The Jordan Rules (28 page)

The Bulls were now 37–14 and starting to pull away from the Pistons, with a three-game edge in the loss column. They'd broken the team record with their sixteenth consecutive home-court win and had lost just once in February—on the road against the Lakers—as they moved toward an all-time club-best month. It was a time to savor the aroma of winning as if it were fresh-baked bread. It was also a time for Scottie Pippen to demand to be traded.

Jackson hadn't seen the newspaper story until he arrived at his office the morning of the trading deadline.

“Ain't winning great?” he said to Winter.

Pippen had grown increasingly frustrated about the slow pace of negotiations for his new contract. It had taken the Bulls almost a year to agree finally to a new deal with Jordan, and Reinsdorf believed there was no such hurry with Pippen, especially since he had two years left, both option years at the club's discretion. Pippen had taken out a $3 million disability insurance policy from Lloyd's to protect himself, but he was growing unsettled and nervous.

He was talking almost daily with his agents and Grant about wanting to be traded, and he had even started wearing a back warmer. His back was fine, but he was thinking he could further pressure the team by feigning a back injury. After all, he thought, he'd had disk surgery a few years ago and who really knows about a back injury? He started to tell trainer Chip Schaefer his back was bothering him and he was getting treatment, but he was playing and performing extraordinarily well. The coaches saw that he was becoming a star, something the public wouldn't notice until the playoffs. Since being left off the All-Star team, Pippen was averaging 18.3 points, 7.9 rebounds, and 5.9 assists per game and shooting 54.6 percent. To Jackson, he was the key to the Bulls' fortune. “The big reason we weren't playing well on the road earlier this season was Scottie wasn't playing well on the road,” said Jackson. Pippen had been shooting under 40 percent on the road through January, averaging 8 fewer points per game than at home. “He has to play well for us to win, to rebound and pass and run the floor,” Jackson said. Pippen believed he was doing all of that, but he didn't see any rewards.

Jimmy Sexton, Pippen's agent, was always amazed at just how poor Pippen was. Sexton's firm represents about fifty professional athletes, but he said he'd never encountered real poverty until his first visit to Pippen's Arkansas home. It was just a little shack, really, and Sexton thought to himself, “Twelve kids live here?” Pippen was now in his fourth season and was facing two more in which if he were hurt he'd get “only” $600,000 as a buyout. He was growing ever more nervous. “People look at Scottie and see a wild kid,” said Sexton. “They see a guy who runs around and doesn't seem stable. But the first thing he did when he got his money was buy his mother a house, and that's where he stays all summer. He wants annuities and insurance policies and every kind of protection imaginable. I've never had a client quite like him.”

Pippen had grown angry with Krause, the negotiating bad cop. Krause had earlier told Pippen, “We never negotiate with anyone with more than two seasons left.” Pippen hadn't forgotten and had focused his resentment on him, even while Reinsdorf and Sexton's partner, Kyle Rote, Jr., moved ever closer to a deal. Finally, Pippen's impatience could be caged no longer.

He said the Bulls had broken their promise. They'd promised him a new deal by Christmas and here it was the end of February. He'd watched all this negotiating going on with Toni Kukoc and what about him? He was the one helping the Bulls win.

“I've been patient,” Pippen said. “I haven't said anything. Our team is winning. I'm keeping my part of the bargain, but they aren't. I'm the sixth-highest-paid player on the team. If they don't want to treat me fair, then they should trade me.”

The players, of course, and even Tex Winter, would have some fun with Pippen, for even words spoken in anger are fair game on the Bulls. Pippen worked some with the second team in practice the next day, and Winter began taunting him, “Keep talking to the newspapers, and it's third team for you tomorrow.”

But Krause panicked when he heard that Pippen had talked to the newspapers. He called Reinsdorf, who was in Arizona with his family before heading for Florida to see his White Sox in spring training. Reinsdorf told him just to go on with business.

So even the passing of the trading deadline wouldn't bring calm. King had wanted out, but he knew where he'd be now. He'd heard how close the Bulls had come to dealing him to Golden State earlier in the season for Sarunas Marciulionis, and about the recent talks with Atlanta, Milwaukee, and Seattle. But most of the players were more relaxed at practice on February 22 as the deadline had gone by with no changes in the roster, and several would later credit that as a key point in helping stabilize the team. King, too, was light-hearted, he pasted the number 23 on his practice jersey and taped his forehead to look bald. “Now can I get some extra socks, Chip?” he yelled at trainer Schaefer. “That's the only way you get anything around here. You've got to look like him.”

The Bulls played Sacramento and it was apparent Dick Motta knew this would be bad. He'd appeared at a speaking engagement the night before in Chicago, but didn't show for the game, claiming to be ill. Rookie Duane Causwell shouldn't have; he ended up in Cartwright's elbow trophy case with a broken nose, as Bach drew more tombstones on the bench. The Kings lost by 47. Jordan put up 34 points in twenty-eight minutes and Pippen missed a triple double by 1 assist. The next night, Charlotte came into the Stadium and Pippen was magnificent, playing to standing ovations no one but Jordan had heard there before. Pippen scored a career-high 43 points as the Bulls won by 21. He was 16 of 17 from the field, the best shooting performance in the league during the season for so many attempts. He became the first player ever to score 40 or more points while playing with Michael Jordan in a professional game.

Jordan was gracious afterward, sitting in his locker stall for a long time and congratulating Pippen for his effort. Grant was almost forgotten despite 20 points and 17 rebounds, more boards than the entire Hornets' starting front line. Pippen told him he thought Jordan was looking away from him on the court and that's why he got just 17 shots (to 22 for Jordan) despite being so hot. It didn't seem that way to him this time, Grant thought.

The next game wouldn't be quite so easy. The quarry was the Boston Celtics. The Pistons were wounded and falling back and the Celtics were just a half game ahead of the Bulls in the race for the best record in the Eastern Conference and home-court advantage throughout the conference playoffs. The Celtics were starting to feel their age, as Jackson had expected. Larry Bird had been out much of January with a bad back. Kevin McHale was now out with an ankle injury, and he probably wouldn't play against the Bulls. Another break in a season of breaks, it seemed. McHale, Bach thought, was the greatest post man in the history of the game. His long arms could snatch a ball out from a defender with position, and his moves were nearly unstoppable. Grant feared Karl Malone the most, perhaps, because of his physical play, but he was baffled by McHale. “There's no way to play him,” he said.

It was being billed as a clash of styles, the tradition-bound, aging Celtics against the speedy, nineties Bulls in the Stadium.

Grant sprained his ankle early, but it would not matter. Bird could barely bend over and the Bulls used Cliff Levingston to attack him. The Bulls went on a 21–2 run in the first quarter and the game was all but over. And they did it in their style. Jordan blocked shots and stole the ball to create fast breaks and Pippen got in for three straight slam dunks, leaning out and seeming to fly over grounded Celtic defenders. It was the greatest margin of victory ever for a Bulls team over the Celtics, and Jordan reminisced afterward about how when he came into the league there was no way the Bulls could hope to beat Boston and now they were doing it with relative ease.

The Bulls led by 26 at halftime and by 36 after three quarters. Jordan and Pippen each had 33 points after the third quarter. Jordan told Jackson he wanted to go back into the game, so he started the fourth quarter with King, Perdue, Craig Hodges, and Armstrong and took 6 of the first 7 Bulls shots. He left five minutes into the fourth quarter with 39 points—Pippen would stay on the bench for the remainder of the game with 33—and with the Bulls ahead by 39.

“He wasn't going to let me outscore him two straight games,” Pippen said to Grant as the team left the floor. They both laughed.

Pippen's success the last two games should have given him some pleasure. Instead it gave him an idea, and not a good one. Practice was scheduled for 11:30
A
.
M
. the next morning, about forty-five minutes later than usual. At about 11:35
A
.
M
., Pippen called in. He said he was sick and was staying home. He had been asked by reporters all during the past few days about his trade demands and he'd said he was sticking to his word of wanting to be dealt. Jackson asked him whether he was trying to make a point when he called saying he was sick. He was too ill to come in, Pippen said. Jackson told him he would be fined.

“I'm sick, Phil,” Pippen said. “Guys are sick all the time. Why can't I be sick?”

But Pippen wasn't. He'd decided to skip a few practices as a way of putting more pressure on the team in his negotiations. He felt he could panic Krause into going to Reinsdorf and saying he had to cut a deal quickly with Pippen or all would be lost. The newspapers and TV the next day would be full of speculation, quoting “friends” and “business associates” of Pippen as saying he was trying to send a message to the team.

Reinsdorf got the message that day. He heard Pippen had missed practice the morning after scoring 33 against Boston and after having no apparent signs of any illness the night before. And word was that Pippen had gone out after the game to celebrate.

Reinsdorf called Rote.

“I'm sure Scottie is sick,” Reinsdorf told him. “But if he isn't and he doesn't come to practice tomorrow or if he says he has a back injury, we're done. He plays out his contract and we don't talk again, not a word, until after the 1992–93 season. And then we just match whatever offer he gets. He doesn't get a penny more for two years and you tell him that.”

The next morning, Pippen showed up for practice. Pippen privately told teammates he'd planned to miss practice again until Rote's midnight call. Pippen said no, the media misunderstood. He was sick and he didn't know why everyone was making such a big deal out of it. Guys got sick all the time. He could see where people might get the wrong idea since he was upset about his deal, but he'd never do anything like that.

Negotiations between Reinsdorf and Rote continued.

The Bulls finished the month 11–1 and had now won ten straight. They led the East and suddenly were within reach of Portland for the best record in the league. Were they that good? They hadn't made a deal. Hopson hadn't played since hurting his toe in the Detroit game before the All-Star break, and the coaches felt he was babying himself too much. Levingston had yet to assume a role with the team, despite his strong game against the Celtics. Perdue was playing better, but the coaches were still of a mind to get a center. They wanted to trade both King and Armstrong and they didn't believe a team could win with a starting point guard like Paxson. Just what was going on? Jackson wondered. “Sometimes,” he said, “I look at this team and who we're playing and wonder just how we're winning.” But Jackson also was starting to think that this Bulls team was like the old Celtics teams he remembered dominating the NBA: They were greater than the sum of their parts. Their on-court harmony was tremendous, even though those Boston players and star Bill Russell shared nothing in common and rarely spent any time together. This Bulls team seemed to be able to relate on the court, which was enough. Basketball was a team game, and even if Jordan did dominate the offense, the Bulls were playing like a team, winning games with their defense and speed. There was definitely something happening here.

3/1 v. Dallas; 3/2 at Indiana; 3/5 v. Milwaukee; 3/8 v. Utah; 3/10 at Atlanta; 3/12 v. Minnesota; 3/13 at Milwaukee; 3/15 at Charlotte; 3/16 at Cleveland; 3/18 v. Denver; 3/20 v. Atlanta; 3/22 at Philadelphia; 3/23 v. Indiana; 3/25 v. Houston; 3/28 at New Jersey; 3/29 at Washington; 3/31 at Boston

P
RACTICE ENDED THE LAST DAY OF
F
EBRUARY WITH AS MUCH OF A
punctuation mark as the Bulls' victory over the Celtics a few days earlier.

The Bulls were just two short of the all-time franchise record for consecutive wins, but Jackson warned the players as they prepared for a March 1 game with Dallas—and certainly an eleventh straight win—that they were not 30 points better than Boston and shouldn't get too cocky. Jackson had grown into his job well. Bach, who was close to Collins, had developed deep respect for Jackson. He marveled at Jackson's ease in handling Krause with a joke or a deflected statement. “Don't take life too seriously, Jerry,” Jackson would say. “You'll never get out of it alive.” And Jackson was equally adept at the delicate balancing act of broncobusting the Bulls' young stallions while keeping them eager to run.

Jackson liked to test the players, and Jordan as well. Sometimes what was mistaken as an inability to recognize time-out situations was an intentional effort by Jackson to challenge the players to work through a difficult time. So many of the games the Bulls were playing were not close that he could afford to experiment in games with fatigued players or when the momentum was working against his team.

This day at practice, he decided upon a special challenge for Jordan: He stopped keeping score in the scrimmage.

Jordan hated this as much as anything. He only played to win. What was the point of playing, he believed, if you didn't keep score? A winner had to be determined and Jordan insisted upon winning. He'd make bets with players and assistants throughout practice on free throws, shots from odd positions, just about anything. Sometimes, before games, he'd sit on the bench and attempt shots sitting for $5 each. And he'd always collect. “Sometimes he'll come to me,” says Bach, “and he'll say, ‘Coach, you know you still owe me two dollars.' And it would be from some free throws he'd hit in practice a month ago.”

Jackson was willing to draw Jordan's anger if it would keep him motivated. Any emotion, even fury at his coach, was better than the listlessness he'd shown in Texas. And Jordan cooperated. As practice was about to end, he grabbed the ball, ran toward the basket and launched a vicious tomahawk slam and then glared at Jackson.

Jackson smiled.

Despite the winning streak, Jordan remained angry over the team's failure to make a move and his inability to sway Krause or Reinsdorf. Jordan hadn't talked to Krause since his outburst after the Davis trade to Portland in January, and had grown even angrier when he'd heard that Krause had gone to Cartwright to ask his opinions on some potential personnel matters, including, perhaps, the pickup of free agent Adrian Dantley.

“I'll ask Cartwright or Brad Davis [a Mavericks player drafted by Krause and longtime favorite] before I'll talk to him,” Krause had said.

Krause also wanted to assure Cartwright that the Bulls wanted him back, but they couldn't make him an offer just yet because of other matters, namely the working deals for Kukoc and Pippen and the fact that they'd given him $400,000 up front this season to help create room for Kukoc under the salary cap. League rules didn't allow a new offer until a year from the change in the previous contract. Cartwright, typically, offered little of his thinking, and mostly listened. It's why some on the staff thought Krause liked Cartwright so much—he was less likely to contradict Krause's repetitive stories from his scouting days. He listened and sorted them out, but wouldn't challenge Krause like the others.

Cartwright intended to ask for three more guaranteed years at $2 million or more per season. If the Bulls went for it, he'd probably stay. He had mixed feelings. It was easier not to move and start over with new teammates, but the sands were running out for him, and if the Bulls didn't win this season they might never.

“There's not a lot of instant gratification involved for me on this team,” he admitted. “The most instant gratification is in scoring, and we have a lot of scorers, so I've got to do what we need for a championship. A lot of times I don't like it, but with the chance for the best record dangling in front of you, the sacrifices become more tolerable.”

But there was something else he didn't talk much about. Oh, Cartwright talked vaguely of finishing his career back home in California, but never much explained why. “Sheri [his wife] would like that,” he once told a friend, but went no further.

The Cartwrights, with their four children, live in Highland Park, a wealthy suburb near Lake Michigan on Chicago's North Shore. It's a hamlet of multimillion-dollar homes and much less expansive minds and attitudes.

Sheri Cartwright is white, a pert blonde who had dated Bill since high school. One day, a neighbor met Sheri when she was with two of her four children. “Oh,” the neighbor exclaimed, “you mean those are your children?”

Although she'd grown comfortable in the Chicago area and had become close friends with June Jackson, Phil's wife, Sheri Cartwright had never truly felt her mixed marriage was accepted in the conservative, snobby North Shore neighborhoods where all the Bulls lived. Once, when she'd gone to the local library, the librarian had asked her if she was the guardian of the children. She had once told Bill she'd be more comfortable back in California, where their marriage would be accepted more easily. Chicago could be a cold place, she felt, in more ways than the weather.

Isiah Thomas would understand. The Pistons star grew up on Chicago's West Side, but his family had insisted he attend St. Joseph's High School in Westchester, a blue-collar bedroom community about fifteen miles west of Chicago. It would improve Thomas's chances of getting a good education, since the Chicago inner-city schools had become dens for drug use and violence. Mary Thomas wanted her son to have a chance if his basketball skills proved not good enough. Of course, they were, but when Isiah sought to buy his mother a house, he found out his color mattered; advisers to Thomas said they were told as they searched for a location around Westchester that the family wouldn't be welcomed. Thomas eventually had a home built for his mother in nearby Clarendon Hills—ironically, across the street from the house where Bill Laimbeer was reared.

Thomas, having grown up in Chicago, long known for its separatist battles among ethnic groups, was perhaps more accustomed to overt racism. Michael Jordan had never experienced it much growing up in rural North Carolina and then attending the University of North Carolina. He'd decided to stay near home for college and almost attended the University of South Carolina or Clemson because they'd said he could play baseball, too, and Jordan mostly thought of himself as a baseball player then.

“Even now, when people talk about my greatest thrill being the shot against Georgetown to win the NCAA title, I still think to myself that my greatest accomplishment really is the Most Valuable Player award I got when my Babe Ruth League team won the state baseball championship,” says Jordan. “That was the first big thing I accomplished in my life, and you always remember the first. I batted something like .500 and hit five home runs in seven games and pitched a one-hitter to get us to the championship game.”

Jordan was thinking about other such athletic feats as he sat in his locker stall before the March 1 game against the visiting Dallas Mavericks. It had just been announced that he'd been appointed to the board of the Western Golf Association, which runs the Western Open on the PGA tour. Someone wondered what it meant to Jordan, whose passion for golf had become widely known, to be the first NBA player ever appointed to the board of a pro golf tournament.

“What it means is I get to play every PGA tour course in the country for free,” Jordan noted.

Jordan considered this a great plum, for he loved great golf courses and spent his summers trying out as many new ones as possible. But his friends who played golf knew he could play just about anywhere he wanted to anyway. They called him “America's Guest.” He'd have someone call for him, saying Michael Jordan wants to play your course today, and there would always be an opening. “But now I won't have to play with a member,” Jordan explained. “And they always put me with the worst members. And, anyway, I'm just a token.”

Professional golf, the summer before in 1990, had been embarrassed when a member of the Shoal Creek club in Alabama, where the PGA Championship was being held, had said the club wouldn't have blacks as members. The remarks caused a firestorm of protest and the PGA launched an expeditious campaign to remove racial barriers from its tour. That was a problem, since virtually all the golf clubs at which the PGA held its tournaments had exclusionary policies. As a result, the Western Open, held in Chicago at the Butler National Golf Club, would eventually be moved to a public course. Jordan had become friends with a member of the Western Golf Association, and he'd asked Jordan to join the board. Jordan agreed, even though he knew the true intent.

In the last few years, particularly because of his growing love for golf, Jordan had come to experience racism as he never had before. In his special place as an American icon and folk hero, he'd been able to transcend racial hatred and divisiveness. In the NBA, the way had been cleared for him by the likes of Julius Erving, and now a black superstar could be admired and adored as a national hero and treasure. Jordan was welcomed where black men didn't tread, namely on the country-club circuit. He played on all the exclusive golf courses on Chicago's North Shore and his appearances were cause for celebration.

Word would sweep the course that Jordan was playing that day, and when he'd arrive, the pro was usually there to watch his swing on the driving range and offer a free lesson; on the course, members would encourage him to play through to get a chance to see his much-talked-about game. Jordan had become a solid amateur, about a 6 handicap by 1990, meaning he'd shoot in the mid to high 70s. It wasn't nearly good enough for him to become a pro, but Jordan liked to consider doing so as a fantasy and a goal. He was like a Moses on the course, the members parting as his group would come up behind them.

But actual membership was a different story. He had thought about joining a Jewish club near his home, and friends made private inquiries on his behalf. They were politely informed that, no, Jordan wouldn't be welcomed as a member. Of course he could play any time he wanted but, well, there just weren't any immediate openings. You know.

The realization had never really struck Jordan before: He couldn't go somewhere because he was black. He never pursued the matter, but he clearly was hurt.

It was why he'd responded to a friend the way he did when the Illinois state lottery jackpot had grown to over $40 million in early 1990, and the players were laughing and joking in the locker room about what they'd do if they won.

“I'd retire at halftime,” he said with a smile. “I'd take my uniform off and just leave the court. And then I'd go open up a country club and post a sign that said, ‘No Jews Allowed.'”

The Mavericks tried to play the Bulls the way the Pistons do: They slowed the game to one of those traffic-jam paces in which the movement is bumper-to-bumper slow and the frustration level is high. At halftime, the Bulls were trailing 43–39 after scoring just 12 points in the second quarter. But there was no Rodman or Thomas or Dumars to continue the frustration. The Bulls hustled their transition game into gear and let Jordan begin to attack. He scored 15 third-quarter points and the Bulls pulled away to an easy 109–86 win, now just one short of the longest winning streak in team history.

But Indianapolis, their next stop, hadn't been an easy place for the Bulls to speed through. They'd lost five straight there, mostly because they never could figure out how to defense Detlef Schrempf, and because Reggie Miller usually got hot against the Bulls at home. (He once said that all the NBA looked excitedly on Bulls-Pacers matchups because it was Air against Hollywood. No one was quite sure who Hollywood was, but everyone assumed it was the swaggering Miller.) Not having Horace Grant would hurt the Bulls. He was missing his second straight game with a sprained ankle and this would be a more difficult test for Stacey King. Dallas's front line couldn't score much, but the Pacers would go right at him.

Before the game, the locker room was lively with talk about Bobby Knight, the famous Indiana University coach. Some of the players were talking about NBA players now being permitted to play in the Olympics, and Pippen asked Jordan if he wanted to participate again.

“Why would I?” he responded.

“For your country and all that, I guess,” Pippen said.

“After playing a whole season you're gonna be awful tired to start again with qualifying tournaments and exhibition games and all of that,” Jordan said.

And, Jordan said, his first Olympic experience, a gold medal in 1984, while exciting, had been difficult because of Knight.

“I don't know if I would have done it if I knew what Knight was going to be like,” Jordan told the players, who were leaning in like kids around a campfire to hear a ghost story. “I'd heard about Coach Knight when I was at North Carolina, so I asked Coach Smith and he advised me to do it. I think all the coaches did because after playing for Coach Knight they knew you'd appreciate them more.”

Jordan said that time after time the team would be blowing out the opponent and Knight would come in raving at halftime. “It was like we were losing by thirty every game,” Jordan recalled. “And this one time with [assistant coach] George Raveling was unbelievable. Patrick [Ewing] was getting a little homesick and Raveling said he'd take him to see John Thompson [Ewing's college coach] one night. Patrick gets in late that night and the next day in the game he's not playing well and Knight's screaming to Raveling on the bench and saying Patrick wasn't playing well because of Raveling.