The Jordan Rules (27 page)

Edwards missed and Aguirre was called for going over the back on a long rebound. Close call. Two free throws for Jordan: 90–89 Bulls. John Salley was called for an offensive foul against Armstrong as Salley tried to get around the small guard. Pippen then threw the ball away. Laimbeer launched a three-pointer that went halfway down and spun out. “Hey, maybe,” Jackson thought. Jordan appeared to push off on Dumars getting the inbounds pass, but Dumars was called for the foul. Chuck Daly was dancing halfway down the court on the sideline; his dance would remind no one of Fred Astaire, though there was some Bobby Knight in it. Jordan made both free throws and the Bulls led 92–89 with fifty-five seconds left. “We're home!” Daly was yelling to the referees. “What's going on?” Vinnie Johnson then hit a jumper to get the Pistons to within 1, 92–91. Jordan followed with a seventeen-footer with thirty-seven seconds left and the Bulls led 94–91. But Edwards put in a Johnson miss to get Detroit back to within 1. “Damned offensive rebounds,” Jackson muttered. Jordan again appeared to push off against Dumars. Foul—on Dumars! Jordan made one of two free throws for a 95–93 lead. He was as exhausted as a laborer after digging ditches all day. This time it wouldn't be a grave for the Bulls, though. The Pistons missed three attempts at the basket as time ran out.

“A monkey is off our back,” Jordan exulted. “We'd seemed snakebitten there,” Jackson agreed. “Eye of the tiger,” yelled Pippen. It was a happy ride to the airport for a change. “I can't remember many from here,” Paxson would recall. Jordan had finished with 30, including the Bulls' last 10 points in the final 2:13. “That's when we want to go to him,” said Jackson. “He's the best closer in the game.” Pippen's 20 enabled him to forget about last year's migraine, and Armstrong was the third Bull in double figures with 12. He'd converted three clutch baskets without a miss in the fourth quarter and had helped in bothering Johnson and Dumars into 10-for-27 shooting. He said his good-byes as the players headed back to Chicago for the four-day All-Star break. Jordan would be going to Charlotte, and Armstrong would be staying in Detroit, his hometown. His high school, Brother Rice in Birmingham, was going to retire his number the next day.

It was always the discussion around the kitchen table in the Armstrong household that B.J. most cherished. It's where he learned about life, where he considered his mistakes and set about to repair them. He was the only child of Barbara and Benjamin Roy. He was Benjamin Roy Armstrong, Jr.—B.J. to the kids, to everyone.
Babyfaced
had become a cliche to him by the time he was becoming a star at the University of Iowa. When he came to the Bulls, he looked no more than sixteen. When he went to visit the Sears Tower that year, the attendant charged him the children's price. The players liked his toughness, though, because he played hard, even if he was somewhat sensitive, perhaps because he was an only child. His brown eyes were soft and comforting, and his high cheekbones framed an expressive face.

It was to the kitchen table that B.J. came for insight and counseling, as when he didn't understand why he wasn't starting at Iowa as a freshman, even though he was outplaying the senior point guard in practice every day.

“You've got to be patient,” Barbara counseled. “Your turn will come.”

He understood, for from his mother B.J. learned the patience to be strong. She had been stricken with multiple sclerosis when he was a high school sophomore and she was now confined to a wheelchair, but she continued to work for the doctor she had been with before. And it was at that table again, the night before the Pistons game, where B.J. listened and learned some more.

He wasn't playing the way he had in college, or even in high school. He was tentative and almost afraid. He used to penetrate, he used to be aggressive. He wasn't doing what had made him a star at Iowa, what had made him a first-round draft choice in the NBA. Where was that player, Benjamin Roy and Barbara wondered?

Friends had warned Armstrong about coming to the Bulls. Isiah Thomas, whom Armstrong had admired since he was in high school, had tried to tell him gently that playing with Jordan would not be as easy as it seemed. The Bulls had told Armstrong they wanted him because he was also such a good shooter. “A guard playing opposite Jordan gets so many opportunities,” Krause had said. “Look at John Paxson. And you can take the ball to the basket.”

But Sam Vincent, a friend from his time at Michigan State, also counseled Armstrong. It was hard to play with Jordan. There's a reason the Bulls have had more than a half-dozen point guards and only Paxson, perhaps the slowest and least like a point guard, remained. “You can't play point guard with him,” Vincent said.

But Armstrong wasn't concerned. Here was the greatest player in the game and he'd be opposite him, perhaps not as a rookie, but surely by the time he was in his second season. He could see Paxson was too slow even to play him, and Armstrong knew he wasn't the quickest of point guards. It would be he and Jordan, surely, by his second season.

His first season was tough, Armstrong admitted. He'd never played for a team where he was waved off by the scoring guard. Every time he'd get the ball, Jordan would be yelling for it and demanding he get out of the way. He started spotting up on the perimeter like Paxson and Craig Hodges. The coaches were angry; he didn't have to do that, they told him. He could go to the basket and they couldn't. Why didn't he?

“I didn't know where I was supposed to be,” Armstrong told friends after the season. “I didn't know what I was supposed to be. I was hesitant to play my game. I'd never played without the ball and I couldn't get it. It was tough.”

He'd also found the guards so much bigger and stronger and knew he had to get stronger. He began lifting weights. The pro game always looked so easy—guys scored seemingly at will. He found that was because the players were so great. Defenses really played hard, and it was only because the players were truly great offensive machines that their scoring looked easy. He would have to work harder.

And he did. He played the entire schedule for the Bulls team in the summer league while his rookie friend, Stacey King, showed up for just a few games. He liked King for his brash manner and good humor, but he worried about him. “He won't work on his game,” B.J. thought. “He has to learn different moves.”

Armstrong, though, had gone back to Detroit after his rookie season and worked out with Thomas and Joe Dumars, and they'd urged him to find something new. Thomas had told him that no matter how good you believe you are, you have to add something to your game every year; otherwise, the league starts catching up with you. Armstrong worked hard and impressed in the summer league, leading the Bulls team and averaging about 25 points per game.

But that was not all. He knew that his fate, like that of his teammates, was tied to Jordan. He saw Jordan not only as the greatest player in the game, but as a man perhaps too good for the game. “Everything comes so easy for him,” Armstrong marveled. “He can do anything anyone does and do it better than them. In a way, I think he's too good.” Jordan was a genius of the hardwood, so Armstrong went to the doctor his mother worked for and borrowed some books on genius. He took some out of the library. He read about geniuses in different professions, how they felt about themselves and viewed the world, how they related with others and how others got along with them.

“I felt if I could understand him better I could play with him better,” Armstrong said.

But it wasn't happening. Donnie Walsh, the Indiana Pacers general manager, saw it in the few Bulls games he watched. He liked Armstrong and told the Bulls he'd be interested in him, for he saw how Armstrong struggled. It reminded him of when he had played in college with Doug Moe, a high-scoring guard more talented than he.

“I'd say, ‘Moe, where do you want me to go?'” recalled Walsh. “You see Pippen and Jordan taking the ball and going and you can see B.J. doesn't know where to go or what he should do. It used to drive me crazy. You know what you're supposed to do, but these guys are so good you get to the point where you're just trying to figure out how to get out of their way.”

Armstrong was trying to learn and had taken to studying Cartwright, who he felt was the most professional among the players in the way he approached games. He began to watch film and tried to concentrate harder before games. But again, he'd find Jordan waving him out of the way. He was stuck in a revolving door of confusion.

But the meeting with his parents seemed to relax and revive him. He had been feeling sorry for himself, he knew, and letting that claim his game. He told Jackson he was ready to do what he asked. Jackson told him he would not start this season; Armstrong said that was fine with him. And he was a different player against the Pistons. Twice in the second quarter, he split the Pistons' defense for driving baskets. The coaches looked at one another on the bench. Armstrong did it again early in the fourth quarter and then knocked in jumpers later when the Bulls trailed by 4 and 5. Missing either could have meant the game would be lost.

Armstrong went back to his high school on Friday a hero. And when he returned to the team after the All-Star break, he scored 17 or more points in three of his next six games and was averaging 5 assists in less than twenty-five minutes per game.

The coaches weren't convinced, yet, that he was the team's point guard of the future, and Krause was still lusting after Toni Kukoc. Nevertheless, he was starting to help and feeling better about himself.

“I've got it back, the fire,” Armstrong told a friend after the All-Star weekend. “I thought I'd lost it, but I didn't and it feels good. I care again and I'm emotional. That's me. It's the first time since college that I feel like I'm helping, that I feel good about myself. I'm gonna be okay.”

The Bulls players split for the All-Star break. Paxson went into the hospital to have some old cysts removed and Perdue went to Las Vegas; Cartwright's wife dragged him off on a weekend with the kids. Jordan and Hodges went to Charlotte, Hodges for the three-point-shooting contest and Jordan for the All-Star game. The All-Stars are supposed to meet with the media Friday afternoon of All-Star weekend, but Jordan hadn't shown since his first season in the league. The media often excused his behavior because he was usually so gracious before games, and when he did interviews he was open and helpful. The league also had to excuse his behavior because it had little control over him. But this time the league had a plan. The players get tickets for family and friends, and the league decreed they would be handed out only at those Friday afternoon interview sessions. Jordan had to attend.

The highlight of the Saturday night activities was usually the slam-dunk contest, but Hodges stole the show with a run of 19 straight three-point field goals that helped win him his second straight shooting title and the awe of many. Hodges had aimed all season for the three-point-shoot-out crown since he was playing so little; he hoped this would help him get some more playing time. Most of the All-Stars had come to watch the dunk contest; they found themselves counting along with the fans as Hodges hit one after another. Conspicuous by his absence was Jordan. He said he had a headache.

The All-Star game on Sunday was not particularly interesting. Without the injured Thomas, the East had no point guard and Jordan had to play the position much of the game. He scored a game-high 26 points, but committed 10 turnovers. Jackson saw some of the game back home and wasn't surprised. Jordan, he felt, had lost his point-guard vision. He didn't seem to find the shooters running the perimeter the way he used to. But Jackson still was amazed at his ability to score any time he wanted against even the best in the game. It was a curse in some ways, he thought, to be so good, to be a comet racing across the game with everyone light-years in your wake.

The games resumed, and the Bulls resumed their roll. They trailed Atlanta by 10 in the first quarter but took the lead by halftime and won by 9. Grant wouldn't miss and scored 23, and Armstrong had 18, although Spud Webb cut up the Bulls' guards for a career-high 30. The middle remained vulnerable, especially when Perdue or King played, but the Bulls were overwhelming teams with speed and defense. They would go on to take New York on the road, the Nets at home, the Cavaliers on the road, and Washington at home to bring their winning streak to seven as the trading deadline of February 21 loomed. Were they playing well enough that management didn't feel it had to make a move? Jordan was beginning to think that beating Detroit might have been the worst thing the team could have done.

“They're really afraid to do anything now,” Jordan said before the Washington game. “We're beating a lot of poor teams. So what? We won a lot of games last year, too. Will Horace and Bill still be playing at this level in the playoffs? Maybe, and if they are, we can do something. But what if they're not? What do we do then? Can Pip keep it up? And that guy over there [Jordan pointed toward Paxson]. He's loyal. He doesn't say anything and what does he want, maybe seven hundred thousand, eight hundred thousand dollars, and they're going to screw him. I just hate that. This is going to be out last chance to win. I just know it. There's this Kukoc thing and these guys becoming free agents after this season and the rookies not doing anything. They'll change everything again after this year. Reinsdorf seems like a smart guy and he seems like he knows what's going on, but he won't do anything. I don't understand. I know what's gonna happen. We'll wait until the last minute and then they'll say something like they couldn't get a deal done because of the cap or somebody pulled out at the last minute. It happens here all the time. I don't know why I'm surprised every year.”

Jordan was wrong if he thought the Bulls weren't seriously pursuing deals. They were talking with the Bucks about Ricky Pierce and the Hawks about Glenn “Doc” Rivers, and they were even exploring the possibility of getting Reggie Theus from the Nets. (Jordan told Jackson when this was brought up that he would retire if the Bulls got Theus.) And Krause had had a bizarre conversation with his old friend Bob Whitsitt, general manager of the Seattle SuperSonics, telling Whitsitt about the pressure Jordan was putting him under to make a deal and trying to appeal to Whitsitt's friendship to get Whitsitt to trade him Eddie Johnson, another potential shooter off the bench, to save his job. Krause had spoken to the Bullets about Mark Alarie or Darrell Walker, and to the Spurs about Paul Pressey, and he still hoped the Bulls might get a shot at Derek Harper. Jackson wanted Benoit Benjamin. There seemed to be as many players under discussion to come to the Bulls as there were players talking about leaving. And on the morning of the trading deadline, one more name would be added to the latter list.