The Jordan Rules (19 page)

“This is typical of my life,” Cartwright said to Sheri as she tried to help him up. “I've got to do everything the hard way.”

Week after week there'd be another trade rumor once Cartwright recovered. Cartwright never complained, but he did tell a friend after being traded to the Bulls in 1988, “It's going to be interesting if New York doesn't win this year. It always seemed like if they could get somebody for me, they'd win. So who are they going to blame it on now?”

Rick Pitino? Al Bianchi? Ewing? Mark Jackson? Gulf + Western, which owned the Knicks? John Lindsay? Ed Koch? Take your choice.

The night Cartwright was traded to the Bulls for Charles Oakley, Michael Jordan was at the Mike Tyson-Michael Spinks fight in Atlantic City. Reporters started coming up to him: What do you think of the trade?

“What trade?” asked Jordan. When he was told, Jordan was stunned. He had adopted Oakley, the big, strong kid from Division II Virginia Union University, as sort of a little brother, albeit a little brother with broad shoulders and massive arms that gave Jordan a sense of security he felt with few other players. Oakley had become his bodyguard. In those days Jordan was making his points principally by hurtling toward the basket; the understanding around the league was, knock him down and you were going to get a shot sooner or later from Oakley. It gave an opponent pause. Jordan took Oakley under his powerful wing, brought him to the All-Star game as his guest in Oakley's first season, and began riding to home games with him. Oakley would occasionally complain about a lack of shots, which many viewed as jealousy of Jordan, although that wasn't totally the case; Oakley wanted to be an All-Star himself, and he knew in the NBA that meant scoring. He was frustrated by being left out of the offense. But even as he remained close to Jordan, Oakley realized what management was doing to the team, with its promotional campaigns for Jordan and the succession of coaches who relied completely on the game's greatest individual player. “You can't expect the rest of us to score all of a sudden when they shut down Michael and we haven't had shots all season,” Oakley would tell Doug Collins. Oakley also didn't keep his feelings from the media, and when he was traded, several players felt the message was clear: Speak out about Jordan, even obliquely, and you were gone.

Still, Oakley's outbursts never affected his relationship with Jordan, for Jordan probably needed Oakley more than Oakley needed Jordan. The two often talked by telephone after the trade, and it was Jordan whom Oakley called the next season when he thought he had a chance to make the All-Star team and didn't.

And traded for whom? Jordan thought. Bill Cartwright? Jordan never cared much for Cartwright's play and wondered immediately who would be his policeman now. Not the bumbling Cartwright, or the then-210-pound Grant, who would take Oakley's place in the starting lineup. “I don't know about trading a twenty-four-year-old guy for a thirty-four-year-old guy [Cartwright was actually thirty-one then],” Jordan said at the time.

The big question was Cartwright's knee. “It was always ‘I'm okay' when I asked him how he was,” said Phil Jackson. “He'd always say he was ready to go. You couldn't even get him out of practice. He'd say he needed to keep in condition for the game.” But by playoff time of 1990, Cartwright's knee was so wretched he couldn't sit in a car for more than a few minutes with his knee bent. On the team bus to games, he'd have to lie flat in his seat. But he never talked to anyone about it or complained. He just went out and played, often poorly because of his limited mobility, but even in that condition he was so much better than the team's backup centers, Will Perdue and Stacey King, that he had to be out there.

Meanwhile, Jordan, as if to emphasize Cartwright's clumsiness, began to lay out banana peels for Cartwright to slip on. He'd already proclaimed before the season that he would have to concentrate more on rebounding with Oakley gone. Knowing Cartwright was not a reflexively sharp athlete, he'd dart into the lane and shoot Cartwright a no-look pass. Invariably, it would bounce off Cartwright's hands and go out of bounds. “He's causing me too many turnovers,” Jordan would tell reporters, always making sure Cartwright could hear. And Jordan would shake his head and look toward Collins disgustedly after a Cartwright mistake, stretching his arms out with his palms upward, as if saying, “What more can I do?”

Cartwright refused to break. He might never truly earn the fans' respect, but he did come to gain the respect of the players. Around the Bulls, they began to call Cartwright “Teach,” as in teacher. In recognition of this, Jackson named Cartwright cocaptain (with Jordan) when the team returned home from its western swing this year.

“The coaches would always say that if you want to know how to get things done, you watch Bill Cartwright,” said Jackson. “He's a skilled, veteran player in a clumsy body, but with good skills. He's got the best footwork on the team. We'd tell them to watch how he moves, how he gets position, how he moves his feet, his recognition of the offense. Everyone calls him ‘Teach.' I don't think I've ever heard Michael call him that, though.”

Not likely. Jordan didn't feel Cartwright could score a basket in an empty gym.

Cartwright didn't actually much care what Jordan thought. Winning was all he thought about. He was no different if he scored 30 points or 3: He believed in working hard, keeping your mouth shut, and doing what you could for your team. He couldn't understand why Jordan's fits of pique were always excused in the media as merely a competitor's desire to win. Did it mean the rest of them weren't trying as hard to win, didn't want to win as much, or perhaps didn't deserve to win because they weren't as talented?

Jordan liked to belittle Cartwright in the locker room. He'd imitate Cartwright's unorthodox shooting style with wild exaggerated moves that left many of his teammates trying to contain laughter when Cartwright was nearby. Cartwright would just look away and blame immaturity.

But Jordan went one step too far in the 1988–89 season. He was angry over the Bulls' slow start and had already gone to Krause during the western trip in November to ask that he make some trades. “I need help,” he told Krause. Krause explained the Bulls had salary-cap problems, which Jordan neither understood nor cared to hear about. So Jordan made some decisions. One was that he would have to do just that much more himself. And to do that, he couldn't have Cartwright fouling things up, especially late in the game.

So he told Grant, Vincent, and Pippen—three players who were usually on the floor at the end of games with him—that they were not to pass Cartwright the ball in the last four minutes of a game. “If you do that,” Jordan said, “you'll never get the ball from me.” And suddenly, plays called by Collins were being ignored as Jordan took the ball to the basket. But who could really complain, since the Bulls had started to win? Eventually, though, word got back to Cartwright. He didn't do or say anything to anybody until late that season, when he told Jordan he needed to talk to him.

There was little small talk exchanged. “I don't like the things I've heard you saying about me,” Cartwright told Jordan.

Jordan stared at him.

“If I ever hear again that you're telling guys not to pass me the ball,” Cartwright continued, “you will never play basketball again.”

That was it. But as Cartwright began to move better after surgery following the 1989–90 season, Jordan began to accept him more. He realized that neither Will Perdue nor Stacey King could adequately play center for the Bulls, and perhaps Cartwright could do some things to help the team. He didn't block shots or rebound that well, Jordan thought, but he appeared to be able to score. And opposing centers, whether they feared his mad elbows or not, seemed not to exert themselves that much against Cartwright.

Jackson had offered Jordan a piece of advice, for as much as Jackson liked Cartwright, he realized one problem was that Jordan was too quick and too good an athlete to play easily with Cartwright. “When you pass him the ball,” Jackson told Jordan, “throw it at his nose. He'll catch it then. You've got to try to hit him in the face or he's not going to get it.”

“I think Michael can accept the job Bill does out there,” Jackson said in naming Cartwright cocaptain.

And Jordan did make a peace offering: He no longer throws Cartwright passes he doesn't believe Cartwright can handle. He does throw them at his nose when he can think of it. But Jackson also knows he must tread carefully with the two, and as a rule he never places Jordan on a team against Cartwright in a scrimmage.

“Phil knows I'll take him down if I have to,” Cartwright says.

The Bulls started a new winning streak after the losses to Portland and Milwaukee, but no one was fooled. They beat the Clippers, who were playing without Benoit Benjamin and Charles Smith, by 40. They beat Cleveland by 18 after taking a 36–5 first-quarter lead in an astonishing display of ineptitude by the Cavaliers, whose starting backcourt of Darnell Valentine and Gerald Paddio went scoreless in the game. They beat Miami, which was playing without center Rony Seikaly, by 9.

The only real amusement was in the Miami game. Rookie Willie Burton blocked a Jordan shot and started taunting Jordan, who was bothered by the flu and was to some extent coasting through the game. Sophomore Glen Rice chimed in, saying the Heat were going to embarrass Jordan on his home court. This was not smart. It seemed to revive him. Jordan stole the ball from Burton and dunked after the Heat had pulled to within 1, 96–95. Then Jordan blocked an Alec Kessler shot and hit Pippen for a breakaway lay-up. Jordan then stole the ball from Sherman Douglas, was fouled, and hit two free throws. Suddenly the Bulls were ahead by 7 with two minutes to go and the game was over.

Miami coach Ron Rothstein told Burton and Rice after the game never to say anything to Jordan again.

***

Despite the three wins, everyone knew there were problems. “We're not winning because of talent,” said Jordan after the Miami game. “We're just beating bad teams.”

The coaches met and talked about the bench, which had given up lead after lead. Jackson couldn't find a suitable combination; he had been playing the reserves as a separate unit, but he decided to start playing them more with starters.

King remained overweight after coming to camp some 30 pounds over his 245-pound playing weight; the players were calling him everything from “Juicy Juice” to “Doughboy.” He looked as if he were wearing a coat under his uniform. Armstrong, too, was growing frustrated with his role on the second team. He had worked and improved during the summer, but Jackson liked the way John Paxson ran his offense and complemented Jordan. He felt Armstrong was too loose with the ball. So Armstrong sulked and his performance faltered. Dennis Hopson and Cliff Levingston continued to struggle in the offense, as Hopson tried to hide his slow return from off-season knee surgery. And Jackson was still wondering how to get five guards into the game. He wanted to play Craig Hodges more, but he was committed to trying to use Hopson and worried about Hodges's defense.

“They start posting him up as soon as he gets off the bus,” Jackson joked in the meeting. The coaches called him “Highway Fourteen,” as in “Everyone comes down Highway Fourteen.” Fourteen was Hodges's uniform number.

Tex Winter said they should release him and let him catch on somewhere where he could play.

“Hey, we may need him sometime,” said Bach. “You've got to remember, these are Hessians, hired soldiers. He's a piece that may win a game for us someday. You just don't give that away.”

But there was a more important matter ahead: the Pistons in the Palace of Auburn Hills.

The players were loose in the locker room before the game, much as they were before the seventh game of the conference finals last June, when they were pummeled by the Pistons. Armstrong was throwing his hands around in an exaggerated manner in front of the blackboard in the dressing room, saying, “Who's this?” Everyone laughed.

It was an imitation of Krause, who after that seventh-game loss last June had told the team he never again wanted to be in such a position, as he threw papers down and slammed the blackboard. Krause had been coughing madly and trying to clear his throat and the players weren't quite sure what he was saying.

Sometimes the coaches worried that the Bulls were too loose. They were young and liked to joke with one another, although the humor often had a hard, cutting edge. They teased about everything from girlfriends and wives to their long noses and funny ears with an often roguish insouciance. Before the New York game earlier in the month, Jordan, Pippen, and Grant, all of whom had boys under three at the time, had debated for a half hour about whose child had the biggest penis. They eventually agreed it was Pippen's.

Before games, one of the coaches charts all the opponents' plays on a blackboard. NBA scouting has become so sophisticated—and assistant coaches John Bach and Jim Cleamons, the third and youngest of the assistants, were primarily responsible for this with the Bulls—that as soon as the opposing coach signals a play, the Bulls staff can relay it to the players on the floor. Once, when Miami's Sherman Douglas paused to hear his coach's instructions, Jordan yelled, “He wants a high screen roll.”

Tapes of opponents' games are also edited and left rolling on a television in the locker room before the game, but Bulls players aren't always very studious. Cartwright and Paxson usually watch carefully, and Jordan does more often than most. But the younger players rarely do, and on this night it showed.

The game went as so many have in the Palace. The Bulls hung on for a quarter, but the pace was slow, which always worked in the Pistons' favor. The Bulls need to run and scatter the game against Detroit, but they can't because the Pistons dominate the rebounding. When that happens, it's just a matter of time before the Pistons pull away. In this game, the Bulls got dismantled in the second quarter and eventually lost by 21. Jordan scored 33, but no one else hit double figures. Pippen shot 2 for 16 and Hodges, Hopson, and Levingston combined to shoot 1 for 15. The entire bench was scoreless on 15 shots through three quarters.