Part 13 (1/2)
The game was an all-out battle. Afterward I thought the best slogan for this series would be ”Three the Hard Way,” because the Suns defense held us to only 12 points in the fourth quarter. But our defense was even more effective, restricting the Suns to a paltry 24 percent shooting average in the final period.
It all came down to a play that put a smile on Tex Winter's face. Jordan came into the game with eight minutes left and took over, scoring our first 9 points in the period, including a breakaway jam that put us within 2 points at the thirty-eight-second mark. At the break, I called the players together and said with a straight face, ”Let's go away from M.J.” Some of the players looked at me as if I were mad. Then they realized I wasn't serious and the tension broke.
As it turned out, it wouldn't be Michael who took the final shot. He dribbled up court and hit Pippen, who pa.s.sed it back to M.J. But when the Suns' defense collapsed on him, he pa.s.sed the ball back to Scottie, who started driving toward the basket. At the last moment Scottie dished off to Horace on the baseline. Then Horace, who saw Danny Ainge closing in to foul him, tossed the ball to Paxson, who was wide open at the top of the key. And John nailed the three-pointer.
Talk about a peak experience. Years later, in an interview with author Roland Lazenby, Paxson described what was going through his mind. ”It was a dream come true,” he said. ”You're a kid out in your driveway shooting shots to win champions.h.i.+ps. When you get down to it, it's still just a shot in a basketball game. But I think it allowed a lot of people to relate to that experience, because there are a lot of kids and adults who lived out their own fantasies in their backyards. It made the third of the three champions.h.i.+ps special. It's a real nice way of defining a three-peat, by making a three-point shot.”
It wasn't the shot that captivated me, however. It was the pa.s.s from Michael that led to the pa.s.s from Scottie that led to the pa.s.s from Horace that led to the shot. That sequence of pa.s.ses would never have happened if we hadn't spent all those months and years not only mastering all of Tex's drills but also developing the kind of group intelligence needed for a team to perform as one. That night the triangle was a thing of beauty.
After the game, the sports pundits began comparing the Bulls with the giants of the past. With this victory, we became only the third team in history-along with the Minneapolis Lakers and the Boston Celtics-to win three NBA champions.h.i.+ps in a row. It was flattering to be included in the same sentence with those hallowed teams. But what they missed was the real story: the inner journey the players had gone through to transform the Bulls from a stage 3 (”I'm great, you're not”) team into a stage 4 (”We're great, they're not”) team.
I've always been against packing suitcases before a big game, just in case the basketball G.o.ds favor our opponent and we have to stay around to play another day. So after the win, we returned to our hotel, packed our luggage, and celebrated on the plane back to Chicago, where a huge, ecstatic crowd of fans was waiting to greet us.
This season had been a hard ride. The pressure kept building and building until it felt like it might never stop. But the players turned to one another for strength, and then ended it all with a moment of pure basketball poetry that made all the pain and ugliness melt away. That night I awoke suddenly after a few hours of sleep, overwhelmed by a feeling of deep satisfaction. Then I drifted back and was out for hours.
Soon the feelings of joy turned to sorrow. In August Michael Jordan's father was murdered on his way home from a funeral in Wilmington, North Carolina. Michael was shattered. He was very close to his father, who had retired and spent a good deal of time in Chicago as Michael's chief supporter. The media hordes shadowed Michael everywhere after his dad's death, and it pained him that his fame made it difficult for his family to mourn in private. There was a time when all Michael had to deal with was a handful of sportswriters, many of whom he knew personally. Now he was being stalked by a large, faceless crowd of celebrity journalists who had no qualms about invading corners of his personal life that had once been off limits.
For a long time I suspected Michael might want to step away from the game-and all the pressures it entailed-and do something else with his life. He'd been dropping hints for months that he might be interested in switching to professional baseball, and he'd even gone as far as having his trainer, Tim Grover, design a baseball-oriented workout program. So it didn't surprise me when Michael met with Jerry Reinsdorf over the summer and told him he wanted to leave the Bulls to play for Jerry's other club: the White Sox. Jerry told Michael that before he could give him an answer, he needed to talk it over with me.
I wasn't interested in trying to talk Michael out of following his dream, but I wanted to make sure he'd examined the move from every possible angle. I talked to him more as his friend than as his coach, never raising my own personal interest in the matter. For starters, I appealed to his sense of a higher calling. I said that G.o.d had given him a remarkable talent that made millions of people happy, and I didn't think it was right for him to walk away. But he had an answer for that. ”For some reason, G.o.d is telling me to move on, and I must move on,” he said. ”People have to learn that nothing lasts forever.”
Then we tried to figure out a way that he could compete in the playoffs without playing the whole regular season. But he'd already considered everything I suggested and rejected the idea. Finally I realized he had made his mind up and was serious about leaving the game he had dominated for so long. It was very moving.
”We sat in that room getting all emotional and talking about the steps I needed to take,” Michael recalls. ”And I walked away with the understanding that Phil was a great friend. He made me think about a lot of different things, and didn't let me rush into the decision. But at the end of the day he totally understood that I needed a break. That I had gotten to a point when I was battling a lot of demons rather than focusing on basketball. And walking away was what I needed to do at that particular time.”
But as Michael walked out the door, somehow I sensed that this wasn't going to be the end of the story.
CHAPTER 10
WORLD IN FLUX
If you live in the river you should make friends with the crocodile.
INDIAN PROVERB (PUNJABI)
It was supposed to be a night of celebration. Michael Jordan was there with his family for the 1993 ring ceremony and home opener at Chicago Stadium. This was his first public appearance since he'd announced his retirement on October 6, and the fans were eager to express their grat.i.tude. ”Deep down in my heart,” Michael said to the crowd after receiving his third ring, ”I will always be a Chicago Bulls fan and I'll support my teammates to the fullest.”
What we needed that night, however, wasn't just another fan. I'm not sure if it was Michael's presence in the front row or the fact that we were playing the Miami Heat, an oft-beaten rival that was looking for vengeance, but we went on to play one of the worst games in franchise history. How bad was it? We set team records for fewest points scored in a period (6), in a half (25), and in our beloved stadium (71). It was so bad the Miami bench trash-talked us shamelessly all night without any consequences and the fans started streaming out midway through the third period.
After the 9571 blowout, Miami's center, Rony Seikaly, said he was worried that Michael was going to ”take his suit coat off and be Superman against us again.” Actually, I'm glad he didn't. What better way for the players to learn that they no longer could count on Michael to bail them out than to lose by such historic proportions with the man himself sitting in the front row?
The sports pundits thought we were on life support now that Michael had retired. If we were lucky, they said, we might win thirty games. And the odds in Vegas were twenty-five to one against our winning a fourth champions.h.i.+p. But I was guardedly optimistic. The core of our champions.h.i.+p team sans Michael was still intact, and I believed the team spirit we'd built over the years could carry us into the playoffs. I wrote down what I thought would be a reasonable goal for the season: forty-nine wins. But I didn't feel confident enough yet to share it with anyone.
My biggest concern was figuring out how to replace the 30-plus points Michael averaged every game. Because Jordan's retirement happened so late in the year, Jerry Krause didn't have many options left. So he signed Pete Myers, a reliable free-agent guard (and former Bull) who was a solid defender, an exceptional pa.s.ser, and a quick study on the triangle offense. But in his seven years in the NBA he had averaged only about 3.8 points per game-not exactly Jordanesque numbers. A stronger possibility was Toni Kukoc, whom Jerry had finally persuaded to join the Bulls after a long courts.h.i.+p. Kukoc, a six-eleven forward billed as ”the best player in the world outside of the NBA,” was a gifted shooter who had averaged 19 points per game in the Italian pro league and had led Croatia's national team to a silver medal in the 1992 Olympics. But Toni had yet to be tested in the NBA, and I questioned whether he was tough enough to withstand the punishment. Two other additions were guard Steve Kerr and center Bill Wennington, both of whom showed promise but had yet to post big numbers. Clearly, it was going to take a village to fill the Jordan gap.