The Jordan Rules (2 page)

Pippen was shrinking against the physical play of the Pistons and Dennis Rodman. Horace Grant was too hyped up emotionally. John Paxson's fury seemed to overwhelm him. The kids, like B.J. Armstrong and Stacey King, weren't ready. It was difficult to see this as a championship team. They were going somewhere, but it was hard to see exactly when they would get there.

There's always friction on teams, more on teams that aren't winning. And as I understood then and people began to realize eventually, even more when you are with a relentless star talent.

When Jordan first came to the Bulls in 1984, it was just a medium deal. College star, Olympic star, but really, everyone wanted Hakeem. Teams, including the Bulls, purposely (it seemed) and obviously lost so many games late in that 1983-84 season the NBA instituted the draft lottery the next season. Bulls GM Rod Thorn famously warned fans after that 1984 draft (which were public events then in a downtown hotel ballroom) you didn't build around a shooting guard, that Jordan was one more good piece. Thorn's head coach and buddy, Kevin Loughery, later joked that Thorn finally got a draft right.

Right after Jordan arrived and before his rookie season began, I was invited to Jordan's modest townhouse in Chicago's north suburbs near the Multiplex practice facility to spend an afternoon with Jordan for a
Tribune
feature. I'd later return for a freelance assignment for
Us Magazine
. So I got to know Jordan early on. Not that you can auction this at Sotheby's, but Jordan's driver and assistant, George Koehler, and I are the only ones who hold the distinction of being at Jordan's three first games (1984 with the Bulls, 1995 in his comeback in Indianapolis, and 2001 in his first game with the Wizards) and his three final games (1993 Finals, 1998 Finals and 2003 with the Wizards against the 76ers). There are said to be no statues being considered to commemorate this.

During my time in Washington, D.C. as a political reporter in the late 1970s, I wrote mostly about Congress and occasionally the White House. So I'd seen propaganda before and even been part of it when I spent a short time as the press secretary for U.S. Sen. Lowell P. Weicker Jr., a Republican from Connecticut. So I'm sitting with Jordan and the phone rings. Jordan talks for a while and asks then if I'd like to speak with Dean Smith. Oh, this was good, very good, I thought.

Jordan was a remarkably open and engaging guy then. He's much less accessible recently, though perhaps his mystery makes him an even greater public figure, sort of a sporting Howard Hughes or Garbo. It remains more special today when Michael speaks. But back then he was as open and inviting as you'd like.

He happened to be ironing clothes when I arrived, and I think I rolled my eyes about that one. Nice show, I suggested. No, he insisted. He did iron. He said he took home economics classes in high school because he felt he wasn't particularly good looking and might not ever attract a wife. I actually felt the same way, and I never did learn to iron. He told me about not being able to swim and being afraid of water, which I was as well, though I wasn't questioning whether we were brothers separated at birth.

We seemed to hit it off relatively well. I really didn't want to be his friend as I remained in the old journalism world of not getting too close to the people you have to write about, even if it was sports, which is essentially entertainment reporting. But since I wasn't the full-time writer around the team I'd only see Jordan occasionally.

I was writing more general NBA stories and would do some Bulls playoff games. Then Jordan got hurt to open the 1985-86 season and we basically never saw him, as he went back to North Carolina. There was the famous battle of the tape recorders after his return as he pulled out a tape recorder to record management's comments after conflicting statements about his return and the limitation of his playing time, which you'll read about in
The Jordan Rules
.

Of Jordan's first 10 playoff games, nine were losses. Jordan was now showing up on the cover of
Sports Illustrated
and elsewhere in the news, but he was still pretty much a local story. National writers came in from time to time to write about the dunks and the tongue wagging, but it was more to plant their flags and leave. They'd been there and saw it and now they'd let everyone know they'd been there. Mostly, Jordan played in relative anonymity.

All the coaches embraced Jordan, as it wasn't difficult to see who was going to be the key to winning games. But they were also constructing the caste system that would become the famous play on words, “the Jordan rules.” It was originally the trapping defense Chuck Daly implemented to thwart Jordan. The theory was Jordan's teammates wouldn't beat you, and Jordan didn't think they could anyway, so he wouldn't pass to them. But as a parallel, it also became the team's internal joke, referring to the special rules that the coaches began making to accommodate Jordan.

It wasn't that Jordan was a bad teammate. He came from the structured, senior-oriented North Carolina system, and even at Jordan's Hall of Fame induction he still was annoyed Smith left him out of the photo for the
Sports Illustrated
cover when he was a freshman. But Jordan entered team dysfunction with the Bulls. Half the players on his first two teams ended up in drug rehab programs. The coaches couldn't count on them; Jordan couldn't count on them. He wanted to. But he was caught in his private, competitive world. He wanted to win as a team, but he knew he'd have to do the most for the team to succeed. It would become something of a curse to him, though a joy for the fans. Jordan excelled as his teammates cringed. Hey, they wanted to have fun, too.

Professionalism finally began to set in with the hiring of Doug Collins for Jordan's third season in 1986-87. It was coming off Jordan's famous 63-point playoff game against the Celtics, as the Celtics swept the Bulls, when Larry Bird made the reference to “God disguised as Michael Jordan.” I always felt that series and especially that game (though I recall Jordan playing golf and getting sick before a quiet game 3 in that series) truly gave Jordan the confidence to believe he was the league's best player. He would go on the next season to have the best statistical season (other than Wilt Chamberlain's), averaging more than 37 points per game, and Jordan's personal best scoring statistical season. Collins, as the new head coach, was bright and energetic, but way too young for that situation, a 35-year-old who still regretted the premature end of his playing career. His reliance on Jordan was sealed in Collins' first game in his rookie season at Madison Square Garden. As Collins was pacing nervously before the start of the game, Jordan told him to calm down and said he shouldn't worry, that he wasn't going to let the coach lose his first game. Jordan scored 50. The legend was building and Collins had his security blanket.

Michael was unusually image conscious, and I probably got him in trouble in my second book,
Second Coming
, when he returned in 1995, as I told the story of how I was urging him to get involved in Democratic politics in North Carolina (I was the Rockefeller/Jacob Javits Republican, an extinct species now). Michael was always quick and clever, first to win a word race, and he joked to me that “Republicans buy shoes, too.” It wasn't the political statement many have made it out to be, and I've felt badly I hung it on him.

But I recall asking him one time about his greatest fear. I was thinking it would be one of these weepy family stories. But he said it would be people seeing him as a vile figure and losing his cache with the public. It's why I think he was mad at me initially about
The Jordan Rules
. I think he felt, based on the selective post-publication media rage about the book, it cast him as the devil incarnate. I never felt it was remotely like that, and eventually as people read it I think most agreed. And Michael managed to do okay in his career despite the book.

When I was going through the publicity onslaught after the release of the book, it did remind me of watching
The Tonight Show
with Johnny Carson when Jim Bouton's famous book,
Ball Four
, was published. Carson was asking Willie Mays about the book, which was one of the first to pull back the iron curtain surrounding sports and athletes. Mays said he hated the book. Which part, Carson wondered. Willie didn't know. He hadn't read it. But he knew he didn't like it. I got the same reaction upon the release of
The Jordan Rules
. There were Ditka and Roy Williams condemning me in interviews, and they were just a sampling.

I also learned about that out of context thing you hear so much about. There can be something to it. There was always this joke around the newspaper that “95 percent of what you read is true. Except the five percent you have personal knowledge about.” I was getting trapped in a version of that.

Many writers try to present their subjects as they are, though ultimately the result is based on perception. I generally appreciate people giving me time and I work my hardest to be fair. Sometimes they don't like it. And some writers care more about a good headline and the next story. That's why I'm proud of
The Jordan Rules
: It was no hit and run. I didn't parachute in to write something with the luxury of being able to leave and never face everyone again. I stayed to face everyone, and I'm still here 20 years later.

I think Jordan feared the book might cause things to change for him, that maybe his image and endorsements would be affected, perhaps a precursor to what would happen to Tiger Woods many years later. But no, there was nothing sordid about Michael in the book. But Michael didn't know that from what he was hearing.

***

The tension began to build within the team as the disappointments deepened. Before, it was fun. Nothing much was expected, and Jordan could score as he pleased and everyone could enjoy and gasp and ask if you saw that, and then watch Bird and Magic fight it out. Michael was beginning to have a lot of trouble with this ending. He'd had his rivalry with Isiah Thomas, first about who really was Chicago's favorite son (Isiah once was), then about the games against the Pistons and their tactics against him, and then the alleged freeze-out of Jordan in his rookie All Star game. Whether or not that actually happened, Jordan believed they tried, and that was enough. It also was the genesis of Jordan's early feud with Magic Johnson, and Jordan's refusal to attend Magic's summer All Star games, which in the 1980s was the big deal of the offseason. Jordan always had a tame excuse. But he truly disliked Magic because of the connection with Isiah. Eventually, they'd get past it and when Magic learned of his HIV, Jordan was one of the first he informed. And though everyone denied it for years, it's now become widely-accepted that Jordan kept Thomas off that 1992 Dream Team, based on the NBA-TV documentary and Jack McCallum's fine book on the subject.

So as Jordan grew frustrated and resentful about the stars around him having so much success, he began to look inward with a more critical eye. He needed better teammates; they needed a more unselfish leader. Collins was fired, and, no, despite the speculation, Jordan had nothing to do with it. Jordan was no great fan of Phil Jackson's at the start, as I relate in the book. Phil had a plan and a system, but, after all, Jordan noted, what had he ever done? Okay, he was on a championship team. But he was a sub. He was Cliff Levingston, Jordan said. So what. I was considering all this as the 1990-91 season was about to begin.

***

So how do you write a book and who do you call? I'm generally independent and self-sufficient and decided I could figure out how to get a book published. There was a small publisher across the street from the
Tribune
building, and a colleague, Don Pierson, had written a book with Mike Ditka for them. So I figured I'd go there. To me, the Bulls story was interesting, but since I was around it all the time, and I'd written it and read it and no one was asking me to write more on it, how big could it be?

I didn't write out any kind of book proposal—I didn't even know you had to—and just made an appointment to see the publisher. I explained what I wanted to do and he said he was interested. I thought, “Great, I'll write a book. I'll have it on my shelf and people will walk into my house and I'll say, ‘I'm an author. Hey, look at my book.'” That was about the extent of my ambition.

The publisher offered me about $4,000, as I recall. I thought that was okay, but I said, well, I'd need my own computer as I only had the one from the newspaper and I'd need babysitting money as my son was about one and my wife worked. I said maybe $6,000. He said he couldn't afford that. I said I'd think about it. I went back to the Tribune and was talking about it with another colleague, Mike Conklin. He said he had a friend who was an agent and told me to talk to her. So I called Shari Wenk and told her what I had in mind. She was working at a different publisher and was going into the agent business full-time. She was excited about the idea and told me to write a proposal. I asked what that was. I wasn't quite Hemingway or Halberstam. She said basically a chapter and a description of the book. I did that and she went to work and what she initially received remain some of my favorite souvenirs.

These were letters of rejection from the top publishing houses in the country. Some rejected the proposal on the grounds of who was I to write a book. I could agree with that. Others asked who really cared about Jordan, and why would anyone be that interested in a guy whose teams never win. New York is the center of the publishing world and, yes, another reason why we all hate New York. I like the old definition of a dynasty: A family in China ruling for 1,000 years, or a New York team winning three games in a row. Jordan? Does he play for the Knicks? Next!