The Jordan Rules (22 page)

This was no longer the Michael Jordan who had a “love of the game” clause in his contract that allowed him to play any time he wanted without club permission. It had long disappeared in collective bargaining, and Jordan didn't play much basketball out of season anymore—just a few charity games for other players so they'd come to his, and for his shoe sponsor. A few incidents early in his career began to change his love for the game. “I quickly learned it's just a business and you get as much money out of it as you can and then you get out,” Jordan found himself saying this January. He was feeling like one of Bach's mercenaries. Also, he was feeling more and more embittered toward management. “They're not interested in winning,” he would say. “They just want to sell tickets, which they can do because of me. They won't make any deals to make us better. And this [Toni] Kukoc thing. I hate that. They're spending all their time chasing this guy.” Jordan felt the media were demanding too much of his time and sniping at him. He felt his teammates were becoming too heavy a load to carry. And now he had two children at home. It all was becoming just too much. All he wanted to do was play golf.

Sidney Moncrief understood. He was one of the great NBA players in the 1980s, but he had retired after the 1988–89 season. Now he was back, playing for the Atlanta Hawks, whom the Bulls would meet in a few days. He'd seen some tapes of Jordan and could see a lot of himself in the look in Jordan's eyes.

“You play ten years and the games mount up, the travel, the winning, the losing, everything,” said Moncrief, regarded during his prime as not only a perennial All-Star but an eloquent spokesman for the game. “I would say it hit me after year eight. Especially if you're playing a lot, you start to feel it. You keep playing. You deny you don't have the desire anymore. But you find yourself becoming more critical of everything around you, your teammates, the coaches, the front-office people, the press. You're probably not as mentally focused for the entire year as you need to be. You tend to go in and out mentally, and everything around you seems to distract you a little more. I took that year off and I didn't watch any basketball. I played tennis and golf and I was on my own schedule for the first time in ten years. I had knee problems, so I'm not the player I was, and I have a lesser role and I can't say I don't miss playing thirty-five, forty minutes per game and scoring twenty, twenty-five points. But I feel totally different about everything after a year away. I realize what a privilege it is to play in the NBA and how really nice it is. I think now I'll stay around three or four more years.”

Jordan wasn't feeling nearly so sanguine about life in the NBA, and his talk about five more years masked even deeper doubts. He had gone so far as to discuss with David Falk whether he could quit after the 1990–91 season, at least for a year. “There are two problems, though,” he said. “One is my endorsements. I told him I'd do it if he could find a way to keep my endorsement money coming. Of course, the Bulls would probably sue. But I'm more worried that if I quit for a year, I'll never want to come back.”

The game against the Nets at home on January 8, a win in which the Bulls led by 24 in the third quarter, wasn't very pretty. The excitement came afterward. Jordan had scored 41 points and former Bull Jack Haley, who mostly waved a towel on the bench for a season in Chicago, said, “Michael always seems to get up for me.”

But Jordan would create a new bench insurrection with his comments after the game. The Nets had cut a 24-point deficit to 10, and Jackson had to put Jordan back in the game to stanch the bleeding. Jordan was seeing red.

“Our bench guys are not going out there looking to improve on the game,” Jordan complained to reporters afterward. “They're mostly looking to improve on their statistics instead of learning to play with each other and get some kind of continuity. They're playing as individuals and that's something they need to change.”

The principal reserves, Armstrong, King, Hopson, Levingston, and Hodges, saw it otherwise. When they were on the floor, they felt, they ran the system, but Jordan and Pippen wouldn't. They played 12 to 15 minutes, but in two or three shifts that was just a few minutes on the court at a time, and hardly enough chance to get into the flow. And all they got for it was criticism.

But they didn't like what they heard from Jackson, either, when they demanded a meeting with the coach after Jordan's outburst. Jackson told Levingston and Hopson (the loudest complainer in the meeting), “You guys are either stupid or just incapable of being on the floor together. Because nothing happens when you two are out there together.

“And life,” Jackson continued, “just isn't meant to be fair. There are different rules for you guys and Jordan and Pippen. They are here to take the shots and you're not. You're here to fill roles and that's what you're expected to do.”

Jackson didn't understand, Armstrong thought as he sat there. He liked the coach, thought him intelligent and funny. He liked playing for him. But he also knew his friends. Hopson, to whom Armstrong had grown closest, had a big ego; he had been Big Ten Player of the Year and was the leading scorer with the Nets. King had been a big college star who thought he should have been the No. 1 pick in the 1989 draft. Levingston had even clashed in Atlanta with Dominique Wilkins because he wanted more of Wilkins's shots. These guys were all high first-round draft choices and believed themselves capable of starting—capable, in fact, of being stars. Jackson had to see that, if not in their play, then at least in their pleas. Armstrong saw that no good was to come from the meeting.

Jackson, for his part, understood only too well how large a percentage of the league's players saw themselves as stars. All of them had been stars before joining the NBA, but on this level you had to accept your role. He saw Armstrong as salvageable, but he wasn't sure about Hopson and King. He worried that the three spent considerable time together, on the team plane and bus and on the road. A few weeks later, Jackson approached Armstrong. “There's too much negativity going on with those guys and it's going to poison you,” he warned. “You might want to join another group.” Armstrong would stay friendly with both, but on the team plane he began to move in an open area with some of the other players, and would continue to for the remainder of the season.

The breaks certainly were coming the Bulls' way as the team headed for Philadelphia, the 76ers being another team with injuries when they met the Bulls. The Bulls hadn't played well on the road, going just 2–6 against winning teams. But Rick Mahorn was out with an injury, and the 76ers had just traded Mike Gminski for Armon Gilliam. Jackson thought this was to the Bulls' advantage because Gilliam was what the players called a black hole: Once you threw the ball in to him, nothing ever came back out. Barkley likely would have to play more power forward, which he liked less.

The Bulls' own good health—they hadn't lost a starter to injury yet, they would have a league-low four player-games missed through the All-Star break and just twenty at the end of the regular season—was partly due to their youth, but Jackson felt it was also partly due to the offense. It left less room for the out-of-control rushes to the basket that can cause injury. Jordan laughed when this theory was relayed to him. “P.J. comes up with some wild stuff,” he said.

The Bulls had finished their pregame shooting and were returning for the regular pregame meeting to go over the scouting report on the 76ers when Charles Barkley walked into the Bulls' locker room wearing his coat. It was about 6:40. Game time was 7:30. Barkley had just arrived and hadn't gone to his own locker room yet. The Bulls required all players to be at a home game by 6:00
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. or be fined. Philadelphia coach Jim Lynam had dropped a similar rule because Barkley never adhered to it.

“A great, great player, maybe unstoppable,” Jackson said as he watched Barkley talking with Jordan. “But he's got no discipline, none. You can't win with a player like that.”

This night, Jordan most certainly was a player you could win with, scoring 40 for the third time in the last six games. Philadelphia drew within 1 late in the game, but Armstrong hit a jump shot to put the Bulls ahead by 3 and then Bill Cartwright hit two straight jumpers to hold off the 76ers. It was an important win, almost a crucial one, the coaches felt. The Bulls needed to defeat a good team on the road, something they hadn't done since the Utah and Boston games two months earlier. Philadelphia may have been hurting, but it counted.

The Bulls then went home and defeated the Hawks, with all five starters scoring in double figures. Grant, Pippen, and Cartwright each got 10 rebounds, and Paxson and Cartwright hit the crucial shots in the last two minutes when Atlanta closed a 16-point deficit to 1.

A trip to Charlotte was next and was relatively easy for all but Jordan, who was always greeted there like a returning war hero. He rarely got his afternoon nap before the game because he had to receive old friends, much as the pope might. In the game, the Bulls pulled steadily away and led by 19 early in the third quarter before letting the Hornets close to within 7 with nine minutes to go. So Jordan put on a show, scoring 12 of the Bulls' last 14 points.

Then the Bucks came down to Chicago for the Bulls' last home game before going on the road for nine of their next ten over the twenty-five days leading into the All-Star break. Milwaukee had defeated Chicago at home in December, but the Bucks were struggling now and a little beaten up. They'd surrendered first place after almost a month atop the Central Division; they were now a half game behind the Bulls and in third place.

Jordan and Pippen applied their own kind of accelerant, stealing the ball and feeding one another for slams. They pretty much just looked for one another on the court these days, as neither much trusted Cartwright and they only viewed Paxson as a bailout in case of emergency. They combined for 19 points in the third quarter as the Bulls went up by 10 and never led by fewer than 6 in winning 110–97.

The Bulls had now won six straight and would face teams with losing records in four of the next five before another western trip. They weren't playing that well, the coaches knew, but their defense and overall team athleticism was enabling them to escape with wins after those impressive spurts. It was still early in the season and still a time for development. They were in good position as the race headed toward the halfway point.

But Jerry Krause, for reasons that were unclear to the team, insisted on dumping gasoline onto the fire.

There was a growing tide of resentment on the team about the Bulls' pursuit of Yugoslav Toni Kukoc. Everyone had heard the stories about what a super player he could be, but they saw Krause's obsession with him as a pipe dream, and one that was costing them money. The Bulls had offered Kukoc a firm $15.3 million for six years. They were being careful to keep about $1.8 million available under the salary cap so they could sign him if he decided to come to the NBA. This left the Bulls with one of the lowest payrolls in the league. Pippen was demanding a new contract and Jordan, too, wanted more money, although he was not sure how he could get it. Paxson and Cartwright were unsigned. The players naturally weren't thrilled that the Bulls were offering millions to an untried European who might take one of their jobs.

The team sent Jordan a half-dozen tapes of Kukoc so Jordan might see how talented Kukoc was. Jordan refused to watch them.

Krause traveled to Yugoslavia in December to meet with Kukoc and give him a deadline, the first of Krause's three trips overseas and the first of at least five “final” deadlines for Kukoc to make a decision. The Bulls said he must make a decision by the end of January.

But the 6-10, 200-pound Kukoc could not be persuaded to make up his mind, and the January deadline would pass without a decision. Pippen could barely be contained as reports circulated regularly in the media about offers to Kukoc while his own negotiations weren't moving. Jordan remained displeased, even telling Falk to try to work out a trade if the Bulls signed Kukoc. Jordan also believed Kukoc would fail because of the incredible pressure that would fall on him the way the Bulls had built up his ability, and the promise he'd heard that Kukoc would be made the starting point guard; he told Reinsdorf the Bulls should trade Kukoc's rights and get something for them. But Jordan also doubted Kukoc would come to the Bulls, especially after Krause's visit.

“What a guy to send if you're trying to get a guy to come here,” Jordan said laughingly in the locker room. “He's gonna think everyone over here has doughnut crumbs on their face.”

To Jackson, though, it wasn't a joke. He saw the resentment growing on his team, not only toward Kukoc, who he felt could be a solid player someday, but toward the organization. And he began to think Kukoc was just using the Bulls to increase his bargaining power with teams in Italy and Spain. Krause asked Jackson to call Kukoc and assure him that he would get a fair chance for playing time. Jackson reluctantly agreed, but Krause was having paroxysms after the call.

The translation wasn't exact, but Jackson, after listening to Kukoc hesitate in his intentions, got fed up. “Listen, kid,” he said. “Enough of this. Either shit or get off the pot.”

The Bulls went to Orlando on January 16 to open a four-game, eight-day trip, but the game would matter little. It was sunny and the evening was balmy as the team bus rolled up to the arena, but it would be the desert everyone would soon be thinking about. Some thirty minutes before the game was to begin, word flashed that the United States had begun bombing Iraq. The Persian Gulf War had begun. The usual pregame tape of that night's opponent was slipped out and everyone watched the TV news reports. Jordan has an older brother, Ronnie, stationed in Germany, and he figured Ronnie might be called. “We're gonna kick their asses,” Jordan said as the first reports of the beginning of hostilities passed on the screen. “We're gonna show them they can't mess with us.” It wasn't a unique response, and his thoughts clearly continued as his words trailed off. Emotions were stampeding away everyone's concentration on the game.