The Jordan Rules (33 page)

But if the accoutrements were intolerable, somehow the games played here always seemed special. And this one would be ever so special. It was one of those games that you might want to hang a banner for, like Jordan's 63-point explosion that forced a double-overtime playoff game a few years back. Again, the teams would play overtime and again the Celtics would win. But it was a memorable day on national TV for both teams.

The NBA provides a sort of itinerary of the game's events to visiting teams. On it are listed the pregame presentation, the celebrities expected, and halftime events. On the one distributed by the Celtics, all the categories were empty except the one that read, “Halftime events.” It read: “A ballboy rolls the ball cart to center court.”

But these were not the mighty, feared Celtics anymore. Larry Bird would probably have been retiring after this season if he didn't have a $7 million contract for next season under a salary-cap quirk. McHale, as the Bulls expected, suited up after missing six games, but was limping. Brian Shaw and Reggie Lewis were also hurt, but all the players would forget the pain and strain every breath out of themselves and the hot, stuffy arena before the afternoon was over.

Chris Ford had done a terrific job remaking the Celtics with Shaw back after a year in Italy and Dee Brown providing help despite being a rookie. In this game, Brown would be remarkable, hitting 10 of 12 shots for 21 points. The Bulls, though, felt they could collapse on the Celtics because they didn't believe the guards posed enough of an outside-shooting threat.

Bird's balky jumper—this year's version, anyway—was falling early, and when the Bulls gave Grant a break and brought in Cliff Levingston, Bird posted him up and went to the hoop for a pair of easy baskets. The Celtics held a 53–47 lead at halftime. King hadn't played and was restless at halftime, looking around the locker room as Jackson was going over some of the team's first-half breakdowns. “Pay attention, Stacey,” Jackson snapped. “We're going to need you in the second half.”

Bird kept firing and Jordan started answering back, but the Celtics weren't missing much, 16 of 22 in the third quarter, as they went ahead 86–78. They led 96–82 early in the fourth quarter when a three-point shot by McHale danced all around the flexible Garden rim and fell in. Both the rats and the leprechauns were still around the old building. The Bulls cut the Celtics' lead to 10 and Jackson called a time-out.

“It's only five baskets,” he said coolly. “We can attack this team.”

And that's what the Bulls set about doing. Jordan and Pippen took a cue from Raymond Chandler: When in doubt, have two guys come through the door with guns blazing. They drove and jumped and pierced the Celtics with their deadeye marksmanship and daring elan. The Bulls knew their strength remained in their youthful alacrity and the Celtics weren't quick enough to handle their slashes to the basket. John Paxson hit the third of his 5 three-pointers of the day with 5:19 left to make the score 103–97, and that sent the Bulls on a 13–2 run that gave them a 3-point lead with fifty-five seconds left. Lewis missed a jumper, and then Jordan missed a drive that could have ended the whole thing. Bird missed a three-pointer, but the ball was tipped back to Lewis, who tied the game at 110 with a three-pointer with nineteen seconds remaining. It was his first of the season. It was just one game, but it was becoming a special day, filling with golden moments as the tension grew. Boston basketball fans were considered the most sophisticated in the NBA, but they were as loud and excited as a high school crowd by now.

Cartwright, standing in the right corner, flipped the ball to Jordan, but Lewis had a hold on him. No call, and the ball dribbled out of bounds off Jordan's fingertips with three seconds left. “You don't get that call in Boston Garden,” Cartwright agreed later. With three seconds left, Bird flipped the ball in to McHale and then stepped gently on the court. The Bulls inexplicably collapsed on McHale, who dropped the ball back to Bird for an open three-pointer. The ball hit the back of the rim, bounced straight up and headed back down to the basket. Behind Bird, the cameras caught several Boston newspaper writers jumping up and using their own body English to try to wriggle the ball in. One more wonderfully beguiling moment for the great Larry was all they were asking, even the ones who weren't supposed to care. The ball refused to cooperate and leaked off. Overtime.

Robert Parish hit two jumpers and a drive before fouling out in the first overtime as the Celtics took a 118–113 lead. But Jordan got two back with free throws and Paxson spotted up for another three-pointer to tie it at 118 with thirty-two seconds left. Grant then blocked a Bird shot, but Jordan drove and threw a wild runner off the rim. Boston had the ball with 1.1 seconds left. Bird threw a lob that was intercepted by the Bulls. Time-out.

It was miracle time. It was Jordan time. Cartwright found him deep in the right corner. Jordan knew he had to be quick, but he also had to square up and see the basket. He grabbed the ball, leaned back, hung, and shot falling away. The Garden crowd froze. Jordan had made such moments delicious and painful before. As the ball nestled softly through the net he was colliding out of bounds with Ford and celebrating an apparent Bulls victory. “No good, no good,” screamed referee Mike Mathis, waving off the basket. “Good, good, yeah,” Jordan screamed, “yeah.” The clock had expired before Jordan had released the ball, Mathis said. Jordan ran immediately to the press table to watch the replay on TV. Mathis was right. “Damn,” he said. It was one time that hang time had betrayed Jordan. If only he had shot it more quickly, he counseled himself. The game would head for a second overtime, and with Grant, Pippen, and Jordan each playing more than fifty minutes, the troops of energy looked as if they would reinforce the Celtics' side.

The Celtics again went ahead by 5 in the second overtime, but back came the Bulls. Jordan hit two free throws after rebounding a Cartwright miss and was fouled by McHale, his sixth. But Bird drove for a three-point play to keep the Celtics lead at 5, 127–122. Bird had summoned all of this up from somewhere, and he was “Larry Legend” again. Bird's painful back problems would require surgery after the season, putting his career in jeopardy. He had missed most of the 1988–89 season after heel surgery and his return in 1989–90 had been painful as he tried to adjust to diminishing skills. He shot a career-low 47 percent and rumors abounded of conflicts with angry teammates, some of whom began to resent Bird's preeminent position, which was based on his prior skills. But he was no less a competitor than Jordan, and despite the searing pain he snaked his way through the defenses and lofted his deft fallaway jumper as if he'd gone back in a time machine. And his teammates, grown used to his absence, had begun to look for him again and to expect the moments he so often had produced. On this day he was back up front leading the way, rolling imaginary dice after baskets and even taunting the youngsters again. One sign of age, it has been said, is a passing from passion to compassion. The fire of passion was back this day in Larry Bird.

Jordan answered back with an off-balance runner that went in as he was fouled. The Bulls were back within 2. Bird then hit a jumper for his final points of the game, giving him 34, including 9 in the final overtime, and Brown drove for a basket after a Jordan jumper rimmed in and out. The Celtics led 131–125 with 1:17 left. Paxson then floated into place above the three-point circle on the left side and fired. The shot was good and he was fouled by Lewis for a rare four-point play, the free throw giving him a career-high 28 points. There was still more than a minute left and the Bulls were within 2. The Boston Garden was a well of emotion now, a geyser, flooded with a fury of excitement. Shaw hit a jumper and Jordan missed. Celtics by 4 with twenty-eight seconds left. Lewis was fouled, but he made just one. From the deep right corner, Pippen hit a three-pointer. Wouldn't this ever end? Boston led 134–132 with twenty-one seconds remaining.

The Bulls fouled Lewis again with fifteen seconds left and again he made just one. One more chance. The Bulls trailed by 3. The play was for Jordan to pull up for a three. He weaved his way toward the basket and stopped, the defense falling back, and he shot. The ball rimmed in and out. But Grant rose up from the crowd like a giant beanstalk and grabbed it. As he came down, he flipped back to Jordan. The Celtics had collapsed toward Jordan and the ball as it went back. They had overloaded Jordan's side of the court. Paxson was wide open on the left, the area from which he'd hit his last 3 three-pointers. “Here! Here!” he screamed. “Here!”

Jordan had to know Paxson was there, but there wasn't much time. In the huddle, Jackson had told Paxson to stay near the circle on the left side, but Paxson wasn't too upset or surprised. “I would love to have had that shot,” he would agree later, “but mostly good things happen when Michael's got the ball, so what can you say?”

Bach would agree. It was what he called “Red October time.” The Bulls shout “Red” for the last five seconds of a possession, a time when it's difficult to get off a shot and Jordan usually steps forward to take one. “His shooting percentage would be maybe thirty points more if he didn't have to take all those shots,” acknowledged Bach, “but he somehow finds a way to get those shots off, and his teammates are always running to throw the ball back to him then anyway.”

Shaw ran at Jordan and Jordan ducked below, hanging and then leaning in and shooting. It was not a good shot, sort of a liner, as Jordan leaned forward. The ball caromed off the side of the backboard like a billiard ball and out of bounds. It was over. The Celtics had won 135–132 and had kept alive their slim hopes to overtake the Bulls in the East.

Everyone around the Bulls felt drained from the game, but not empty, because of its meaning. They still maintained the advantage in the East. Jordan, Grant, and Pippen had played more than fifty minutes and Paxson and Cartwright more than forty. Jackson was asked about the bench, and he said that Levingston was having trouble handling Bird and King didn't appear to be into it. It was the first game King didn't play when not injured in his short pro career. But on the whole, Jackson was as satisfied as you could be without winning. If this was a playoff preview, the Bulls had to feel good about pushing the Celtics to double overtime on their home court in a game that Bird would be hard-pressed to repeat in his condition.

4/2 v. Orlando; 4/4 at New York; 4/5 v. San Antonio; 4/7 v. Philadelphia; 4/9 v. New York; 4/10 at Indiana; 4/12 at Detroit; 4/15 v. Milwaukee; 4/17 at Miami; 4/19 at Charlotte; 4/21 v. Detroit

W
ERE THOSE
A
PRIL SHOWERS OR A MAN CRYING OUT FOR
discipline?

That's what Phil Jackson was wondering about Stacey King.

Monday's workout on April Fool's Day had been light. The team had a mandatory semiannual league meeting on the dangers of drugs and alcohol, and Jackson had scheduled a workout for only the seven reserves, most of whom had played little or not at all the day before against Boston.

“I'm out of here,” King muttered during the meeting. “I'm not dressing. I'm leaving.”

“Sure, sure, Stacey,” taunted Pippen. “You better be getting taped.”

“I'm leaving, you watch and see,” said King. He looked hard at Pippen. “I'm not staying.”

After the session, true to his word, King walked out of practice. Failure had indeed gone to his head.

Jackson called King at home. His answering machine was on, and later even that would be disconnected. Jackson called King's girlfriend; she claimed she didn't know where he was.

“It's a soldier gone AWOL,” Jackson told reporters.

It seemed to the Bulls staff that the last chance to save King was now gone. The team had tried to move him before the February 21 trading deadline, but Krause had held out for the value of a No. 6 pick in the draft, more than King was worth now. After the season, the Warriors again would try to get King, offering forward Tyrone Hill, their No. 11 pick in 1990, but the Bulls were uncertain about whether they could sign free agent Cartwright, so they decided to keep King, who also could play some center. They felt his upside remained substantial, even if his backside did, too. The players would taunt King about staying under the “calorie cap.” “Calorie cap problems,” someone would invariably say to him during practice.

As his game continued to slide, King became desperate; he finally concluded the problem had to be Al Vermeil, the Bulls' trainer. King announced that he needed a private trainer, someone who would give him more weight-lifting work and less of the power jumping Vermeil preached.

The Bulls weren't so sure, but they did bring in a dietitian for King: If he was going to eat, they decided, he should eat right. King sat with the dietitian for almost two hours, taking notes and listening to a lecture on nutrition. He said he would follow the program.

After the lesson, King went to get a rubdown. During the rundown, he ate two bags of Doritos.

But he was trying to retain his sense of humor, even if no one was laughing along.

“I set a screen roll, and these guys,” said King at practice, loudly mocking Jordan and Pippen, “they're out there dancing around and waving you off.” King went into a maniacal mambo, flailing his feet and arms. “They're dancing around like this and not even looking at you.” But then he would turn somber. “This is not the place for me,” he'd say, “although I don't know if I'll be able to get out—the line at Jerry Krause's door to get traded after this season is going to be so long.”

If anything was going to put King at the front of that line, it was his walkout. Jackson called Krause, who had just returned from seeing Kukoc. Krause told Jackson to fine King $250 for missing practice and suspend him from the Orlando game on Tuesday, which meant docking his salary about $12,000.

King ducked reporters all day, but he did show up that night at the local TV station where he did a weekly show. He had walked out, he suggested, because Jackson had publicly criticized him with the “King wasn't into it” comment after the Celtics game. Jackson was a hypocrite, King said, because he had told the players not to take their complaints to the media, and here he was doing it himself and embarrassing a player. The coach didn't have the guts to face him, King said.

Jackson didn't hear the comments. Later he said that if he had, the suspension would have been for more than one game.

The next day things would get worse.

King came to practice, but only to meet with Jackson, since he wasn't going to play. The meeting quickly turned ugly. “Look,” King demanded, “I don't give a shit if you play me or don't play me. Just get off my fucking back.”

It takes quite a bit to make Jackson angry. This was quite a bit. Jackson's jaw muscles tightened, and then he erupted, like a long-dormant volcano.

“I've had to sit in this room and watch tapes of seventy games,” he blasted, “and for seventy games I've had to watch your fat ass make mistake after mistake and screw up just about everything we've tried to do. And I'm sick of it.”

King started cursing Jackson and, as Jackson would say later, “the epithets were flying pretty good after that.” King got up and left, cursing Jackson more as he stormed out.

Everyone who didn't hear the outburst heard about it fast. Jordan said if it were up to him he would just suspend King for the year, but he wasn't about to get involved. “Then everyone will go running around saying, ‘Michael Jordan got him traded.' I'd just sit his ass. He's of no use to us anyway, and you don't treat a coach like that no matter what your problem is. I always told them the guy was a problem. But they never want to listen to anything I've got to say.”

Paxson shook his head. King's outburst was the talk of the team.

“We've got so many guys on this team going in different directions,” he acknowledged. “That's the kind of thing that kills you.”

If anything good came out of the King controversy, it was that it was overshadowing a new chapter in the Pippen controversy. There had been a story by Lacy Banks in the
Chicago Sun-Times
that day saying that Pippen was annoyed that Reinsdorf and Krause had gone to Yugoslavia to woo Kukoc, while Pippen still didn't have a new contract. The story quoted Pippen as saying he didn't see why he should play hard the rest of the season if the team was going to treat him that way.

Meanwhile, a process server wandered through the Multiplex to serve Levingston with papers about some credit-card debt.

As Jackson tried to cool down, team photographer Bill Smith stood by anxiously. It was time to take the 1990–91 Chicago Bulls team picture, a task that had been planned for several months and rescheduled several times. This was the final time it could be done.

“Everyone smile,” said Smith.

Reinsdorf sat in the White Sox offices in Sarasota, Florida, feeling pretty good. His baseball team was finally getting some respect. Just a year earlier, most free agents—even bad ones—wouldn't even consider signing with the team; Reinsdorf couldn't even overpay for one. Now the team had surprised baseball in 1990 with a second-place finish behind Oakland, the new Comiskey Park was about to open, and season-ticket sales were at an all-time high.

And the team was about to announce it had agreed to terms with Bo Jackson. Jerry Reinsdorf now employed the two most popular athletes in the United States—Jackson and Jordan. What more could an owner ask for?

Then his secretary came in and handed him the newspaper article about Pippen.

Reinsdorf was shocked. Had Pippen gone nuts?

“We're going to stop giving physicals to these guys,” he thought to himself. “From now on we're only going to have psychological testing.”

What had happened? he wondered incredulously. The day before he left for Yugoslavia to see Kukoc, he had talked to Pippen and Kyle Rote, Jr., in a three-way conversation. They had essentially agreed upon a new deal for Pippen, a contract extension of five years for almost $18 million. Everyone agreed it was fair, and Reinsdorf even admitted it was his fault the deal hadn't been negotiated sooner; he had stalled because of the Kukoc situation.

He wanted to make one more strong pitch for Kukoc. If the Bulls could sign him, they'd need the approximately $1.8 million they had left under the salary cap this year; if they couldn't, part of that would go to Pippen. In either case, Pippen would get the full amount of his extension. But Reinsdorf needed time. So he told Pippen, “I'll guarantee your deal myself. Even if you get hurt now, we'll be obligated to pay you. No matter what happens to you, consider that deal done.

“Do you understand, Scottie?” Reinsdorf had repeated. “Is that okay with you? We'll get this done, probably after the season is over, but you can consider the deal done. Okay?”

Pippen had agreed.

So Reinsdorf took the nineteen-hour trip to Split, Yugoslavia. For months, the consistent report was that Kukoc was about to sign with Benetton, the Italian-league team, for upwards of $4 million per season. The Bulls wouldn't match that, having offered Kukoc a $15.3 million, six-year package. But every time Reinsdorf asked, Kukoc's representatives said there was no deal. Was he being suckered? Reports circulated in Europe that the Bulls could not sign Kukoc because of Pippen's contract status. Finally, Reinsdorf had decided to see Kukoc and his family himself.

Krause had also made the trip to talk with Kukoc about basketball, how he'd be featured in the Bulls' offense and how it worked. Reinsdorf sat for two days with Kukoc's worried parents. They knew nothing of the United States but what they'd read in controlled press reports, and Reinsdorf sought to assure them that there was a substantial Yugoslavian community in Chicago with access to the Belgrade newspapers. He told them about his four children, ages twenty-one to twenty-eight, and how he'd treat Toni as one of his own.

Only Kukoc's girlfriend seemed to be a problem. She didn't want to go to the United States and was openly hostile toward Reinsdorf. Still, he was feeling better about the Bulls' chances of getting Kukoc, and he was back in Sarasota three days later. He believed he had done what he could and now it was up to Kukoc to decide. Both Reinsdorf and Krause saw the Yugoslav as the final piece in the Bulls' championship puzzle; Reinsdorf was also looking at him as the player who could fill Jordan's shoes—and any empty seats—after Jordan retired.

The reports of Reinsdorf's trip were all over the newspapers when the Bulls returned to practice Monday after the Boston game. Pippen hadn't thought much about it until several teammates began taunting him about how much more the team wanted Kukoc than him. And Krause, ever the fingernails on the blackboard, hadn't helped. The week before, he had told Pippen he wouldn't even have been a Bull if Krause hadn't traded up in the draft to get him; Pippen owed everything to him, he said.

And if Pippen had been anxious, he was downright panic-stricken when he now heard that Charles Barkley had hurt a knee; all he could think about was what could happen if he was injured, spoken guarantee or not. Krause and Reinsdorf had shown Cliff Levingston last summer what their assurances were worth, he felt. Pippen called Rote, nearly hysterical. “I want to sign a contract, now. I've got to sign something now,” Pippen repeated over and over. Rote understood. He knew that Pippen remained deathly afraid of dying young, as his father had just a year ago, or being crippled like his brother. He played with a constant fear of a crippling injury.

Still, even Rote was astounded by Pippen's public threat to play at less than his best, as was the furious Reinsdorf, who wasted no time in calling the agent.

“You get this straightened out or we're through,” Reinsdorf said. “Scottie Pippen has a contract with this organization and he has every legal and moral right to live up to it. We've been fair, but we're not going to be made fools of. I don't feel the least bit sorry for Scottie Pippen.”

Rote called Pippen and told him there had better be some statements in the newspaper the next day saying that there had been a misunderstanding, that he would always play hard no matter what. It would also be nice, said the agent, if he said he wanted to stay with the Bulls. Pippen agreed.

Krause also had something to say.

“You ain't going anywhere, Scottie,” he told Pippen as the team got ready to play Orlando on April 2. “We got you and this is where you're staying. No matter what you do and no matter what you say. So get used to it.”

While the Pippen story would quiet down, the King blowup had everyone talking, analyzing, and deciding how the Bulls should handle the situation. John Bach and his old friend Frank Layden had gone to lunch at Ditka's restaurant in Chicago one afternoon, shortly after King's walkout, where they ran into the Bears coach himself. He pulled Bach aside.

“This thing with King really bothers me,” Ditka said, stopping by their table. “Now, here's a guy who forgot about the team. Sometimes, you have to make that clear. What I would have done is ripped his locker out of the wall and thrown it out in the street and said, ‘There. That's where you can go.' Who the hell does that kid think he is?”

The strain of seventeen games in March was beginning to show on the Bulls in April; they seemed to have lost a step. Their shooting eyes were still holding up, but they weren't executing the harassing defense that so frustrated opponents; teams were getting to the basket more easily. The Orlando Magic shot 55 percent in the April 2 game and even pulled ahead by 3 points with three minutes left. But the Bulls turned up the defense for a few minutes and made the Magic disappear; Orlando went five straight possessions without scoring while Jordan and Grant combined for 6 free throws in the last forty seconds for the 106–102 Bulls' win.

But Grant would get just 5 shots while even the coaches were screaming for somebody to get him the ball. Worse, Grant had 12 points on those 5 shots, underscoring the Magic's inability to cover him. “First, I've got [6-6, 210-pound] Nick Anderson on me in the post and then [6-8, 195-pound] Jerry Reynolds, and I can't get the ball. It's ridiculous,” said Grant, noting that Jordan attempted 26 shots and scored 44 points.