The Jordan Rules (30 page)

The Bulls' defense was sharp down the stretch, too, and bothered Utah into several turnovers and the fast breaks the Bulls rely upon to put up their point spurts. It was a close game the Bulls had won and one in which they'd come from behind. But the real significance was the way it happened. To Jordan, it was a playoff preview, and after the game he stood up in the locker room and thanked Jackson in front of the team “for sticking with me.”

To Jordan, it was an escape from the jail he called the triangle offense. He was as happy as a baby in a tub and as anxious to recount the events of the evening as a kid coming home from the circus. Jordan's eyes sparkled when he talked about the game.

“The triangle's killing me,” Jordan insisted. “All I can do in it is take jump shots, but he finally gave me the freedom. This was the first time all season I kind of felt free of the triangle. He gave me the option to drive and boom, screen roll, everything was working. I had space and could move. I don't think we'll go back to an open court game in the regular season, but it's what you've got to go to in the playoffs. I think he's just trying to lift everyone's confidence a little and this (tonight) is not the game Bill can play because it's too quick. Horace is going to get his points off the boards and Paxson will get his spotting up. This is the type of game we need for Scottie and me and I think he'll keep it under wraps until the playoffs. But we'll have to go with it then or we won't have any chance.”

The game with the Jazz was frightening to the Bulls in another way. Although they'd won, they had to resort to massive use of Jordan and the starters against the team with the worst bench in the league. And there was the specter of what the Jazz had to endure. Coach Jerry Sloan was saying that only in the last few weeks—after the All-Star break—had the team started to recover from the season-opening trip to Japan. Sloan said he had actually gone weeks without any kind of practice at all because the players were so tired from the trip and then returning to the arduous NBA schedule. The entire Bulls organization feared they'd be next.

They steadfastly tried to ignore the probability, like a kid in class who doesn't know the answer and figures if he doesn't look up he might not get picked. No NBA team that had gone to Europe to the preseason McDonald's tournament had finished that season with a better record than the season before, and the Japan trip was far tougher. The Bulls were a natural attraction with Jordan, but more than that they believed NBA commissioner David Stern would soon send them as punishment. For what? For beating him.

The Bulls had switched their televised games to WGN, a so-called superstation capable of carrying Bulls games to cable systems throughout the country. The league was outraged because of the potential competition in smaller markets. Would Indiana fans want to watch their Pacers or Michael Jordan? The league ordered the Bulls to cut down on their TV games each season and go off WGN within five years. The Bulls sued and won. This left them both thrilled and worried. Stern, the powerful commissioner, had never been beaten in a public arena like that before. In many ways, he'd shaped the current success of the NBA and had been rewarded by the owners with a contract worth millions of dollars a year.

Stern has been credited as a marketing and promotional genius, but he is more than that. He is a behind-the-scenes power, manipulating ownerships in different cities and even helping sign players. Clippers' owner Don Sterling says a call to Stern enabled him to break what he considered a hopeless impasse in the negotiations with then-No. 1 draft pick Danny Manning. Stern had arranged for black ownership in Denver to help the league's image, and he'd forced out weak owners when he had to and come up with stronger groups. Bach had always heard rumors that Stern's fingerprints were all over Franklin Mieuli's sale of the Golden State Warriors. And when Reinsdorf was once asked why he's not more involved in the NBA, as he is in baseball, he responded, “Stern won't let the owners get involved.”

No one was complaining about Stern, though. He was the NBA's kingmaker, and could also cause a team problems if he wanted. The Bulls were sure he'd soon be sending them on some awful preseason or season-opening trip that would ruin their year or try to catch them in some sort of minor rules infraction and fine them or take away a draft choice. They didn't believe he'd take his loss on the WGN case quietly. Krause had more reasons for paranoia.

The games are Olympian any time Michael Jordan comes to town, even after all these years. Atlanta Hawks president Stan Kasten said his son had asked that his birthday party be postponed because he didn't want to miss seeing Jordan for the final time this season when the Bulls came into Atlanta March 10. The Hawks, perhaps, could have done without seeing Jordan again; recently winners of twenty-two straight at home and conquerors of the Bulls in Atlanta in January, the Hawks surrendered as if Sherman were back in town. They were down 15 by halftime and by 31 midway through the third quarter on the way to a 122–87 loss. After the game, Hawks coach Bob Weiss, seeing Phil Jackson, said, “Hey, we didn't even finish second out there today.”

The scene in the locker room before the game was heart-wrenching. Almost weekly, Jordan meets a kid from the Make-a-Wish Foundation, a group that tries to grant last wishes to dying children. There's nothing sadder. But Jordan has seen so many in his seven years and the Bulls have processed so many requests, the senses become numbed. Jordan is gracious with the kids, who usually are frightened and thrilled and invariably speechless. He'll ask them their names and about basketball and about getting a win. He'll sign some things and sometimes the kids will want to meet other players. Basically, they're there for Jordan. But the little girl who came in this afternoon was special. Sweet, blond, wearing a frilly dress, she was glowing. Public-relations man Tim Hallam stood nearby. He'd processed dozens of these requests, but he was near tears. The girl started crying, she was so excited to be near Jordan. “Relax, take it easy,” Jordan said comfortingly. His voice was breaking. She sniffled and smiled. It was heartbreaking and uplifting at the same time. Jordan didn't want her to go. He sat with her and talked and laughed and she smiled some more, fighting away tears. Finally, it was time for Jordan to get taped. The little girl stood, and as she walked away she kept looking back over her shoulder. Tears were in Jordan's eyes.

“How do they expect me to play basketball now?” he wondered aloud.

Earlier, there had been big business for the team. Krause had flown down from New York with scout Jim Stack to meet with the coaches. Scott Williams, the mercurial rookie, had cracked, they thought. He was demanding an operation on his shoulder. All season, he had fought even the suggestion when friends saw him in pain. Although he could barely lift his right arm, which severely hampered his rebounding ability, he wouldn't hear or talk of an operation. “I'm going to finish the season,” he'd say. Now, he had demanded immediate surgery. He'd aggravated his shoulder injury in the Indiana game ten days earlier and had grown dark and remote, slipping into a personal dungeon in which he was all but unreachable. The coaches suspected his representatives had talked to him about going to Europe next season, and if he could get the Bulls to operate now he'd be ready. He might not have time to recuperate from off-season surgery before the European season began, or, worse, he'd have to pay for the surgery himself. Jackson would eventually call him in and tell him the Bulls had taken a chance on him when no one else wanted him, they'd offered him an opportunity, and now he wanted to walk out on them. Williams would relent and say he was ready to finish the season. But a roster spot was looming.

The coaches agreed it might be worth it to give still-unsigned free agent Adrian Dantley a look. They'd had a chance the year before, but Jackson had believed Dantley wouldn't fit into the Bulls' style of play. He was a 6-4 post player, he needed the ball and space to operate. His game would not fit Jackson's triangle and movement concepts. And he was not noted for his defense.

Perhaps rejecting Dantley had been a mistake, Jackson thought. Dantley had been with Detroit, his fifth team, as the Pistons made their climb to get past Boston, but midway through their first championship season he was traded for Mark Aguirre. Dantley blamed Isiah Thomas, with whom he'd never gotten along. Dantley went to Dallas, and the first time Dallas came to Detroit and the two met, Dantley walked up to Thomas and whispered in his ear, “I know it was you who got me.” He had grabbed a piece of Thomas's leg and squeezed it in an exaggerated pinch. “I'm not going to forget, and the first chance I get I'm going to mess you up.”

Maybe Dantley could help the Bulls. He might even have helped them get past Detroit in 1990. Who would have been more willing to break down the Pistons' physical tactics than Dantley? And he could score. He always could score. The triangle really didn't work well among the Bulls reserves. Jackson had hoped to develop a second unit, but they couldn't play together. King had disappointed as the designated scorer and Hopson wasn't getting many opportunities. Perhaps Dantley could help.

There were doubts, though. Dantley's agent was David Falk, and Krause disliked Falk intensely for his habit of bypassing Krause and talking to Reinsdorf. The Bulls might look at Dantley, but they'd make it hard; they'd bring him in for a physical and a mental exam, they'd question him hard, and they'd pay him little. It was typical Krause, Jackson thought: Go after a guy and then belittle him in the process. The Bulls had done that in their bitter negotiations with Levingston and Krause wondered why the players said the team wasn't fair. “We're fair to everyone,” Krause told Jackson. “Have you been fair to John Paxson?” Jackson shot back.

Jackson asked Bach to talk to Frank Layden, Dantley's old coach in Utah, who once said Dantley had driven him out of coaching. Layden was at the Atlanta game for the NBA radio network. He had nothing good to say, but he did say Dantley would score for the Bulls. That he could do. The Bulls would think about it some more.

Tuesday's game against Minnesota figured to be easy and it was. The Timberwolves were the drying paint of the NBA. They played like a leftover fly from January, moving more and more slowly and then trying to buzz for a shot. The Bulls simply had too much talent for them: They led by 23 at halftime and put the lead into the 30s by the third quarter before Jackson emptied his bench in a 131–99 laugher. Jordan and Grant were sitting with 20 points and Armstrong had 19 with about five minutes to go when Jackson put Paxson back in. The players razzed Armstrong because they knew his career high was 20 and now he wouldn't be in the lead paragraph of the stories as the leading scorer. Armstrong was not amused. He called his agent, who later called Reinsdorf to find out why Armstrong had been pulled at that point. Jackson had no idea, actually, how many points Armstrong had or what his career high was. He told Reinsdorf he thought Armstrong was playing selfishly.

Armstrong had one other discussion that had some effect on the team. Pooh Richardson, the Minnesota point guard, told him he'd rejected a new contract offer from the Timberwolves of $3.5 million per year. Armstrong told Pippen. The pace of negotiations between Pippen and the Bulls had quickened and the two sides were close to a five-year extension that would pay Pippen almost $3.5 million per season. But now Pippen was worried. Was Richardson telling the truth? His agents had told him he might be better off to wait until summer, but Pippen was growing ever more nervous.

Bo Jackson, the two-sport star, was said to be through for his career because of a hip injury, although he would eventually sign with Reinsdorf's White Sox with the hope of returning for the 1991 or 1992 baseball season. “What if something happens to me? I've got nothing,” Pippen told Rote in a desperate late-night call. But Pippen's teammates told him the market would be going up, that he'd be crazy to lock himself up through 1998, as he would if he accepted this deal. Rote thought Pippen's teammates were using him, trying to keep him from signing a deal so there might be more money left for them. The salary cap had made the players vultures, Rote thought, preying on one another over the scraps of cash that were allotted. Paxson and Cartwright were free agents and Jordan wanted more. And the Bulls remained in pursuit of Kukoc. There was only so much under the cap and everyone knew it wasn't going much higher without a new TV deal and expansion. But, Pippen wondered, what if he signed and two years from now the cap doubled? And what if he got hurt? He was desperately confused.

Meanwhile, the Bulls were racking up milestones in this historic twenty-fifth anniversary season. The win over Timberwolves coach Bill Musselman, Jackson's old CBA coaching foe, was Jackson's hundredth—he'd had the quickest hundred wins for a coach in team history. The Bulls had just won the thousandth game in franchise history and were on a pace to break the all-time team win record for a season, and would certainly win just the second division title in team history. The newspaper reporters already were writing about magic numbers. And the Bulls had simply been dismantling teams. They'd won more games by at least 10 points than any team in the league and had the biggest winning margin per game, averaging 9 more points scored than yielded. They were the league's hottest team.

How crazy would things be if we were losing? Jackson thought.

And even when they should have lost, they wouldn't, or couldn't. The Bulls went to Milwaukee, where the Bucks usually played them closer, although with just slightly more success. But this time it appeared the Bucks would carry away a win in a wild game. Milwaukee had a 5-point lead with less than five minutes left, only to unravel late this time. Fred Roberts and Dan Schayes committed turnovers against the Bulls' slapping hands and Paxson hit two big three-point field goals off the transition breaks. Jordan hit two free throws with five seconds left to give the Bulls a 102–99 lead, and the Bucks threw in to Frank Brickowski, who stepped close to the three-point line and fired. It was good and referee Ted Bernhardt, standing a few feet from Brickowski, signaled a three-pointer while Dan Crawford from across the court was waving him off. The lead official in the crew was Hue Hollins. He was at the lower right baseline and too far away to see the play.