The Jordan Rules (16 page)

Grant had heard the rumors about King. His twin, Harvey, had told him when the Bulls drafted King that he wouldn't play hard and was lazy. And he had been right. Rookies often come in overweight, as Miami's Glen Rice and San Antonio's Sean Elliott did in their rookie years, but a year of pounding and disappointment usually persuades them to get into shape by their second seasons. But not King. Yet King was blaming his problems on a lack of playing time, and had told Armstrong he was going to quit the Bulls after the 1990–91 season to play in Europe. Once again, King wasn't paying attention: He didn't know that he could not break his NBA contract to play in Europe.

Grant's friend Pippen had taken to snarling openly at King, letting loose some of Grant's irritation and some of his own. “How can that piece of shit be making more money than me?” he'd ask.

Like Grant, Paxson believed his time as a starter was coming to an end. His off-season ankle surgery didn't appear to have worked well and he was worried. He still had pain and soreness in the ankle and he wasn't moving well. Great contract I'll be able to command, he thought.

Cartwright, too, was frustrated. “We just don't seem to have any purpose,” he said. He had come to a decision: He was going to leave Chicago after the season unless the Bulls' offer substantially topped that of any other team. He would be an unrestricted free agent, meaning he could sign with any team, and he always liked the idea of finishing his career in California. His wife had talked at times of returning there and his family and closest friends were there. He thought about Golden State and playing for Don Nelson, whom he admired and who had tried to get him to turn pro after his junior season when Nelson had a top choice in Milwaukee and promised to take him.

Cartwright had grown tired of Jordan's approach to the game. He was getting fewer shot opportunities than almost any of the starting centers in the league, despite the fact that Jackson constantly urged players during the games to “get the ball inside.” He liked Jackson's offensive concept, but couldn't stand the way Jordan ignored it. So he thought perhaps the right opportunity might come along in the off-season and he'd get a chance at a title somewhere else. He thought the Bulls had the talent to make a run, but wasn't sure the tension between Jordan and his teammates regarding the offense would allow it.

Jordan rarely stopped griping about the offense. “If I had come up under Phil,” Jordan said to friends, “I'd never have become the player I did. He'd have had me all screwed up and doubting what I could do with that system like these other rookies. And what's Tex Winter ever won, anyway?”

Jerry Krause almost couldn't speak when he heard what Jordan had said. Krause viewed Winter as something of a holy man and often promoted him for the Basketball Hall of Fame. Months later, when the Bulls would win the NBA title, Krause would run directly to Winter and yell, “You did it. You did it.”

Winter was a student of the game's legendary scholars, Sam Barry at USC and Purdue's Piggy Lambert. This was before the NBA even existed, when college basketball was king of the sport, the era of two-hand set shooters and patterned play. Winter earned great success at Kansas State in the 1950s and national Coach of the Year honors, but did little on the pro level except for a brief stint as head coach of the San Diego/Houston Rockets. Krause had become something of a disciple of Winter's, treating him as a great basketball guru, and to many around the Bulls it seemed as if Winter had a Svengalilike hold over Krause. The kindly, grandfatherly Winter had befriended Krause some years before and would spend time with him whenever he was in town, lecturing him on the game and his precepts. Krause had sworn a lifetime oath: “Tex Winter will never be unemployed as long as I'm running a team.” Winter was Krause's first hire when he replaced Rod Thom as Bulls general manager in March 1985.

He is a character, but an endearing one, and a favorite of Jackson's; the head coach chides him for his idiosyncrasies as one does an eccentric but lovable uncle. He behaves as if he's still a poor Texas kid, often rushing into the media room before games to eat and shoveling in the food as if someone were about to take it away. He can also be found scouring around an arena for an abandoned newspaper. A friend remembers when Winter was coaching the Houston Rockets in the early 1970s, just after the team moved from San Diego. The Rockets were trying to persuade Jimmy Walker, the tough, streetwise New York playground great, that Houston was a great place to play. “Jimmy, you're gonna love it here,” said Winter. “They've got the best cafeterias in the world.”

Jordan's game clashed head-on with Winter's. It was Jordan's Testarossa, which could only seat one or two, against Winter's lumbering station wagon, which would accommodate everyone. Jordan liked to hold the ball, survey the defense, and make his move as defenders edged nearer to him. No one had ever seen anyone split defenses the way he did, twisting his way through two or three players and then popping up and
Boom!
slamming the ball through the basket. But he didn't always make room for his teammates, and Jackson was trying hard to change that, although he wasn't getting much help from the players; they were resigned to the fact that Jordan would never change.

A few days before their November 21 game in Phoenix, the players had moved lethargically through the drills, seemingly bored with the offense, which required movement based on who had the ball and where it was.

Suddenly, Winter slammed a ball against the wall and shouted, “It's not the offense; it's you guys. You're not working hard or playing hard. You're not trying to get it to work.”

The players just sort of shrugged. They knew that their going with the system wouldn't matter much if Jordan didn't.

And he wasn't. He scored 34 points but attempted a whopping 32 shots as the Bulls lost at the buzzer on Thanksgiving Eve in Phoenix. Everyone saw turkeys, and not on the dinner table.

Being a member of the Chicago Bulls meant many things: fame, usually; fortune, mostly; and never having to carve a Thanksgiving turkey. The NBA schedule is one of the most virulent in sports with its back-to-back games in different cities, its stretches of four games in five nights in four different places. Thoreau once mused that it wasn't worth going around the world to count the cats in Zanzibar. Traveling the United States to try the room service wasn't much better, yet that was the biggest part of an NBA player's life. In many ways, it was a dull routine. Other than the travel, which had improved dramatically with the charter flights, days on the road went like this: practice from 11:00
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. to 1:00
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., lunch, and then a nap—most NBA players had long worked naps into their routines as a means of being close to their best for their serious work, which came from 7:30
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. to 9:30
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. Many lifted weights in the afternoon to stay in condition, and the Bulls usually had one of their strength coaches, Al Vermeil or Erik Helland, on their road trips.

The Bulls were in Phoenix almost three full days before playing that Thanksgiving Eve game. That rare situation was because the Stadium was always leased to the circus the last part of November, so the NBA sent the Bulls on a long Western Conference road trip at that time. It's why the players were never home for Thanksgiving. For a few years, the team met for a meal together, but that custom was discontinued in 1988; the players preferred not to eat together anymore. Grateful Pilgrims they were not. The Bulls had become a disparate group. Jordan rarely socialized with any of the players, although it was hard for him to go out in any case because of his celebrity. He liked to have friends in for long card games or to sneak out to a golf course. In some cities, like Oakland, where he had friends like Higgins, he could try out a nightclub they'd know. Jordan just didn't socialize much with his teammates, and he even skipped mandatory events like the team's preseason promotional bowling night or the Christmas party, preferring to pay a fine instead. Grant and Pippen were close, but Grant had become a TV junkie and liked to stay in his room these days. When many of the players went out to celebrate later in the season after the win over the Pistons in the playoffs, Grant went home to watch the game again with his father-in-law. He always went straight to his room after games to watch the half-hour national sportscast, and he might have dinner with Pippen. Paxson was a loner, though he had friends from his NBA days and Notre Dame connections in many cities. Cartwright, too, was a loner. He enjoyed movies and would go out to one when he'd exhausted those in his room. He also had to bathe his knees in ice, which he did several hours each day. In Phoenix, he went to a movie each night and then a quiet dinner. Hodges often would try to find a mosque to visit and he, too, went to the movies, but he and Cartwright, though friendly, could rarely agree on films to see and usually went separately. Armstrong and Hopson had become friendly and started to spend time together, and occasionally might join King. Williams tended to stay by himself and walk the malls; it was a favorite pastime of many of the players, and the team always tried to arrange for hotels within walking distance of shopping. Perdue and Helland had become close and they'd often take off somewhere for dinner after a workout, while Levingston, who liked the company of groups of people, drifted in and out of Jordan's circle, having developed contacts throughout the league.

Those few days in Phoenix were warm, so several of the players hung around the pool, which is a favorite location for Jackson and the coaches. They'd usually meet in the mornings, then run practice, watch films afterward, and then break up for dinner and perhaps a movie. It was a relaxing if unexciting few days, unusual only for the length of time the team went without playing a game. It wasn't what one might consider a holiday with first-class travel, but it wasn't with kids, either.

The only thing that could have improved things was a win; the Bulls lost to the Suns by 109–107 when Kevin Johnson scooted around like a water bug and hit a running shot at the buzzer. Jackson still thought it was a good game for the team, a close loss against a championship-quality team on the road. But Krause was apoplectic afterward outside the team locker room, complaining about an illegal-defense call. He was flapping his arms like a drowning man and convulsing with anger. He was raging at reporters to question the referees about the call and demanding that the assistant coach get league operations director Rod Thom on the phone.

“Jerry,” said Suns president Jerry Colangelo, “relax, you're going to have a heart attack.”

Colangelo wasn't joking, as Krause's face had turned completely red.

“Hey, you didn't have a game stolen from you like we just had,” Krause screamed at him. “Out of my way.”

It would be the third time already, this season that Krause had called the league to complain about an official's call.

Expectations were taking a heavy toll.

Jackson tried to lighten the mood as the Bulls flew into Los Angeles to play the Clippers. “If we don't win a road game,” he warned, “Mr. Reinsdorf is going to take away our plane.” While his tone may have been light, he could not have hit upon a more important improvement in the Bulls' life on the road than the team's charter aircraft.

Jackson himself had called the plane “our flying limousine.” It was specially equipped with captain's chairs for lounging and sleeper compartments. It made for more rested players, especially on quick trips in which they would have had to catch the first flight out of town to get to a game the next night.

The presence of the plane was one of the more puzzling contradictions of a Bulls management that seemed so determined to nickel-and-dime players in other ways. While management was doubling or tripling travel costs to ensure the players' comfort, it was direct-depositing some paychecks a week or more after payday. On matters of money owed, like retroactive per diem money, the Bulls were one of the slowest teams in the league to make payments. These practices irritated the players, and there seemed to be little reason for them.

There would be more than a game going on in Los Angeles. There were rumors flying that the Clippers were going to make a deal for Isiah Thomas. The rumors turned out to be false, but one thing was true: The Clippers' owner, Don Sterling, desperately sought a headline star to compete with the crosstown Lakers' Magic Johnson. One he'd tried to acquire was wearing Bulls jersey number 23.

Sterling had called Reinsdorf during the 1987–88 season. The Bulls were about to be eliminated by the Pistons four games to one after losing nine of ten playoff games the previous three seasons with Jordan. It was already a popular theory that the Bulls would never win a title because Jordan's style of one-on-one play eliminated the other players as contributors. But the fans loved it, and to Reinsdorf, that meant money. Reinsdorf believed he could never trade Jordan: As unpopular as he already was because of his threats to move the White Sox out of Chicago, he knew such a trade would force him right out of town. Still, there was the looming prospect of moving the White Sox to Florida, so maybe he'd have to move anyway. Collins had always told him the Bulls couldn't win with Jordan, and Reinsdorf had always told friends he knew only two things about basketball: “You win with defense and team play.” He could have one, he knew, but perhaps not the other as long as Jordan dominated the scoring.

Sterling offered any combination of five players or draft choices. The Clippers didn't have many players the Bulls desired, but they had two of the first six picks in the upcoming draft, and Krause loved 7-4 Rik Smits, a top prospect that year. And with another high pick, the Bulls could select Kansas State guard Mitch Richmond, whom Jordan later would compare favorably with himself. That would give the Bulls Smits and Oakley, Scottie Pippen and Horace Grant, and still allow them to select a point guard, perhaps De Paul's Rod Strickland, or trade for a point guard now that they had depth and draft choices. Krause had always wanted Kevin Johnson, and he thought he might get Johnson (then with Cleveland) for Oakley or Grant, leaving the Bulls a starting five of Johnson, Richmond, Pippen, Grant or Oakley, and Smits.