How to Be Like Mike (23 page)

Kerr made his next one.

It is worth noting that Kerr was one of Jordan’s most intense “motivational” projects. In fact, Jordan was so tough on Kerr that he once picked a fight with him during practice. But when it mattered, they trusted each other.

“MJ would include his teammates in the game early,” Walton said, “then bail them out in the fourth quarter when it was winning time.”

Craig Hodges, Michael’s former teammate, has a vivid memory of that happening:“In the 1989 play-offs with Cleveland, I’ll never forget the famous ‘Ehlo Game. ’The Cavs scored in the closing seconds, and the defensive mistake was mine. I felt I’d cost us the game and at the timeout MJ could feel my pain. He said to me, ‘Don’t even worry about it, Hodge. I’ve got you covered. ’ Then he hits the miracle shot to win it for us. I was off the hook. What a teammate.”

In a couple of those championship seasons, it wasn’t even Jordan who hit the winning shot; instead it was Jordan who drew the defense and passed off to either John Paxson or Steve Kerr for the final blow. For both men, solid but unspectacular guards, it was the moment that defined their careers. And it was a result of the confidence that Jordan instilled in them—something that Kerr had a little fun with during a victory parade speech after his shot won the title in 1997.

Here, Kerr told the crowd, was what “really happened” during that final time-out before his game-winning shot:

“Phil Jackson told Michael to take the last shot. Michael said he didn’t really ‘feel comfortable in these situations’ and that maybe the Bulls should go ‘in a different direction. ’ So, I thought to myself,
I guess I have to bail Michael out again. But why not? I’ve been bailing him out all season.”

This is, of course, the extremely exaggerated version of how Jordan affected his teammates. But somewhere within Kerr’s false braggadocio lies the truth. When Jordan showed he was on your side, when he helped you off the floor after a hard foul and whispered in your ear, “Don’t let them know you’re hurt,” there was a tendency to believe you could do anything.

Trust each other, again and again. When the trust level gets high enough, people transcend apparent limits, discovering new and awesome abilities for which they were previously unaware.

—David Armistead
AUTHOR

“Creating a successful team,” said Phil Jackson, “is essentially a spiritual act.”

Jackson is a renowned believer in Zen and meditation and other esoteric concepts, but this notion is not grounded in any kind of complex Eastern philosophy. The spirituality of it—as it is within any group situation, athletic, corporate, or otherwise—is this: to surrender egotism in favor of altruism. To develop a network of employees, of teammates, who trust each other enough to believe that any of them could close the deal.

“Respect, dignity and integrity,” Jordan said, “haven’t gone out of style.”

7. Build Trust and Respect

(see chapter 10)

8. Build and Model Character

“Your ethical muscle grows stronger every time you choose right over wrong. Your character is your destiny.”

—P
RICE
P
RITCHETT
businessman

This notion (explored more fully in chapter 11) was instilled in Jordan at North Carolina, a place where great sacrifices were met with great rewards. The more you sacrificed, the more it came to mean. That which came easily would never be valued. “The ethic (at North Carolina),” wrote David Halberstam, “seemed to come from another time.”

It is a notion that springs from John Wooden’s era. And it is a notion that has become lost somewhere in a dusty corner as professional sports have burgeoned.

“While individual athletes have gotten better over the years, without a doubt, team play has, in fact, declined,” said Wooden, who won ten NCAA Championships at UCLA in the 1960s and 1970s.

Perhaps it’s the media attention, perhaps it’s the money, perhaps it’s the overwhelming cult of celebrity, but as that acceptance of sacrifice and teamwork has declined, so has the general character of the modern athlete. Today’s superstars are arrogant enough to believe that they can win on their own; early in the 2000–01 NBA season, Shaquille O’Neal and Kobe Bryant immersed themselves in a feud that threatened to tear apart Phil Jackson’s newest potential dynasty, the Los Angeles Lakers.

“The real leader of that team,” Jordan said of the Shaq/Kobe dispute, “is the one who can sacrifice and step back and let the other one be the leader.” Of course, the Lakers did resolve their problems and rolled to their second straight NBA title in June of 2001.

Even now, as he works to improve the Washington Wizards, Jordan will remind his employees in team meetings on marketing and promotion and other business that “everything is a team sport.”

That Jordan was able to recognize the value of the team is one of a myriad of reasons why his example should be cherished. For all of his flaws, Jordan was consistently able to recognize what was best for the greater good. The optimal teammates are those who do the right thing, those who have honesty and integrity, who share a strong work ethic and a sense of maturity and responsibility and self-discipline, who display perseverance and humility and courage. They are destined to become the crucial cogs in a machine, one that grinds in endless pursuit of something bigger than any individual could ever accomplish.

CHAPTER NINE

THE EYES
UPON YOU

JORDAN ON LEADERSHIP:

I
can’t live up to the expectations people have of me. They’re exaggerated. But I have my own expectations as a leader. . . . That’s what I can live up to.

I
have it, but I’ll be darned if I can define it.

—General George Patton
on leadership

W
e’re in the midst of a leadership crisis. Or at least that’s what they tell me. I speak to executives and coaches and managers, W and this is their lament—that there is a dearth of gifted young leaders. And so it’s become trendy to hold leadership conferences, to share divergent theories about leadership, to put heads together and attempt to analyze and isolate the problem.

Do I have the answers to all of these issues? Of course not. But I can say that we in the NBA have seen this leadership problem affect us firsthand. Our league is floundering right now, ticket sales and television ratings are plummeting, the luster of our star players is fading, the popularity of the league is on a downward slide. The truth is, we didn’t know how good we had it when Michael Jordan was around (and before Jordan, Julius Erving, Magic Johnson and Larry Bird). As much as I credit David Stern and others in the NBA front office for the boom in popularity of the NBA, none of them was our acknowledged leader.

Michael was our leader.

He was the one in the commercials, the one in the promotions, the one on the magazine covers. He was our representative image. Michael sold jerseys and Michael sold hats and Michael sold tickets, and produced TV ratings which, as any half-witted sports executive will tell you, is the only thing that matters. Michael was very much aware of this undeniable truth.

And Michael did not just sell tickets in Chicago. Michael sold tickets in New York and Cleveland and Milwaukee and Los Angeles. I once spoke to a businessman in Oakland—and I’m sure there are dozens of stories like this—who said his company bought season tickets to Golden State Warriors games in order to have their corporate box available for one game—against the Bulls.

It’s impossible to have any success as a quarterback without being a leader, since all eyes in the huddle will be on you. If you’re uncertain about things, your teammates will know.

—Joe Montana

Michael’s game.

“Michael had a special ability to lead others because he thought about the game all the time and understood it,” said former NBA coach Mike Fratello. “He didn’t just go out and play. He was always anticipating what could happen next, and how he could get his teammates involved.”

So as the NBA’s popularity peaked in the ’90s, we in pro basketball’s front offices began to congratulate ourselves.
Boy,
we thought,
are we good.
We genuflected upon packed arenas and boisterous crowds. We restocked the gift shop and ordered a few thousand more hot dogs.

And then Michael retired for good. And here we are, without a spokesman, without a voice, without a leader. Every time someone steps forward, he appears to shun the role or to stumble in some way. And the NBA remains a league without a pacesetter.

Certainly, these are enormous shoes to fill, but our most effective leaders are able to shoulder great burdens. Our most effective leaders share certain qualities.

1. Vision

Great leaders are visionaries. They have an instinct for the future . . . a course to steer . . . a port to seek. For persuasion, they win the consent of their people.

—A
RTHUR
S
CHLESINGER
J
R.
historian

Woodrow Wilson had the ability to see around the corners, to see the future before it’s here.

—Bill Bradley
U. S. S
ENATOR

Vision is not something that can be explained as much as it can be signified. True vision is more than just adherence to the typical rules of success. It is more than just setting goals. It is a transcendent sense of meaning and purpose, the radiant desire that you recognize in someone as soon as you see it. (“Vision leaks,” said pastor and author Bill Hybels. )

Visionaries are the ones we defer to in times of crisis. They share ideas that are easily understood, that are attainable, yet are only seen in their entirety by the rarest of people. (“Vision,” said author Jonathan Swift, “is the art of seeing the invisible.” ) Visionaries focus others around their plan, keep others fueled and are driven to complete the entire picture of their vision without quitting when things become difficult.

Visionaries are the people who we say were meant to lead.

“I had a long conversation with Michael Jordan, and he broke it down to a science,” said Minnesota Timberwolves forward Kevin Garnett. “He told me about coming out each night and setting a tone with your play, both on offense and defense. Being ready. Taking that next step. He told me a lot of key things that you’d think you would know, but it’s not always the case. Killer-instinct stuff. Use your instincts. Be aggressive and if the team’s not following you, you have to be that leader to push the team over the hump. Mike’s sort of a deep guy. . . . You want to tape record when he talks, so you remember a lot of stuff.”

Vision without action is a daydream. Action without vision is a nightmare.

—Japanese Proverb

2. Communication Skills

Ninety percent of leadership is the ability to communicate something people want.

—D
IANE
F
EINSTEIN
U. S. Senator

There was a year when the Bulls split their first two home play-off games with the Atlanta Hawks. What happened after the Bulls lost Game Two is an example of Jordan, the communicator, at his most potent: he got in everyone’s face. His message was rather simple and quite straightforward. He said, “This will never happen again. We must win this.”

You could call this “fiery optimism.” It is the foremost quality of an effective communicator.

“You had no chance after that,” Bulls assistant coach Frank Hamblen would tell Hawks assistant Stan Albeck later that summer.

And he was right. The Bulls won the series.

“MJ,” Albeck said, “would not let you lose.”

Michael Jordan was an inspirational leader. Businessman Robert Mondavi understands that: “Out of all the rigidities and mistakes of my past, I’ve learned one final lesson, and I’d like to see it engraved on the desk of every business leader, teacher and parent in America—the greatest leaders don’t rule. They inspire.”

“Michael was a quiet leader at the start,” said former Bulls trainer Mark Pfeil, “but as the years went by, he became more vocal and took charge.”

I am an optimist. It does not seem too much use being anything else.

—Winston Churchill

“In 1995, the Magic beat us in the play-offs in six games, so when we played them again in 1996, it was big,” said former Bull Jack Haley. “In Game One, we blew them out, but in Game Two, they jumped all over us in the first half. At the half, you could see the fear and hesitation in our faces. Michael stands up and says, ‘Trust in me. Climb up on my back and let me carry you. I’ll take care of the rest. ’You could feel the goose bumps after that. We won the game and we swept the series.”