How to Be Like Mike (19 page)

One of the corporate values at ServiceMaster Corporation is, “There are no friendly competitors.”

St. Louis Cardinals manager Tony La Russa said, “You don’t manage for the money or the publicity. It’s about the competition.”

Michael played hard, but all players play hard. The difference was he out-competed people. That’s a rare trait. You can’t just play hard, you have to compete hard. There is a great difference.

—Kelvin Sampson
COLLEGE BASKETBALL COACH

“Every time I step on the court, if you’re against me, you’re trying to take something from me,” Jordan said. “I don’t want the other team to win. I just do not want them to win.”

“I was with Minnesota, and we were beating the Bulls at home,” said former NBA guard Pooh Richardson. “Tony Campbell was guarding Michael, and said to him, ‘This is it. We’re going to beat you guys. ’ Michael said, ‘You wouldn’t beat me if your life depended on it. ’Then Campbell hit a shot to put us up by one with five seconds to go. Michael took the ball, whirled into the lane, made an underhand scoop shot, and the Bulls won the game. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

After he lost eight straight games of Ping-Pong (for twenty-five dollars each) to Chicago sportswriter Lacy Banks, Jordan reportedly bought a table for his house and hired a coach to work with him. A few weeks later, Jordan won seven of eight games against Banks, then never played him again.

When Jordan was a kid, he would wager household chores in games against his sisters. He wanted to win so badly that he could never resist a bet. He also wanted to win so badly that he didn’t always hold to the rules. He once paid off the porter at the airport to ensure his bag would come out first, and then bet his teammates on it. When he lost a game of Go Fish to Buzz Peterson, his college teammate, and Peterson’s mother, Jordan sulked. When he lost two dollars in a college poker game, he was furious. When he lost to former North Carolina assistant coach Roy Williams at pool, he refused to speak to Williams the next day. When he was losing a pinball game to teammate Matt Doherty, he made Doherty stay up all night and play.

Everytime I lose, I die a little.

—George Allen
FORMER
NFL
COACH

Once Jordan played pool against Doherty and lost. Afterward, Michael tossed his cue onto the table and declared, “This table is not regulation.”

To be successful you have to like to lose a little less than everybody else.

—Phil Jackson

In college, after a grueling practice, he would insist on running races in the parking lot against his teammates. “Michael would deny this, but he never won a race,” said UNC teammate Joe Wolf. “Buzz Peterson and Kenny Smith were faster and would always beat him. But afterward, Michael would always say, ‘Let’s go again. ’He knew that to get faster, he had to run against faster people.”

He had a wicked memory. He never forgot a loss. And he never forgot to collect on a bet. Once he sent a clubhouse boy to collect five dollars from NBA veteran Vin Baker, on a bet that Baker insists Jordan
lost.
“Sometimes,” said ex-Bulls coach Phil Jackson, “he’d come to me and say, ‘Coach, you know, you still owe me two dollars. ’And it would be from some free throws he’d hit in practice months ago.”

It wasn’t about the money, of course. It was about the trophy. It was about confidence and bragging rights. It was about the last word. When someone would offer to bet him on something, and they’d ask how much, Jordan would often reply, “Whatever makes you nervous.”

One night, soon after he made his return to the NBA from baseball, Jordan sat down in the fourth quarter with the Bulls leading Utah comfortably. He had forty-nine points. He turned to the crew on press row and asked, “What’s the league high-scoring game this year?” Somebody called back, “Karl Malone, fifty-four points.”

I love this game and I love competing. I love it when I get hit and when I hit back.

—Steve Young
FORMER
NFL
QUARTERBACK

Jordan checked back into the game, scored three quick baskets, and sat down again. “Now the high is fifty-five,” he said.

This is a man whose assumed name when he checked into hotels was that of the teammate, Leroy Smith, who beat him out for the varsity basketball team in tenth grade. He remembered criticisms that out-of-town reporters had written years before, and he remembered challenges that had been issued months before. In an interview with ESPN’s Dan Patrick immediately after the 1998 finals, Patrick joked about being able to take Jordan one-on-one, and Jordan challenged him right there.

“Just minutes before, this guy hit one of the biggest shots in basketball history,” Patrick said. “Then he wants to play me just to shut me up.”

He had a goal of dunking on every center in the league. He even dunked on his own teammate, Corie Blount, during a celebrity game. He spent a great deal of effort trying to dunk on the Hawks’ rangy shot-blocker, Dikembe Mutombo, and when he finally did, in a play-off game after Jordan emerged from retirement, he taunted Mutombo with a waggle of his finger.

Before the first game of a Bulls–Miami Heat play-off series, Michael went out to meet the refs. He shook Keith Askins’s hand, but he ignored Alonzo Mourning. That was MJ’s way of getting into Zo’s head.

—Ike Austin
NBA
PLAYER

“I told you I’d dunk on you,” Jordan told him. “That’s why I came back.”

“Michael would take any little thing someone said and create a challenge for himself to beat that person or team,” said Lakers center Shaquille O’Neal. “He kept his edge because he just made up stuff in his mind. You did not want to make Michael mad.”

Jordan’s instincts led him astray at times. This was the side effect. With such a finely honed competitive instinct, it was nearly impossible to let go. Said Phil Jackson:“The greatness of Michael Jordan is his competitive drive. The weakness of Michael Jordan is his competitive drive.”

When Jordan was embroiled in a controversy after taking a gambling trip to Atlantic City during an NBA play-off series against the Knicks, his own father admitted that what Jordan had was not a gambling problem, but a competition problem. “But if he didn’t have a competition problem,” James Jordan said, “nobody ever would have written about him in the first place, and he never would have gotten to the level he did.”

What you may not remember is that, in the midst of the Atlantic City controversy, the Bulls won that series against the Knicks. “The media ripped Michael,” said Knicks general manager Ernie Grunfeld, “but all that did was wake him up. He was saying, in effect, ‘I’ll always be there to do my job. And if you arouse me, I’ll really destroy you. ’”

That’s the thing. Outside influences never affected his job. On a night during the 1992 NBA Finals in Portland, Jordan was sitting in his room with a few of his old friends from North Carolina, and they were riding him, talking trash about his game. This was around ten at night, and Jordan said, “All right, let’s see you back it up.” They drove to a Nike facility and Michael opened up the gym and they played pickup games late into the night.

I want to be the best. Maybe not the best coach, but the best winner. You can name me the worst coach if you give me twenty rings. I want to win.

—Doc Rivers
COACH
, O
RLANDO
M
AGIC

The next day against Portland, Jordan put up forty points.

A healthy measure of competition, kept in perspective, is crucial. It breeds confidence, which helps us to overcome obstacles, to take risks, to allay our fears and to win. Six NBA championship rings were not attained by backing away from a challenge.

Building Wings

T
his was in Chicago, during a game between the Bulls and Hawks that came down to the final moments. There were twenty seconds left and Steve Kerr had the ball for Chicago and began to drive toward the basket, and as he did, Jordan, sensing Kerr’s move wasn’t going to work, called a time-out. After the time-out, the ball went to Jordan, isolated on Mookie Blaylock. He hit the shot. He won the game.

He always wanted the ball in these situations. He almost always got the ball. When he didn’t, he was infuriated. During spring training in 1994, when Jordan was playing baseball, he played in a pickup basketball game. He scored every basket, but on the last play, his manager, Terry Francona (against whom Jordan spent the entire season embroiled in an ongoing game of Yahtzee), missed a wide-open shot that would have won the game.

“Don’t ever do that again,” Jordan said. “In any game, I take the last shot.”

He was supremely confident. He never considered that he could be denied the basketball, or that he could be denied his shot. In Game Three of the 1991 NBA Finals, when the Bulls faced the Lakers, the Los Angeles coaches specifically instructed their players not to allow Jordan to touch the ball on Chicago’s last possession. “The play started,” recalled Lakers assistant Bill Bertka, “and Michael got the ball, raced down the court and scored. The Bulls won and went on to sweep us. That was so typical of MJ.”

There’s an elation to winning.

—Joe Paterno

So typical that a nearly identical scenario had occurred in 1989, with the Bulls leading the Knicks 3–2 in a play-off series. Late in the game, the Knicks led by one, and New York coach Rick Pitino called time-out. “Whatever we do,” Pitino said, “we’re not going to be beaten by Michael Jordan. Do not allow him to catch the ball. I want two of you to deny him, and if he does get it, double-team him immediately.”

Jordan fought off the defenders. He got the ball. He dribbled through a trap, got fouled, hit both free throws, won the game and ended the series.

Once, in the fourth quarter of a game against Phoenix, Jordan stood next to former Suns coach Cotton Fitzsimmons on an inbounds play and declared, “Cotton, I want you to know it’s all over now.”

“My rookie year with the Clippers, we’re up on the Bulls at home by five with forty seconds left,” said the Memphis Grizzlies’ Lorenzen Wright. “We had the ball out of bounds. We inbounded into the backcourt, which gave the Bulls the ball. Michael hit a three. Then Michael intercepted Rodney Rogers’s pass and hit a shot at the buzzer to tie it. We went ino overtime and the Bulls won. What an introduction to Michael.”

“My rookie year, we’re in Chicago and up by one late in the game,” said the Hawks’ Chris Crawford. “MJ hit a bank shot to put the Bulls up by one. Then we came down and Steve Smith got fouled. He hit them both and we’re back up by one. The last play of the game MJ hit a jumper and the Bulls won. MJ walked off the floor like it was no big deal—just another day at the office. He had forty-nine that night.”

I think I’m lucky. I was born with very little talent, but great drive.

—Anthony Quinn
ACTOR

On what was supposed to be a day off for him before the 1996 play-offs, Jordan arrived at the gym wearing a pair of sweatpants and worn-out canvas sneakers. He wanted to join the team’s scrimmage, but Phil Jackson had insisted that he sit out, take it easy. Jordan couldn’t resist. He laced up his canvas sneakers and barged onto the court.

“Michael was all over the place, making steals and blocks,” recalled his former teammate, John Salley. “One play he made a steal and dunked right over me. As he’s soaring over me, he said, ‘Try to block this one. ’ I thought to myself, now I understand.”

While the law of competition may be hard sometimes for the individual, it is best for the race, because it ensures the survival of the fittest in every department.

—Andrew Carnegie

Former Bulls teammate, Charles Davis, understood as well. He said, “When I practiced against MJ I never backed down because he wouldn’t allow you to. If you slacked off against him, he’d bury you because he felt you were cheating him. Michael knew the harder he was pushed in practice, the better he’d play in the games.”

“Michael’s rookie year in Chicago, we came out of training camp one night and we’re walking to my car,” said former Bull Rod Higgins. “It was late and dark and we heard a dog bark.

“I said, ‘Michael, do you hear that dog?’

“Michael said, ‘Yeah. ’

“Then the barking got louder and closer and out of nowhere we saw this big German shepherd running after us. We started running around the car. Michael left me in the dust. Even threw a couple of elbows at me. He wasn’t going to let the dog or me beat him.

“Michael ended up jumping on the hood of my car. He left a dent in it. Finally, the dog left. I guess he had bigger fish to fry.”

“Michael had a mean streak,” said ex-Bulls coach Doug Collins. “He could be vicious. All the great geniuses of the world were like that. We’re talking about the Einsteins, the Edisons, the Roosevelts. These people came across something and worked to perfect it. You played one-on-one with Michael, and he was not going to let you score.”

We cheat ourselves when our self-esteem falters. Lack of confidence is the primary reason that we shy away from competition, and without competition, there is no possibility for success. But confidence can be built—if we are willing to face those things we fear, and if we are willing to take the risks. For most of us it is not a matter of playing hurt, or taking the final shot, or fighting for victory in such an overt sense. It is more subtle, something that exists in the environments we cohabit, in the classroom or the boardroom or the sales floor. It is an urge to succeed that overwhelms our urge to take the easy way out.

Franklin Roosevelt was the only person I ever knew—anywhere—who was never afraid.

—Lyndon B. Johnson

Historian Jeffry D. Wert observed that trait in studying the life of Confederate General Robert E. Lee: “A Texan in the Confederate Army compared Lee’s temperament to that of ‘a game cock. ’ The mere presence of an enemy aroused his pugnacity,” he wrote, “and was a challenge he found hard to decline.” General James Longstreet described this trait in Lee as “headlong combativeness.” Lee’s battle correspondence bristles with words like “destroy,” “ruin,” “crush,” and “wipe out” when referring to what he wanted to do to Union armies.