The Jordan Rules (13 page)

So Pippen wanted, almost demanded, a long-term deal from the Bulls, six years for $5.1 million. The Bulls were agreeable, for Krause was ecstatic about Pippen. He viewed him not only as a potential All-Star but as a personal discovery, a case of outsmarting his peers, as every general manager yearns to do (but few with Krause's intensity). And he would be right, so much so that when the Bulls later went shopping for talent, the only players they considered untradable were Jordan and Pippen.

But coming out of Hamburg, Pippen wasn't even sure he could play in the NBA. His representative, Sexton, remembers Pippen asking how much he could get from his contract if he were released after his rookie season.

“He wanted security,” recalls Sexton. “That's what he was most concerned with.”

Although he was a rural version of a street kid, wild, somewhat irresponsible and subject to running with people of questionable character, Pippen was intensely conservative with money. His father's illness, which had put him out of work when Pippen was in junior high, and crippling illnesses to two brothers left Pippen obsessed with providing for the future. He never, never wanted to be without money now that he had some. When he signed a deal, he talked about an annuity before he talked about a new car, Sexton said.

“I just had my mind set on one thing after going through college,” Pippen said. “I wanted to get money to help my family. I felt this was a chance for me to give my mom some of the things I wanted her to have.”

So Pippen began sending home a regular allowance, bought his mother a new car, and built the family a sprawling ranch-style home to accommodate his father's wheelchair needs. In later years, Pippen would always return there. “It's real comfortable, the most comfortable house for me,” he says. “I could just sit there and know we're all enjoying it and that made me feel good.”

But now, as his teammates were in Chicago preparing to begin the 1990–91 season, Pippen wasn't feeling so good. He'd just left that big house in Hamburg and was driving east through Mist and Thebes on U.S. 82. He was heading into Mississippi toward Memphis, Tennessee, where he would meet with Sexton. It was the first of October, just a few days before the opening of camp, and Pippen had made a decision: “I just thought I'd sit out a few days and see what they said. Maybe I'd even sit out all of training camp.”

Pippen was outraged at the bigger salaries being paid to teammates like Stacey King, who Pippen thought was lazy and lacking spirit. He'd heard rumors all summer about Levingston, about the Bulls being willing to pay him more than $1 million per year, and he wondered: How good is this guy? Could he play my position and replace me? Is that why they wanted him?

Pippen was to earn $765,000 in 1990–91 with two unguaranteed option years to come at the club's discretion at $1.1 million and $1.25 million. When he had signed in 1987, those were considered lucrative figures, but the impact of the NBC TV deal had thrown all previous deals out of whack. Reggie Miller was about to sign a five-year, $16 million deal with Indiana, and Reggie Lewis, picked even farther down in that 1987 draft by Boston, was about to sign a $3-million-a-year deal. And Pippen's next two years were still unguaranteed. Pippen bought a multimillion-dollar insurance policy, but he remained frightened that it could all vanish quickly.

He'd had that fear since his rookie season, when he averaged 8 points per game in about twenty minutes on the floor. From midseason on, Pippen had experienced pain in his back and legs, but team physicians couldn't agree on the problem. Trainer Mark Pfeil told Pippen he only needed to stretch, and the general feeling was that Pippen was a malingerer. Pippen knew otherwise, and also knew that if something wasn't done, his career was over. Sometimes he'd have to stop two or three times during his forty-minute drive to the Stadium to walk or stretch because he couldn't sit in the car anymore. He'd never realized how far away his feet were before; he could never seem to reach them. He could dunk a basketball more easily than he could put on his socks. But the team insisted nothing was seriously wrong. Pfeil, who'd had a long career in Chicago listening to the whining of lazy athletes, became the team's enforcer, telling Pippen he was weak and lazy. It was something Pippen would not quickly forget.

Eventually, the team would recognize that Pippen needed disk surgery, which he had after his rookie season. And he admits that as he lay in bed, he wondered if he'd ever play again. “I was scared,” he recalls. “I thought that was the end.”

But Pippen had a full recovery and moved into the starting lineup by late December of the following season. And now he was an All-Star, yet teammates like King and Hopson and Cartwright were all making more than he was. And the Bulls could hold him to three more seasons without the kind of raise he deserved. Pippen had worked out most of the summer back in Chicago and was quicker, jumping better, even shooting better. He felt lithe and strong—and underpaid.

As he rolled north, he came up with a plan. He was going to get a room in Memphis and hide out for a few days so the Bulls couldn't find him. He'd enjoy knowing that Krause was squirming before the local media, unable to find him. His anger, as it is for most of the Bulls during contract negotiations, was directed at Krause.

Krause had gone to Pippen when Pippen started mumbling about wanting a new deal after the 1989–90 season, and said it was team policy not to renegotiate when a player has three years left on his contract. Pippen cursed out Krause and later told Sexton he wouldn't talk to him anymore. Krause had had the same effect on John Paxson earlier in the summer, when Ed Nealy signed with Phoenix for almost $700,000 per year. Krause knew Paxson and Nealy had become close friends, so he told Paxson not to expect that kind of money when his contract ran out. Paxson didn't want to make a scene, but he asked his lawyer to call Reinsdorf and request that Krause no longer talk with him—about anything.

And Krause had so angered Horace Grant during talks late in the 1989–90 season that Grant demanded to be traded on the eve of the playoffs. Krause had said Grant was unworthy of a big contract, unlike A. C. Green, whom Sexton, also Grant's agent, had brought up for comparative purposes. When Sexton told Grant what Krause had said, the sensitive Grant could think of nothing but trying to hurt Krause in return.

But Reinsdorf was shrewd. He knew Krause annoyed players and their agents. He'd offer ridiculously low contracts just to make them fume. Krause initially told Grant he'd never get more than $800,000 per year; he eventually added $6 million over three years to his contract. Krause would compare a player unfavorably with others around the league and tell him the Bulls fully intended to enforce his contract. There was no bargaining with Krause.

So Reinsdorf would enter the negotiations. He was smooth and smart. He'd assure the agent and his player things could work out, that the Bulls thought highly of him, and immediately increase any “last” offer Krause had made. He was comforting and he'd order Krause to keep quiet, often right in front of the agent. It was a tactic Reinsdorf would use again and again, even as agents came to realize what was going on.

“I was told that's the way it worked with the Bulls,” said rookie agent Roger Kirschenbaum, who represented Levingston. “But Krause makes it so hard and gets you so mad you seem to forget.”

Then Reinsdorf would move in with a seemingly generous offer and a deal would quickly be agreed upon. It would be the price Reinsdorf was going to give them in the first place, but they'd be so glad to be dealing with someone so reasonable that they'd take it.

But Pippen had had it with Krause. There would be no talking with him, not even with Reinsdorf, this time. “Why bother?” he told Sexton. Sexton urged Pippen to go to camp, that he had to be there to get a deal done, that Reinsdorf wouldn't deal any other way.

Pippen was stubborn. “Let them see how many games they'll win without me,” he said.

Sexton, though, persuaded Pippen to call Reinsdorf and at least tell him he wasn't coming.

Reinsdorf was stunned. Pippen had to come to camp, he insisted. He was under contract. He'd be taken care of, but he had to be there. It was an obligation. This was a contract, for God's sake. You live up to contracts. That's the way it was.

Pippen said it was a bad contract and he had no intention of honoring it. He said he'd think about it, and hung up.

“The thing was,” said Pippen, “I really wanted to go to camp. I'd worked out all off-season and I wanted to show what I could do, not sit around.”

Sexton persuaded Pippen that it was important to him to make the All-Star team again, that many had thought his previous appearance a fluke, especially after the migraine incident in the playoffs. Also, Nike had offered Pippen a shoe deal, and Sexton said a holdout might embarrass Nike and hurt Pippen's endorsement opportunities.

Finally, Pippen changed his mind. “I'm going to camp,” he told Sexton. “But they better do something quick.”

The prime role of the exhibition season for the Bulls is to make money, which they do exceptionally well thanks to Jordan. And while Jordan hardly needed the playing time, Jackson often felt compelled to play him.

“I know the people are here to see him and that we're not only playing basketball, we're in the entertainment business,” said Jackson. “They want Jordan.”

To what extent was often beyond belief. In Vancouver, kids hung from the team bus like spiders trying to get a view of Jordan. In Seattle they threw firecrackers around the bus. Exhibition games are usually played in cities without NBA teams, so the security is often poor; the NBA cities and regular team hotels have learned how to deal with the Jordan phenomenon, but this year the Bulls went to Nashville and Iowa City, Vancouver and Chapel Hill, and capacity crowds watched the team everywhere, as opposed to the few thousand who attend most exhibition games.

The Bulls played well, frighteningly so at times, running up 30- and 35-point leads in some games. “We've been solid, really overwhelming at times,” admitted Jackson, “although we won't be that overpowering all season. The key for us will be to run the system and force everyone into recognition of that system, which will take time.” Yet Jackson would welcome a gradual ascent. He experimented repeatedly with different combinations, something that would continue throughout the season. He'd play the reserves as a unit, then try them with Jordan or Pippen or both; he'd squeeze the offense so that Jordan ended up in corners it was almost impossible to score from, and then Jackson would ask Jordan to do so. He'd challenge Grant with verbal attacks and encourage Pippen with soft praise. “This is a ball club that has to be extended all the time,” Jackson would tell the coaches. “We have to give them things to extend them and put them in negative situations so they learn to recover, not only in practice but in games. They're going to have to figure out situations as a group all season and find something to hang their hat on.”

Jordan remained a phenomenon of epic proportions. The Bulls attracted more than twenty-five thousand to the Kingdome in Seattle, and just as many in the new Sun Coast Dome in Saint Petersburg, where Reinsdorf had almost moved the White Sox. At the last minute a new stadium deal convinced him to stay in Chicago, but he appreciated Saint Petersburg's interest and asked how he could repay the favor. Bring the Bulls to our new dome, he was told. So the Bulls were scheduled for the first basketball game in the new arena on October 18, facing Seattle, and it was the top story in all the local newspapers. Like most big stars, Jordan performs when the stage lights go up. No matter how he might feel or how routine the games seem, he always seems energized by the crowd and the demands placed on him. He knows the fans are rooting for the big breakway dunk or the slashing baseline jam or the reverse hanging lay-up.

He also knows this style of play goes against Jackson's best instincts about how the game should be played.

“I almost wish sometimes that we could put in a play where Michael can dribble around like Marques Haynes and everyone would clear out and we could do a Globetrotter backdoor and jam the ball at the end of the twenty-four-second clock,” mused Jackson once. “Then we'd give them that one play where they could see him dribble and pass and slam. Maybe if we just asked the other team they'd lay down for one play and it would be all over and out of the way and we could get on with playing the game.”

But Jordan wasn't thinking that way in Saint Petersburg after an unusual 0-for-7 shooting half when his jumpers were bounding off the rim and his lay-ups were sliding away.

The fans were growing restless. Jackson felt an obligation to leave Jordan on the court, playing him thirty-five minutes in a meaningless exhibition game, and Jordan felt an obligation to score. The first five times the Bulls had the ball in the second half he dribbled around, drove, and shot. His teammates stood around watching helplessly, hopelessly. They had seen it before and they knew they would not be seeing the ball much. The Bulls ended up losing the game down the stretch when Sedale Threatt hit several jumpers in a row.

Bill Cartwright had attempted 3 shots to Jordan's 18, even though Seattle had Olden Polynice and Michael Cage, both natural forwards, playing center.

“I've got one fear,” said Cartwright later. “It's that I'm going to play all this time in the league and come so close and never get a ring. I only want to win. He's got so much talent and can do so much for this team, but I keep thinking he's going to keep us all from it unless he changes.”

11/2 v. Philadelphia; 11/3 at Washington; 11/6 v. Boston; 11/7 at Minnesota; 11/9 at Boston; 11/10 v. Charlotte; 11/13 at Utah; 11/15 at Golden State; 11/17 at Seattle; 11/18 at Portland; 11/21 at Phoenix; 11/23 at L.A. Clippers; 11/24 at Denver; 11/28 v. Washington; 11/30 v. Indiana

I
T
DIDN'T TAKE LONG FOR THE
B
ULLS TO DISCOVER THEY WEREN
'
T
as good as they thought they'd be.

Before the opening game against Philadelphia, Jordan sent a diamond ear stud over to Charles Barkley with Barkley's number 34 on it, just like the number 23 Jordan was now wearing in his ear. Rick Mahorn had told Jordan that Barkley had seen a picture of Jordan with his ear stud during training camp and liked it, so Jordan picked one up for Barkley. “Maybe it will keep him from hitting me,” Jordan joked.

Actually, the two had become good friends. After the 1989–90 season, Jordan played in a celebrity golf tournament in Philadelphia with Barkley caddying for him. “Charles is a nice guy, a fun guy to be with; he makes me laugh,” Jordan would explain about how Oliver Twist and the Artful Dodger had come together, how the league's Goody Two-Shoes and Peck's Bad Boy could coexist. “We're friends,” added Barkley, “because most of the guys in this league are jerks and you wouldn't want to spend any time with them.”

As the season went on, the two would engage in a personal race for the league scoring title, and one would often call the other to taunt him about how many points behind he was. In December, Jordan would take over the scoring lead for the first time all season, after a slow start; he'd been playing by Jackson's rules. But Perdue remembers Jordan sitting in the locker room before a game, saying that Barkley needed to score 45 that night to pass him. “No way he'll do that,” Jordan said. But sure enough, Barkley did, and Jordan would go for a season-high 42 in his next game to keep pace.

Jordan, like most players in the league, studied his statistics, for that was, in the end, how players were paid. Play as a team, they were told; but in negotiating sessions, statistics were always held up as the barometer of value. It was hard to find an NBA player who did not know his current statistics, and those of most of the players in the league. During the 1988–89 season, when Collins switched Jordan to point guard, he started picking up triple doubles, and it became something of a contest to see how many he could get and whether he could pass Magic Johnson, who usually led the league in that category. For several games, Jordan would check with the official scorer during the game to see how many more rebounds or assists he needed for another triple double; it only stopped when the league got word and ordered the scorer to refrain from giving out the information during the game. But Jordan has always kept his point totals in his head as he's played: Late in the 1989–90 season, during a time-out in a close game, the overhead scoreboard in Chicago Stadium listed Jordan's point total as 38. “Go tell them it's got to be thirty-nine,” Jordan told trainer Mark Pfeil. “I know I shot an odd number of free throws, so it's got to be an odd number.”

Jordan liked Barkley's brashness and respected his ability, which some said made him the most unstoppable player in the game, although their personalities were different. Jordan could be razor-sharp of tongue with an implicit, cutting message, like when he saw struggling rookie Stacey King walking into the locker room carrying a box: “I hope there's a jump shot in there,” Jordan cracked. Or when then-reserve Charles Davis was sorting through tickets for friends and family when the team was playing a game in Atlanta: “They don't need a ticket to watch you sitting on the bench. They can go to your house for that.”

Barkley, who doesn't own an unexpressed thought, rarely worries about whether outsiders hear his taunts. Everything about him is on public display, as in the 1990 playoffs, when he signaled with his thumb for coach Jim Lynam to yank Mike Gminski during a game. He's annually the most fined player in the league, once saying he'd considered donating his annual total to the homeless, “but then they'd have better homes than I do.” In the 1989–90 season, he and New York's Mark Jackson were fined for saying they had bet on which of them would make the winning shot in a close Knicks-76ers game. Barkley would be called in by the commissioner for a slap on the wrist and lecture, only to say, when asked if he were going to be fined, “Wanna bet?”

Barkley angered women's groups for saying, after a loss, that it was the kind of game after which you go home and beat your wife. “Screw the women's groups,” he said when asked if he'd actually like to see that in print. He slammed New York: “It's my kind of town … because I've got a gun.” He said of Larry Bird, “As long as he's around, I'll only be the second-worst defensive player in basketball.” He talks throughout games to anyone who'll listen, and he once told lead referee Tommy Nunez to make a call because “you know Moe and Larry won't.”

“Charles says what's on his mind,” says Jordan. “I like him because it's like I'm the good brother and he's the bad brother. He says a lot of good things the good brother wants to say, but doesn't. And I like that. I know I'm always laughing when we're together.”

But Barkley's play is no joke, and despite his developing friendship with Jordan, Barkley said he was going to show all the preseason prognosticators that the Eastern Conference race wasn't just between Detroit and Chicago. In the season opener in Chicago, he went out and outscored Jordan 37–34 and added 10 rebounds as the 76ers won rather easily, 124–116, after building a 19-point halftime lead.

The Bulls went into Washington the next night to play a Bullets team they'd defeated easily in the preseason. With Chicago trailing by 1, Jordan had a last-second shot attempt blocked, and the Bulls were now 0–2.

The Bulls had come to expect last-second heroics from Jordan. After all, who could forget that stunning fifth and final game of the 1989 opening-round playoff series in Cleveland? With Jordan promising a victory and Collins fearing for his job, there were half a dozen lead changes in the fourth quarter when Cleveland ran a brilliant screen play from Larry Nance to Craig Ehlo and scored to take a 1-point lead with three seconds left.

Collins called time-out, gathered everyone in a tight circle, and began to draw a play for Dave Corzine. “Everyone started to look around,” recalled backup forward Jack Haley, who would call the moment the most thrilling of his life. “Doug could see everyone sort of frowning, and he started to explain that they wouldn't be expecting Corzine to get the ball. Michael just slammed his fist down on the clipboard and said, ‘Give me the fuckin' ball.'

“Doug looked at him, drew up the play Jordan wanted, and he hit that amazing hanging jumper to win the game. Now that's what I call taking charge,” said Haley, who would later go to the Nets.

Taking charge: It was what Jordan was there for. But Jackson had been drilling his team—including Jordan—about moving the ball and hitting the open man. And on the final, decisive play in the Washington game, no one was near Craig Hodges in his favorite spot in the comer, yet four Bullets jumped at Jordan and blocked his shot. It happens, but some began to wonder when it happened again the next game: Boston squeezed out a 110–108 victory in Chicago when Jordan missed an eighteen-foot jumper with about twenty seconds left, and then Brian Shaw, whom Jordan was supposed to be guarding, rebounded a missed Robert Parish jumper over Jordan and put the ball in at the buzzer to win the game.

A week before at the Bulls' kickoff luncheon, player after player had talked about winning a title; management was saying this was the year, national publications were picking the Bulls as one of four or five teams with the best chance to win a championship.

The Bulls were 0–3.

After this start, Jordan told reporters he'd talked it over and decided to become more assertive on offense. And just whom had he talked that over with? “I talked it over with myself,” Jordan explained.

The Bulls ended the first nine days of the season 3–3, but two of those wins were over expansion teams—Minnesota and Charlotte—and some were worried. But not Jackson. He's a patient man, well suited for coaching the modem athlete. From his experience in the game he can relate to players, particularly big men, which is rare for a coach. Many eventually fail because they lose the respect of the bigger players, who doubt that a smaller man who never played the game can understand what they do. It's one reason Golden State's Don Nelson remains so successful But Jackson is successful for another reason: He refuses to blame his players for the team's failures, which is something that eventually doomed Collins. “It would be either that
he
won or
we
lost,” recalls Will Perdue. “It was always ‘The coaching staff did all they could.' It was ‘you guys' who let down when we lost, and then when we won it was ‘What a great job of preparation the coaches did and how hard they worked watching those films.'”

Collins had been a great player, a three-time All-Star with the Philadelphia 76ers, because of his hustle, enthusiasm, and impassioned, almost insane desire. His own personal demons drove him to be a standout while also keeping him on a highly emotional edge. But that same intensity eventually took him down as a coach.

When Stan Albeck was fired in 1986, Krause felt that Collins, then an analyst for televised NBA games, would relate better to the current generation of players because he had been one so recently.

“You mean the TV guy?” said Reinsdorf incredulously. “As our coach?”

But Krause was adamant, and he was right—at first. Collins was enthusiastic and let Jordan loose to average 37 points per game. But as time passed and the Bulls failed to join the NBA's elite, Collins became desperately controlling, calling every play and privately blaming Jordan for his inability to get the team to play a fast-breaking transition offense.

And in 1988 when the team traded for Cartwright and drafted center Will Perdue from Vanderbilt and Krause proclaimed the team set at center for the 1990s, Collins found himself under great pressure to develop a low-post game at a time when he didn't know how, never having studied the position or played it. In the 1988 exhibition season, by which time the team was fully expected to win—they had crashed the fifty-win barrier, they had Jordan, and they now had the center everyone always said the team lacked—Collins was near a breakdown, strung tighter than piano wire. He was breaking out in a rash that the players noticed whenever he was nervous, he wasn't sleeping or eating much, and his permed Little Orphan Annie hair sat on top of an ever-shrinking face that was a mask of rage one day, tears the next.

Once at a charity exhibition, Jordan sat with players from around the league, swapping stories, when the subject turned to coaches. Everyone had something to add, from Dominique Wilkins telling about Mike Fratello's demonic rages to Isiah Thomas telling about his willful exchanges with Chuck Daly. So everyone had a good laugh, but there was silence after Jordan said, “You may think you've got problems with your coaches, but, well, mine cries every day.”

Finally, Krause and Collins became bitter enemies, with Krause compiling indiscretions by Collins, and Collins calling Reinsdorf and demanding Krause be sent home from a road trip or remain out of the locker room. Collins's mania had become too draining on everyone around. He had to go.

Jackson was never predictable, though in a different way than Collins; he still mystified his players, although they liked and respected him. He was a guy who could wear his hat sideways during practice, but then confront them in the harshest terms about their play. To some, Jackson was a master of psychology, using a variety of ploys to produce results. “I think it's important to do anything you can to make them play hard,” he'd say.

“Phil's always playing with your head,” said Craig Hodges.

In his first season, Jackson started giving books to players at the start of the team's annual two-week November road trip. This season he would give the novel
Glitz
to high-priced, fast-talking Stacey King,
Tar Baby
to rookie Scott Williams, and
The Great Santini
to Will Perdue. Michael Jordan received
Song of Solomon
and the aging Bill Cartwright got
Things Fall Apart.
Jackson considers himself a guide for these young men as well as a coach, and given the long duration of the NBA year, he tries to break up the routine. That's why the team took a bus trip from Seattle to Portland, instead of flying, because Jackson thought they'd enjoy the scenery. Instead, they all slept. He'd occasionally administer psychological tests during bus and plane trips, although most of the players would invariably scribble aimlessly while listening to their headphones. Jackson sometimes wondered if he could reach a generation that didn't understand how Thoreau could live by a pond but not own water skis or snorkeling equipment. The players often considered Jackson too didactic.

“I have to spend a lot of time thinking about people,” says Jackson. “I remember my dad thinking in terms of the congregation, and it was the pastor's responsibility to remember everyone, sort of like a shepherd with his flock, and I believe that about a team. You can't think of them as just players for a coach, but you have to think of them as a group and relate to them that way, even without words. Sometimes just a wink or a pat on the shoulder will do it.

“Basketball is a very fragile thing because as coaches we can do everything and prepare everybody and have everyone physically ready and still if there's not the group reflex and reaction at the right moment, if you don't have that oneness of the group, it starts to be five starters on the floor. That bond, that unity, is a very fragile thing. It's really almost something holy, which is where the word
whole
comes from in a sense. So you've always got to try to do things to break down the routine.”