Part 18 (1/2)
That's not to say it was easy. The team had gotten another year older. Rodman was thirty-seven; Pippen, thirty-three; and Michael and Harper would be turning thirty-five and thirty-four, respectively, during the year. We needed to husband our energy during the regular season so we would be in good shape when the playoffs rolled around. But that was going to be difficult without Scottie on the floor. We needed to figure out a way to manage until he returned.
Without Pippen to direct the action, the team was having a difficult time finding its rhythm and got off to a rugged start. Our big problem was finis.h.i.+ng close games, which used to be our specialty. The low point came in Seattle at the end of November when we lost, 9190, to the SuperSonics and dropped to eighth place in the Eastern Conference with an 8-6 record. Our opponents were starting to smell blood.
During our trip to Seattle Scottie's anger boiled over. He told reporters that he was so fed up with management that he no longer wanted to play for the Bulls. After the game he got drunk on the bus to the airport and launched into an ugly tirade against Krause, who was sitting up front. I tried to contain Scottie's outburst by pointing to the beer bottle in my hand and indicating that he'd had too much to drink.
When we returned to Chicago, I hooked Scottie up with our team psychologist to help him deal with his anger. I still worried, though, about his frame of mind. On Thanksgiving he called me late at night to discuss his situation. He told me he was dead serious about being traded, and I tried to get him to think about the problem from a different angle. I was concerned that if he pushed too hard with his demand at that moment, he might get blackballed in the league as a troublemaker and jeopardize his chances of signing with one of the top teams the following season. As far as I could tell, the best move for Scottie careerwise was to finish out the season with the Bulls. I advised him not to let his anger with management poison his desire to come back and help lead the team to a sixth champions.h.i.+p. He answered that he didn't want to give management a chance to break his heart.
I could tell this was going to take time. In the end I decided that the best strategy was to have the players bring Scottie around, just as they had done after his 1.8-second meltdown four years earlier. I asked Harper, Scottie's best friend on the team, to let him know how much his teammates needed his help. I also nixed the idea of having Scottie travel with the team to prevent another embarra.s.sing confrontation between him and Krause on the road. What's more, Scottie's rehab was progressing more slowly than expected because his muscles had atrophied so much. His vertical leap was down from thirty inches to seventeen inches in mid-December, which meant that it would take another month for him to return to form. Which was fine. I figured that the more time Scottie spent working out with his teammates, the more likely he would get in touch with the joy he had always felt playing the game. By late December I could see that he was softening to the idea of coming back to the Bulls.
In the meantime, the team was trying to right itself. In mid-December we were 15-9, after beating the Lakers at home, 10483, but the team still hadn't gelled and was relying too heavily on Michael. During a film session I made what I intended as a joke after watching a clip of Luc messing up a play. ”Everybody makes mistakes,” I said. ”And I made one coming back here with this team this year.” At which point Michael said, ”Me too,” in a somber tone. Shortly after that, Luc, who was obviously hurt by our comments, said, ”It's easy to be a critic.” When Tex jumped on him and accused him of having a bad att.i.tude, Luc said, ”I wasn't talking about the coaching staff. Michael is the one being critical.” To which Michael replied, ”The only thing that upsets me is when we lose. I think you should resolve to make yourself better next time. Change.”
The room fell silent. ”It's over,” Michael added. ”We're not going to lose anymore.”
Actually, he wasn't far off. Right after that, we began to rebound and went on a 9-2 run. One move that made a big difference was turning Toni Kukoc into a starter when we played teams with big forwards. This allowed him to act as a third guard, much like Pippen did, and take advantage of his creative ball-handling skills. Toni was a maverick, always looking for the play no one else could imagine. Sometimes this worked brilliantly. However, Toni didn't have the mental toughness or physical ability to navigate the rugged NBA eighty-two-game schedule as the primary scorer or ball handler. And without Toni to anchor it, our bench was much weaker.
The big surprise was Rodman. He had struggled in 199697, and I worried that he might be losing interest in the game again. But during Scottie's rehab, we asked him to step up and give the team an energy boost, and he suddenly started playing MVP-level basketball on both ends of the court.
Michael likes to tell the story of how he and Dennis bonded during this period. The key was their mutual love of cigars. ”When Scottie got hurt, that left me and Dennis as leaders of the team,” recalls Michael. ”So I went to Dennis and said, 'Look, I know your antics. I know you like getting technicals. I know the image you try to project. But I need you, man, to stay in the game. I don't need you to get kicked out. Scottie is not here. That means you're going to have to lead from upfront, as opposed to being behind Scottie and me.'” For the most part Dennis lived up to the challenge. Then during one game, he got angry and was thrown out. ”Now I'm steaming,” says Jordan. ”I'm p.i.s.sed because we had this conversation and he left me hanging. That night he came knocking at my hotel room door and asked for a cigar. In the whole time we'd been together, he'd never done that. But he knew he had let me down. And that was his way of saying, 'I'm sorry.'”
Scottie returned to the lineup on January 10 against the Golden State Warriors, and the team transformed overnight. It was like watching a great conductor return after a leave of absence. All of a sudden, everyone knew what notes to play and how to harmonize. From that point on, we went on a 38-9 run and tied the Utah Jazz for the best record in the league, 62-20.
As the regular season wound down, I thought it was important for us to have some closure as a team. This was the end of an era, and I wanted us to take some time to acknowledge our accomplishments and the strength of our connection. My wife, June, suggested that we perform a ritual that she had used with children whose parents had died in the hospice program where she worked. So I scheduled a special team meeting before the start of the playoffs and asked everyone to write a short paragraph about what the season and our team had meant to them.
We met in the tribal room. It was just the inner core of the team: the players, the coaches, and the training staff. Only about half of the people wrote something ahead of time, but everyone spoke. Steve Kerr talked about the thrill of becoming a father while he was with the team and bringing his four-year-old, basketball-crazed son into the Bulls locker room to meet Michael, Scottie, and Dennis. Head trainer Chip Schaefer quoted the famous pa.s.sage from 1 Corinthians 13:
If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.
Michael wrote a short poem for the occasion. It was very moving. He praised everyone's dedication and said he hoped that the bond we'd formed would last forever. Then he added: No one knows what the future holds, but let's finish it right.
It was touching to hear a group of hardened NBA players revealing themselves to one another in this tender way. After each person spoke, I asked him to put his message in a coffee can. Then we turned the lights out, and I set fire to their words.
I'll never forget that moment. The quiet aura in the room. The fire burning in the darkness. The intense intimacy we felt sitting silently together and watching the flames die down. I don't think the bond among us had ever been stronger.
During the final week of the regular season, we lost two games, including a home game to the Pacers. That raised some questions in my mind as we entered the playoffs, even though we had locked up home-court advantage in the Eastern Conference. My main concern was fatigue. Michael and Scottie were playing big minutes, and I wasn't sure our bench was strong enough to give them the breathing room they needed late in games. Our strategy at the outset was to play tough defense, conserve energy, and set Michael up to take over in the closing minutes. One bright spot was the reemergence of Kukoc, who had struggled the previous year with a bad case of plantar fasciitis but was playing so well now that Sam Smith suggested that the Bulls' Big Three should now include Toni instead of Rodman. As for Dennis, I worried about his inconsistency and lack of focus, especially now that we no longer had Brian Williams to back him up. To strengthen our inside defense, we'd traded forward Jason Caffey and brought back d.i.c.key Simpkins, a bigger, more aggressive player-and a former Bull-who we hoped would help Dennis and Luc clog the lane.
We swept the New Jersey Nets in the first round after a sluggish start in the first two games, which Chicago Tribune columnist Bernie Lincicome characterized as ”dead men dribbling.” In the next series, the Charlotte Hornets gave us a surprise in game 2, beating us with a strong fourth-quarter push led by former teammate B.J. Armstrong. Being one-upped by B.J. inspired the team-and Michael in particular-to explode and finish off the Hornets in five games.
Our next opponent, the Pacers, would not go down so easily. They were a powerful contender, coached by Celtics great Larry Bird and featuring one of the best shooters in the league, Reggie Miller, along with a tough front line led by center Rik Smits. During one of their Breakfast Club sessions, Michael, Scottie, and Harp came up with a creative defensive strategy for neutralizing the Pacers' backcourt. They suggested having Pippen cover point guard Mark Jackson because he had done so well against him in the past and putting Harper on Miller because he was good at breaking through screens. Michael, in turn, would guard the small forward (either Jalen Rose or Chris Mullin), which would free him from expending a lot of energy chasing down Reggie on defense.
I gave the scheme the go-ahead and it worked well, forcing the Pacers into 46 turnovers in the first two games, as we cruised to a two-game lead in the series. After the second game, however, Larry complained to the media about the physical play of Pippen. Ergo, the next time we met, Scottie got into foul trouble early in the game. Then Larry foiled our defensive scheme by subst.i.tuting the quicker Travis Best for Jackson. As a result, we had to change our plan and put Harp (or Kerr) on Best and Michael on Miller. In the fourth quarter Reggie manipulated his way through enough screens to get some free s.p.a.ce and score 13 points en route to a 107105 victory.
The closing seconds of game 4 reminded me of the 1972 Olympics final, i.e., totally chaotic. We were leading 9493 with 4.7 seconds left when Scottie was fouled and missed two free throws. Then Harper and Miller got into an altercation, and Ron pulled Reggie down onto our bench and started hitting him. Both players were later fined, and Rose, who jumped up to join in the scuffle, was suspended for one game. (I was fined too, for comparing the refs to the '72 Olympics officials who nullified the U.S. team's win with a bad call.) When everything settled down, Reggie pushed Michael out of his way with both hands, grabbed an inbound pa.s.s, and hit a three-pointer with 0.7 seconds left to win the game.
In game 5 we resorted to our deadliest weapon-our defense-and shut down the Pacers 10687 in Chicago to go ahead 32 in the series. ”Tonight was unexpected dominance,” said Michael. ”When everybody's focused and playing our game, we can really play the game of basketball.” So far, so good. But two days later the Pacers tied the series again in Indianapolis, in another game tainted by dubious officiating. With 1:27 left, Scottie's old nemesis, Hue Hollins, called him for illegal defense, a technical foul that allowed Miller to tie the game, 8787. Then, with the Pacers ahead by two in the closing seconds, Michael drove to the basket and fell. To us it looked like a tripping foul, but the refs looked the other way. Game over.
Could this be the end of the Bulls dynasty? I've always been wary of playing seventh games. Anything can happen, and it usually does. If we lost, it might also mean that this would be Michael's last game. Before the game I talked to the players about the prospect of defeat. We could lose this game, I said, but what's important is playing with the right kind of effort, and not being overtaken by the fear of losing. Michael understood that. To him losing was not an option. During a team huddle, he said, with a cold, determined look in his eye, ”We are not going to lose this game.”