The Jordan Rules (17 page)

The Bulls thought about it long and hard; they were almost sure the deal could get them to a title faster than staying with Jordan. But in the end, Reinsdorf held firm: Michael Jordan was untradable. Period.

The Bulls beat the Clippers easily with perhaps their best effort of the season. Paxson hit for 26 and Pippen scored a triple double. Six players were in double figures, including Jordan with 14 points on 12 shots. Jackson was feeling pretty good. Perhaps it was finally working. Perhaps Jordan was going to go along. Several players said it was the best game the team had played in years.

But the next night, before the Bulls played the Denver Nuggets in the final game of the trip, Jackson noted something unusual. Jordan was on the floor long before the game, shooting. Jordan
never
engaged in pregame shooting drills. He liked to relax before the game, sorting out tickets for friends, chatting with out-of-town reporters. But since the other players were required to shoot before games, the Bulls offered a flimsy excuse, saying that the crowds around Jordan would be too disruptive. That didn't fool the other players, for they knew fans weren't even allowed in the arena during pregame shooting drills. And it wasn't long before Pippen, whom assistant coach Winter called “the imitator,” had taken to skipping pregame shooting drills too.

But because he didn't shoot before the games, Jordan never felt comfortable shooting when games opened, so he usually surveyed the defense, examining where the double-team was coming from and how the overall defense was reacting, and passed the ball at the start, which is what Jackson wanted anyhow.

As he watched Jordan warming up on the court, Jackson thought about the predictions that Jordan would perhaps score 100 points against the Nuggets' new style, which employed little defense and was creating talk of 200-point games. Jordan knew Jackson would never allow it to happen; Jackson was almost insulted by the thought. “That's not basketball,” he'd say.

Jordan had 18 by halftime on the way to 38 points, and the Bulls won, 151–145.

But when the team returned home, Jackson noticed that Jordan had continued his pregame shooting routine. Suddenly he was taking shots early in the game as never before, scoring 15 in the first quarter of an easy win over the Bullets, then 20 in the first quarter in another easy win over the Pacers to end November. Jordan would score 13 in the first quarter the next night in Cleveland, then 15 and 16 in the first quarter the next week in games against the Knicks and Trail Blazers. Jordan was averaging more points in the first quarter than anyone else on the team was averaging the entire game. Jackson thought he'd come up with the rules the team needed to go all the way; Jordan was rewriting the rules.

His rebellion was becoming clear to his teammates and coaches. Jordan realized he wasn't going to get as many minutes as before, and in the current offense he was not going to get as many opportunities. He was desperately unhappy, and completely at odds with the rest of the team. Several players felt Jordan cared only about winning the scoring title, while Jordan believed he was uniquely responsible for the team's success: If he didn't do it, who would? It remained the Bulls' classic chicken-and-egg problem.

“I can't go out and win games at the end if I'm not in the flow,” Jordan had told assistant coach Bach in explaining his opening offensive assaults. “I can't just take twelve shots a game and then hit the winning shot.”

Bach, usually a loyal soldier to Jackson, had somehow come between the coach and the player, encouraging Jordan to be aggressive with his shots early in games, which was contrary to Jackson's game plan. This was fine with Jordan, who called Bach his personal coach. “When I'm having trouble, I go to coach Bach and ask him if he has any suggestions,” Jordan once said.

Jordan, meanwhile, told reporters it was a new team strategy to come out more aggressively, although he did belie his motives in accompanying statements.

“I always could count on playing forty minutes before, but I can't anymore,” he explained. “So in the past I could start out slow and then come on strong, but now I'm not out there as much. I found my minutes and opportunities going down, so I decided I needed to get more production out of the minutes I was playing.”

Jackson had long studied philosophy and he knew you get the chicken by hatching the egg, not smashing it. So when he was asked about Jordan's theory, Jackson offered a narrow smile. “I find as I get older I become more patient,” he said.

12/1 at Cleveland; 12/4 v. Phoenix; 12/7 v. New York; 12/8 v. Portland; 12/11 at Milwaukee; 12/14 v. L.A. Clippers; 12/15 v. Cleveland; 12/18 v. Miami; 12/19 at Detroit; 12/21 v. L.A. Lakers; 12/22 v. Indiana; 12/25 v. Detroit; 12/27 v. Golden State; 12/29 v. Seattle

T
HE
B
ULLS WERE HEADING INTO THE CALMEST PART OF THEIR
schedule. December would bring only three road games out of fourteen, and the first one was against the Cavaliers, who were about to learn that night that their star guard, Mark Price, would be out for the season. The Cavaliers were forced to start guards John Morton, the worst shooter in the league the previous season, and Gerald Paddio, a free agent from the CBA who had failed with several teams.

The game was a quick rout, with the Bulls bolting away by 17 in the first quarter and leading by 30 before the third period was half over. Fewer and fewer NBA games were being decided in the last two minutes since expansion hit; the dilution of talent had weakened many teams and created so many have-nots that a team with talent, like the Bulls, would have an easy time many nights.

Jordan was enjoying himself on the ride home after the game, joking about the Cavaliers, against whom he'd enjoyed so much success. Stretching out a stat sheet, Jordan, with 32 points in thirty minutes, had some lighthearted instruction for the younger players: “That's the kind of game where you get your points and get out of there,” he told Armstrong.

Horace Grant shook his head.

He and Jordan had become antagonists a few years back when he became the first Bulls player ever to challenge Jordan, although not publicly. It was on a plane ride home from a playoff loss against Detroit, and tensions were high. Jordan had scored 18 points and wasn't too happy about it, and he had taken a beating. Grant, the Bulls' power forward, had just 1 rebound, and had supplied little protection for Jordan. Jordan enjoyed taunting Grant, whom he felt was not very bright, but Grant, who could be as sensitive as an open wound, finally tired of the kidding.

“Screw you, M.J.,” Grant shot back. “All you care about is your points and everyone knows it. You don't care about anything but yourself.”

“You're an idiot,” Jordan screamed at Grant. “You've screwed up every play we ever ran. You're too stupid to even remember the plays. We ought to get rid of you.”

The rest of the players sat stunned as the verbal assaults continued back and forth, Jordan being derisive and Grant warily fending off the arrows, until the two were finally separated. And after the season, Jordan tried to get management to trade Grant for Buck Williams.

But Grant had bigger concerns than Jordan as the season headed into its second month. In the rout against Cleveland he played just twenty minutes, far fewer than any of the other starters, and he was taking it as an ominous sign. His playing time, PT in the players' vernacular, was diminishing, and he saw the team trying to move King in as a starter to justify the high pick in the draft. Jackson had outlined an expanded role for Grant when he became head coach because of Grant's speed; he's the fastest runner on the team, and Jackson envisioned getting Grant open downcourt ahead of the opposing power forward for easy baskets. But Grant was also the Bulls' best rebounder, so he had to stay back to rebound. Meanwhile, he was invariably assigned to guard the best offensive forward, making it difficult for him to break quickly downcourt. And even when he could, it really didn't matter, given Jordan's demands for the ball and his feelings about Grant.

“I have a dream,” Grant would sing one day later in the season on the team bus after a few players had gone to the Martin Luther King, Jr., Center in Atlanta. “I'm going to get the ball.”

But it didn't stop him from trying. Grant had become perhaps the hardest-working player on the team, spending every day in the off-season working out with strength coach Al Vermeil, brother of former Philadelphia Eagles coach Dick Vermeil. Grant could now lift weights with the strength of a football defensive lineman. When Grant came to the Bulls as the tenth pick in the 1987 draft, he was known in coaches' talk as a three and a half: He had the height of a big forward (a four), but without the power and strength to play the position, and he wasn't deft enough offensively to handle the scoring at the small-forward position (a three). But eventually Grant would build up to nearly 230 muscular pounds from less than 210, his rookie weight.

The adjustment to the NBA had been hard for Grant. He was from a rural Georgia town and had been raised by a single parent. When he was young, his ambition was to be a marine. “I'd watch the commercials on TV about how they wanted a few good men and I was fascinated by the nice suits and the swords and everything,” Grant recalled. He was not a good student, but he started to develop as a basketball player, earning himself and twin brother, Harvey, scholarships at Clemson. “We were a package deal,” Horace remembered. But Horace always was a little ahead of Harvey, and when Harvey didn't make the varsity team as a freshman he started missing class and eventually transferred to Oklahoma, where he was a teammate of Stacey King's.

Harvey would eventually come to add to Horace's frustration, although unintentionally. Every year they played together, Horace was dominant—in high school, in college, and even in the NBA during Harvey's first two seasons with the Washington Bullets. Horace always averaged more points and was the bigger star. And the joke between the twins was that Horace flaunted it. “He's nine seconds older,” Harvey once explained, “so he thinks he can boss me around.” But with the lack of talent in Washington, Harvey became a featured player—he averaged nearly 20 points per game and was touted as the league's most improved player in 1990–91. “I'd just once like to get that many shots,” Horace would say, “just to see what would happen.” Horace averaged about 8 shots per game for the Bulls, about a third of Jordan's total, while Harvey was getting 16 to 18 per game in Washington. “I know I'll never get the chance to find out what kind of player I can be here,” said Grant.

And it was getting to him. He'd brought his scoring average up to 13.4 in 1989–90 and his rebounding to about 8 per game, including a fierce playoff run against Detroit in which he had six straight games with 10 or more rebounds. But he also wanted to share in the offense. He felt he worked so hard that he deserved a chance. Instead, Bach prepared him an edited tape of Buck Williams's play. Williams was not a big scorer, but a hard worker who did the dirty work inside. The message was clear to Grant: You rebound and play defense and let others run the show.

Grant had thought everything would be okay when he signed a three-year contract extension at $2 million per year after the 1989–90 season. During the 1989–90 season, he was among the lowest-paid Bulls because he was still bound by his rookie contract, which he had signed when he was a backup to Oakley. But when he became a starter, he began to believe he was underpaid, and his frustration led to a late-season demand to be traded.

Grant is perhaps the least egomaniacal of the Bulls' players and certainly the most popular. These were traits Jackson would use later in the season, for he knew the players always would rally around Grant.

Grant offered fans little of the fake celebrity of sport and much of the earnest reward. He truly stood for what the Wheaties box suggested: hard work, loyalty, trust, support, and modesty. He has remarkably soft features, with honest brown eyes and an open smile. He's the most likely to say what he feels and react to what he hears or sees. That was especially true as the 1990–91 season unfolded.

When Grant came to the Bulls he was something of a wild colt. The team had to hire a cook for him during his rookie season to get him to add weight, for he was eating most of his meals at fast-food restaurants. But it was the late-night menu that frustrated the team the most. He was what's called “a runner” in the NBA, a player who hits the night spots regularly in every city. The Bulls grew anxious about Grant's habits and eventually would trade Sedale Threatt because they believed he was poisoning both Grant and Scottie Pippen with his late-night adventures.

Grant and Pippen had a bond that appeared unbreakable. They met at the NBA draft in New York in 1987, and when both were selected by the Bulls they became friends, if only for protection. Rookies still endure hazing in the NBA, even though Bulls coach Phil Jackson curtailed the practice when he replaced Doug Collins. Rookies no longer had to carry other players' bags, but the veterans still played pranks on the rookies, and Grant and Pippen closed ranks after the veterans charged almost $1000 in food and gifts to their rooms one night.

The two became like Castor and Pollux, the twin heroes in Greek and Roman religion; they were giants in battle on the court, and patrons of adventure afterward.

They'd call one another up to a dozen times a day, even on game days. They purchased identical Mercedes SELs, Grant's white and Pippen's black. They drove the same demonstration cars for the same local sponsor. They lived within a few hundred yards of one another in the same North Shore neighborhood of Chicago. They were married within weeks of each other and were each other's best man. They both have sons (this was not planned). They bought the same breed of dog. They share the same agent and they vacation together in the summer. They went out together at every road stop, and in the Bulls' yearbook, when Pippen was asked, “Who would you take with you if you were going to the moon?” he responded: “Horace Grant.”

But Grant was undergoing some personal changes, and while the pair remained good friends, they drifted apart somewhat. Pippen got divorced and Grant began to fear he was next. “My wife and I were having a lot of problems,” he admitted. “And a lot was my fault. I wasn't treating people right, especially my wife.”

So with her help, Grant began a conversion to Christianity.

“I was sliding spiritually,” said Grant, who would become a regular at pregame chapel services, which are available to all NBA players before games. “I knew I had to do something, so I personally gave myself to the Lord. I realized He gave me so much, but I wasn't really giving back to Him all that I should. He gave me this talent to play professional basketball. He could have given it to so many others, but He gave it to me. I was abusing this talent and my body and that was not what He gave it to me for. The reason was to praise His name and be a positive role model for young people.”

For Grant that meant staying home. He quit the local nightclub scene populated by several of his teammates and began staying in his room on the road and reading the Bible. Pippen's agenda was somewhat different, so they began to spend less time together. And Grant also began to look at his friend more critically. One question in particular kept arising in Grant's mind: “Why was Scottie trying to be so much like Michael?” he wondered.

Pippen had become closer to Jordan, moving into his private berth on the team plane along with Cliff Levingston, who'd attached himself to Jordan like a fly to glue as soon as he joined the Bulls. But Pippen also had his contract on his mind, and after his near holdout he had decided he needed to produce statistics, for that's what the Bulls would measure him by. “They talk about winning,” said Pippen, “but if I don't score more, they won't pay me. I've got to go for statistics this year.”

Pippen would begin to imitate Jordan's play, as Winter had noticed, thus removing opportunities for others and setting up a developing conflict with Jordan over just who should be taking the shots.

“This team has got to move the ball,” Grant told reporters in Cleveland without mentioning any names, although the message was clear to his teammates. “We'll have a lot to learn from championship teams like Boston, the Lakers, and Detroit until we do that.”

The Bulls romped through an easy 155–127 win over the Suns on December 4. It was their sixth straight win, all by wide margins, and it left Suns coach Cotton Fitzsimmons to remark, “At least it took them longer to blow us out than their last few opponents.”

The starters sat out most of the fourth quarter, leaving the action to reserves like Craig Hodges, Will Perdue, Scott Williams, and Cliff Levingston. But Jordan's tongue was a little too sharp after the game. He had played part of the fourth quarter with Dennis Hopson, Stacey King, and B.J. Armstrong, and he complained to Pippen, “I hate being out there with those garbagemen. They don't get you the ball.”

Hodges overheard the exchange. Though not a great overall talent, he took pride in his role.

“Hey, I ain't no garbage player,” he told Jordan. “I was playing in this league when you were still trying to figure out how to put your pants on.”

“Hey, I wasn't talking about you, Hodg,” Jordan interrupted, quick to extinguish Hodges's fire.

The tension broke, but it remained close to the surface despite the winning streak.

The Knicks were next, and this suggested another easy win. The Bulls matched up well with the Knicks. They'd knocked them out of the 1989 playoffs when the Knicks were at their best, and now the Knicks were faltering in a halfcourt game with players developed for former coach Rick Pitino's pressing style. They had little depth, the first two players off the bench this night being rookie Jerrod Mustaf and Brian Quinnett. And it was against Mustaf that Jordan would electrify the Stadium crowd again en route to a 108–98 Bulls victory.

Gerald Wilkins posted Jordan up for a jump shot, which usually infuriates Jordan. He hates to be isolated for a score and almost always comes back to go one-on-one with the player who does this to him. This annoys the coaches, because it means Jordan is going to ignore the offense, but they let it go because he usually scores. It's most aggravating to his teammates.

“The difference,” says B.J. Armstrong, “is that in our offense, if your man goes at you, you can't go back at him—you have to run the offense. But Michael doesn't. Sure, he's better than everyone else, but you just hate to watch him get to do that without anything being said, and then if you try, watch out.”