walk the next day, but he refused to watch from the sidelines. He played three games in a row that way. He was in so much pain that the trainer had to help him walk from the dressing room to the court. But as soon as he hit the floor, he was transformed into another person: Air Jordan.

  Michael rarely gets depressed. During the 1989 playoffs, he blew a foul shot that would have clinched the Cleveland series. Devastated by his uncharacteristic lapse, he spent the rest of the evening, according to a friend, staring blankly at his TV set. Everybody was still morose the next day when we boarded the bus for the airport, and the trip to Cleveland for the final game. At the last minute Jordan bounded on board, glowing with confidence. “Have no fear,” he announced as he walked down the aisle. “We’re going to win this game.” The mood lifted instantly. It wasn’t so much what he said but how he carried himself that made the difference. The next day he fulfilled his promise by sinking a come-from-behind shot at the buzzer to put us ahead, 101–100. Since then, that jumper has been known in Chicago simply as The Shot.

  It took a long time for Michael to realize he couldn’t do it all by himself. Slowly, however, as the team began to master the nuances of the system, he learned that he could trust his teammates to come through in the clutch. The turning point was a game against the Utah Jazz in 1989. Utah’s John Stockton was switching off to double-team Jordan, leaving John Paxson wide open. So Michael started feeding Paxson and John scored 27 points. Michael realized that night that he wasn’t the only money player on the team. It was the beginning of his transformation from a gifted solo artist into a selfless team player.

  LEADING BY EXAMPLE

  As our relationship grew, I began consulting with Michael more regularly to get an inside perspective on what was happening with the team. He, in turn, started to assume a broader leadership role.

  Michael isn’t a cheerleader. He prefers to lead with action rather than words. As he puts it, “I’d rather see it done than hear it done.” But every now and then he gives the team an inspiring pep talk. As we prepared for the 1993 finals, some of the players were worried about our chances against the Suns, who had the homecourt advantage and had beaten us in Chicago during the regular season. On the flight to Phoenix for the first two games, Jordan roamed around the team jet puffing on a cigar and saying, “We’ve got to go there and show them what it’s like to play championship basketball.” The message must ha
ve gotten through. We swept the first two games.

  As a rule, Michael doesn’t get involved with personnel problems, primarily because he thinks it might jeopardize his role as a leader on the floor. He doesn’t want to appear too closely aligned with the coaching staff. Sometimes he needs to exploit the tension between the coaches and the players to maintain control on court.

  One player he did take an active interest in was Scott Williams. When Scott was a rookie, he felt unappreciated because he wasn’t getting paid much and I frequently criticized his performance. Once toward the end of the season, I took him out of a game after a few minutes because he didn’t seem focused, and he started grumbling on the bench. I asked him what his problem was, and he said he needed five more rebounds to reach the bonus in his contract. (As a rule, I’m not interested in knowing that kind of information because I don’t want it to influence my coaching decisions.) “Don’t worry, I’ll get you in in the second half,” I replied. “Just don’t let your mood affect the team right now.” Scott went in later and made his bonus.

  Jordan took Scott under his wing and showed him how to be a pro. Sometimes he would use me as a foil in his attempts to bolster Scott’s ego. He’d tell Scott: “Once you’re on the basketball court, don’t think about Phil. Think about your team. Think about your responsibility. Phil can’t play. You’ve got to play, and we’ve got to help you play.” Michael wasn’t always diplomatic. When Scott tried to overreach, Michael would get in his face and curse. “You’re not out here to shoot,” he’d start screaming. “Get back to the basics. Play defense, rebound the ball, and, when you get your opportunity to score, then you can shoot. But don’t come out here and try to live up to what your friends back home feel you should be doing. Because it’s not going to help us win this game.” Thanks in large part to Michael’s tutelage, Scott settled down and matured as an athlete and a team player.