How to Be Like Mike (29 page)

“Thanks for the best laugh we’ve had in years,” the card read.

It was signed by Eddie Murphy and Michael Jordan.

One of the things that I remember on my father’s desk when he was superintendent of churches in the state was a caricature of a guy with a balloon head, string attached to the shoulders, little teensy feet. The caption on it read, “The bigger your head gets, the easier your shoes are to fill.” That, to me, personified my father, who was a very humble, very approachable man. That’s who I tried to emulate growing up.

—Phil Jackson

“People have this picture of me taking limousines, living at . . . how would you say it . . . at the upper echelon of life,” Jordan said. “But I’m just a guy. It’s funny that that’s the hardest thing for people to accept. I’m just a guy who’s out there having a great time playing a game.”

In 1994 when Michael was just a struggling baseball player in Birmingham, he made a very revealing statement: “I’m just another minor-leaguer in the clubhouse here, trying to make it to the major leagues. You come to realize that you’re no better than the next guy here.”

At Michael’s summer basketball camp, the sharpest kid there is Michael’s son, Jeffrey. He could be the biggest jerk in the world, but he’s not. He’s a kind, humble young man who shows respect and consideration for everyone.

—Jimmy Williams
CAMP COUNSELOR

Mark Ratenkin was a pitcher in the Arizona Instructional League in 1994, when Jordan was playing. He struck out Jordan twice in one game. The next day, Ratenkin wanted to get Jordan’s autograph, but was afraid to approach him. Eventually, he did.

Jordan signed three balls for him.

“Those were two great pitches you threw last night,” Jordan said.

“I noticed a humility in Michael when he came back from baseball,” said former teammate Will Perdue. “He couldn’t master that game and he was different when he came back, more understanding. He saw people as they were, not as what he wanted them to be.”

“One summer, Michael went back to North Carolina,” said sportswriter Bill Lyon. “A little girl asked him, ‘Is it true you can fly?’ Michael said, ‘Yes. But only for a little while. ’”

“If I ask myself, ‘Why me and not other people?’ I’ll never come up with an answer,” Jordan said. “Whatever happened to me, I didn’t know it was out there. I stumbled on it and it happened. To this day, I don’t know why.”

Former NBA center Sam Bowie said to Michael after he made an unbelievable shot, “How did you do that?” Jordan replied. “I really don’t know.”

Compassion

N
o one is useless in this world who lightens the burden of it to anyone else.

—Charles Dickens

“One night, a badly burned boy sat on our bench, and Michael talked with him all night during the game,” said John Bach, the former Bulls assistant coach. “I couldn’t stop crying, it was so touching.”

“It always touched me, the way he handled himself with the Make-A-Wish kids,” said former Bulls trainer Chip Schaeffer. “He would have been a great special education teacher.”

Former Bulls teammate Ricky Blanton said, “I was the ultimate NBA journeyman, but Michael treated me like I was someone special.”

In 1992 JoJo English was a rookie in the Bulls’ training camp, struggling through his first few days. Michael said to him, “It’s not as easy as it looks on TV, is it?” From that point on he took an interest in the rookie and he helped him on and off the court. Sam Bowie said, “We all know the fifty-point side of Michael, but the human side is even better. When I was sitting on the bench with leg injuries, he never failed to come over and ask me how I was doing. He genuinely cared.”

Life is a place of service. Joy can be real only if people look upon their life as a service, and have a definite object in life outside themselves and their personal happiness.

—Leo Tolstoy
AUTHOR

When the Bulls won a championship, Jordan spent more than six figures of his own money to have rings and pendants made up for everyone associated with the Bulls. He considered them his friends, and his friends were a crucial part of his life. His friends grounded him.

“People don’t realize how important friendships were to this guy,” said Jordan’s personal assistant, George Koehler.

“I don’t believe in race,” Jordan said. “I believe in friendship.”

“When I failed the bar exam for the first time, MJ gave me a pep talk,” said his friend, Fred Whitfield. “He said it would be a good test of my character.”

Jimmy Walker, one of Michael’s financial advisors, said, “When Walter Davis had his drug problems in the mid-1980s, Michael went way out of his way to help out an old friend.”

What it comes down to, then, is a shrug. It was against Portland in 1992, in Game One of the NBA Finals when Jordan couldn’t seem to miss, when he wound up with thirty-five points in the first half. After sinking another three-pointer, Jordan turned to Magic Johnson, who was broadcasting the game and smiled sheepishly, turned up his hands and gave us a tiny shrug that said so much.

What the shrug told us is that Jordan doesn’t understand this any better than we do. He was given an immense gift. And all he could do with it, through all of the highs and lows, was continue to be himself.

EPILOGUE

D
reams are what everything is about.

—Michael Jordan

I waited until the end to speak to Ahmad Rashad. By then, the rumors about a Jordan comeback had surfaced. Writer Michael Leahy’s piece in a February 2001 issue of the
Washington Post Magazine
painted Jordan as a man with a desperate competitive itch. Rick Reilly wrote a column in the March 13, 2001 issue of
Sports Illustrated
that quoted a source close to Jordan as saying he was “90 percent committed” to coming back. A media frenzy followed.

I met with Rashad—the NBC broadcaster, ex-NFL wide receiver and one of Michael Jordan’s closest friends—at a Magic-Lakers game that same March. I told him the title of the book. And this is what he said:

“You can be like Mike. In fact, anyone can be like Mike.”

Rashad spoke about Jordan’s dedication, about his lifelong yearning to learn, to improve. He told me that Jordan set higher standards each time he tried something. He told me that Jordan was “a regular country boy who worked for everything he got.”

“Being like Mike,” he said, “is being successful. You set your own standard and then go after it. Set a realistic goal and then work hard. Whatever your field, you can do it. MJ is a normal guy. He just works harder than anyone else. Nothing MJ did ever shocked me or shocked him. He worked so hard, he had the confidence to do anything. Anyone can do that.”

The confidence to do anything, Rashad said. Which means it would be no shock if, by the time you read this, Michael Jordan is playing basketball again. His goals, his dreams, simply won’t let go. They are everything. They are the reason Michael Jordan exists.

All right, class, it’s pop quiz time. Who said, “I took a cooking class when I was younger; girls weren’t interested in me, and I thought, ‘I may be alone for the rest of my life. ’” ?

If you answered “Michael Jordan” give yourself an A+.

You see, Michael Jordan, unbelievable as it may seem, did not always exude confidence. He did, however, as we have witnessed, discover his passion— basketball—and having fully embraced that passion, set himself to work. But, the burden of MJ’s work was lightened because he was in love with what he was doing.

With the work came success, and with the fruits of success came more work, and with more work came bountiful results—multiple MVPs, championships, and worldwide respect.

There is something in everything I do that makes me dissatisified and challenges me to further effort. Sometimes, I rise above my level. Sometimes, I fall below it. But I always fall short of the things I never dream.

—H. G. Wells
WRITER

Don’t miss this point: The passion-plus-work formula is not restricted to the exclusive use of one Michael Jordan. It works for us. I guarantee it!

After a speaking engagement in Minneapolis a few years ago, I was driven to the airport by a man who had a thirteen-year-old son. He said, “Mr. Williams, I have a problem.”

I said, “Sir, what is it?”

He related to me that his eighth-grade son loves basketball, but wanted the assurance that he would be granted a full scholarship to the University of Minnesota, so that he won’t invest hours and hours of hard work and practice for nothing.

I was quietly stunned. After a pregnant pause I said, “Well, sir, I’m sorry, it just doesn’t work that way. Universities don’t go around offering scholarships to unproven talents who are still in the eighth grade.”

When I returned to Orlando, still dazed by this exchange, I asked my seventeen-year-old daughter Karyn, if this is an example of what her generation is thinking.

The successes I had didn’t surprise me because I’d already experienced them in my mind.

—Michael Jordan

She replied, “Dad, I hate to tell you this, but a lot of kids my age think that way.”

The point here, of course, is that there is no elevator button to push when it comes to the ladder of success, and that you don’t climb that ladder with your hands in your pockets. Indeed, the only place where
success
comes before
work
is in the dictionary!

“Michael is quite free talking about his dreams, while most of us fear doing that,” said writer Michael Leahy. “Michael has a unique ability to visualize his life. It’s a prelude to reality. These images he has are about to be realized in his mind, and he dares to talk about them, unlike the rest of us.”

In 2000, Deloris Jordan, Michael’s mother, wrote a children’s book about her son, called
Salt in His Shoes: Michael Jordan in Pursuit of a Dream.
It is a wonderful little book with lavish color illustrations, and a simple story that traces the same path of every successful dream. It begins with a young Jordan lamenting his size, wishing he could compete against the tallest boy on the basketball court.

“Salt,” his mother says.

“Salt?” Jordan asks.

His mother tells him that she’ll sprinkle salt in his shoes every night. This, she says, will help him grow. The young Jordan ponders this, then looks out the window, sees his mother’s blossoming rose bushes, and realizes that perhaps his mother knows more than he does about making things grow.

And so Michael follows his mother’s instructions. It is the path to every dream, the path that all of us must follow if we hope to “be like Mike.”

1. Commit to your dream.

In 1999, when Doc Rivers became head coach of the Magic, he FedExed a letter to all of his players. All it asked was: “Are you committed?”

2. Discipline yourself.

“Some people have greatness thrust upon them,” said writer John Gardner. “Very few have excellence thrust upon them. They achieve it. They do not achieve it unwittingly, by‘doing what comes naturally, ’and they don’t stumble into it in the course of amusing themselves. All excellence involves discipline and tenacity of purpose.”

3. Risk failure.

“The only cats worth anything are the cats that take chances,” said jazz pianist Thelonious Monk. “Sometimes I play things I’ve never heard myself.”

4. Fight your fears.

“Fear is a natural defense mechanism that sharpens your senses and your wits,” said General Norman Schwarzkopf. “It’s really an ally that makes you more effective at overcoming the source of your fear. There’s no reason to hide your fear if it’s rational. What you do need to guard against is allowing fear to paralyze you or cause you to react irrationally.”

Burning inside of Michael Jordan is a child’s dream. It nags at him, it prods him, it urges him to press onward. And the dream won’t allow him to relax. It won’t let him settle down. He watches the best of the active players in the NBA, the hype for Allen Iverson and Kobe Bryant and Tracy McGrady and Vince Carter, and he says to himself, “You know what? I could do that, too.” Behind those glistening eyes, those sleek lines, that bald head, that pigeon-toed walk, there is a man who played through sickness, who played through pain, who played through double-and triple-teams, who played with the game on the line and season on the line and history on the line.

Michael followed his dreams by setting goals, working hard, and being dedicated. It’s only when we do this that our dreams can and do come true.

—Deloris Jordan

And always, he will wonder:
What else can I do?

Mark McCormack, sports executive, said, “The champion’s true edge exists solely in the mind, and over the years I have observed three attitudinal characteristics that are common to every superstar I have ever known: The first is the champion’s profound sense of dissatisfaction with his or her accomplishments. They use any success, any victory, as a spur to greater ambition. Any goal that is attained immediately becomes the next step toward a greater more “unreachable” one. The second is an ability to peak their performances to get themselves up for major tournaments or events. The legends of any sports era always seems to perform at their best when the stakes are the greatest. Finally, it is their ability to put their opponents away. This is referred to as “the killer instinct,” but that tells you more about the result than of what is going on mentally. In the champion’s mind he is never ahead. He distorts reality to serve his competitive purpose. He is always coming from behind, even when the score indicates he is destroying his opponent.”