Celebrate MJ going into the Hall of Fame? Forget that
I can see Michael Jordan now, giving that little wink signaling that he was outta here and easing through the crowd of reporters squeezed in around him. Chicago Bulls PR man Tim Hallam used to call that tight circle of media a “pig fight.” That was when dozens of sportswriters and camera crews would crowd in around Jordan with their notebooks and microphones and body odor, snorting and squealing their questions, squeezing in closer to catch every word. We all knew Mike as a man who enjoyed the spotlight, but even he could stand only so much of a pig fight. In that regard, it’s no surprise that he got into the fragrance business.
It was the 1996 pre-season, and my first inclination is to recall that Jordan then was at the height of his fame, except that his fame in those days seemed to know no heights or any other boundaries.
With his signal that the interview session was over, the path out of the locker room cleared just enough for His Airness to make an escape. The piggies parted, but in a flash, the gap closed. A boy, probably 12, with a brand new basketball and a black marker, stepped out of the shadows, too dumfounded to speak, mesmerized to be in Mike’s presence.
Mike gave him that “Yo, baby, whatcha need?” look.
The young fella just stood there, his mind gone so transparent you could read it.
“Here I am, standing next to god!!!” he was thinking, his eyes glazing over with a filmy sort of ecstasy. “It really is Michael Jordan. Michael Jordan!!! And I’m standing next to him. Out of the millions of people wanting to do this, it’s actually me. Me!!! Standing next to Michael!!!”
Mike furrowed his face and looked at the boy. “Do I get paid for this?” he said as he reached for the ball and marker. “Normally I get seven digits.”
Somehow the young fella managed to speak.
“I… I got five dollars,” he offered hopefully.
Mike smiled. “No problem,” he replied, trying to make it clear that he was just joking.
The marker, though, was nearly out of ink, and when Jordan stroked his signature across the face of the ball, it barely took, as if he were writing on air. Jordan frowned.
“Man,” he said, “you gave me this cheap pen.”
A mix of horror, panic and disbelief spread across the boy’s face. He quickly jammed his hand in his pocket to bring out a raft of pens for another try.
“I thought you were reaching for some money,” Jordan said, laughing.
Jordan, of course, could be excused for thinking that the young fan was digging for his cash. For years he had been on the receiving end of an immense transfer of wealth, as just about everyone on the planet made a donation to his surging bank account, as if the universe itself was his personal ATM. Back in the 1995-96 season alone, it was estimated that Jordan raked in better than $40 million in off-court endorsement income. But that’s small change compared to 1996-97, when the numbers were buggin’, what with Mike introducing his new cologne line (it sold a jaw-dropping 1.5 million bottles the first two months on the market) and his acting gig in Space Jam, which set theater ticket sales records on its opening weekend. But that’s why they called him Money, wasn’t it? Twelve-year-olds were conditioned to reach in their pockets and offer him their allowance.
Anyway, his off-court sum that year became a tidy match to the $30 million he received under a one-year contract extension for playing with the Bulls. He would sign another monster one-year deal the following season which convinced NBA ownership that it needed to put the brakes on things and adopt a salary structure to keep mega deals from soaring off into even Rarer Air.
For all the money he made for himself, Jordan’s take was a fraction of the treasure he created for the National Basketball Association itself (not to mention what he did for the University of North Carolina Tar Heel brand). His entry into the league in 1984 ignited the NBA’s annual revenues to balloon tenfold, from under $150 million that year to an astounding $2 billion or more per season by the mid 1990s.
There were other reasons for the NBA’s growth, but by and large it was Mike.
Mike the money magnet.
Mike in the air, tongue out. Slammin’. Makin’ rims rattle and registers ring.
People would have paid to be like Mike, if they only could.
Instead, they paid to see him, to be near him, to wear his shoes, his jersey, to drink his Gatorade, gobble his french fries at Mickey D’s, to buy the briefs, to whack the golf balls, to read his books and enshrine his trading cards.
He even figured a way to bottle his popularity and sell it. That would be the cologne, the ultimate jock-sniffer acquisition.
This is what they call a cultural icon? It was more like madness. Mike Madness. And it was global. The NBA had long been a decidedly obscure enterprise, but Jordan’s great passion and competence made people everywhere care about it. In the 1990s, a Jordan tour business flourished, as Japanese tourists came by the thousands to be bused by MJ’s home in the Chicago suburbs, then taken to the United Center to stand in awe in front of his statue there.
In China, they called him something that sounded like Chow Dan.
“He is like a gift from God to the basketball game,” Huang Gang, a hoopster from Beijing, told reporters at the time. “We try to imitate his ground moves. But you can’t copy him in the air. He is unique.”
Indeed, dude. For more than almost two full decades, Jordan was pro basketball’s master poet while the rest of the players were mere stenographers. He was the champ and everybody else just chumps.
His other contemporaries didn’t seem to mind this too much at first because Jordan’s popularity made millionaires out of them all, hundreds of very average NBA jocks, including a couple of dozen college kids every year who signed big contracts guaranteeing them plenty of cash before they proved they could even play in the league, much less drive a team to championships.
Mike, in the meantime, tried to say on occasion that he didn’t really play for the money. But that wasn’t true. Money was just one of his ways of keeping score, and Jordan kept score on everything because that was what the most competitive guy in the history of games was supposed to do. That’s why he lorded over not just basketball but the entire sports world year after year, winning scoring title after scoring title and carrying his Bulls to six NBA championships.
When I think of Jordan, I like to remember that pre-season in 1996. He had just carried his Bulls to a 72-win season. He was about to turn 34 and could have easily packed it in and ended all the maniacally hard work. But he wasn’t done with his greatness, even though others around the league were smelling opportunity.
“I’m going to send Mike home this year,” Shaquille O’Neal had promised me that pre-season, a threat that would ring as empty as all the others.
Told of O’Neal’s boast, Jordan smiled and quipped that if Shaq planned on doing that he better practice his free throws.
O’Neal, of course, was like a lot of other NBA stars that year. They had had enough of Jordan’s domination and the humiliation. They wanted it to end.
Jordan knew it.
He felt it in his 34-year-old knees.
But he had a wellspring of competitiveness, deep as a Saudi sheik’s oil reserves, vast as the space between Dennis Rodman’s ears.
Yes, Jordan had already done it all by the end of the 1996 season, but his effort and success over the next two campaigns would simply astound.
He served notice in January 1997 with a 51-point game against the New York Knicks and his league-leading 30.9 points per game scoring average. There have been a couple of dozen people fortunate enough to score more than 50 points in an NBA game. Wilt Chamberlain, in fact, accomplished that feat 122 times. But no one had accomplished the feat as late in life as Jordan. Most players hit 50 points as young superstars. Wilt’s magnificent run of big games ended when he was 32.
While he had begun to show his age, Jordan had shown no signs whatsoever of backing down. He still wanted to rule.
“I want to be consistent every night,” he explained as the 1996-97 season opened. “I want to step on the court and accept every challenge.”
Being consistent sounded nice, but it was a gigantic challenge when you’re the king of the NBA hill, because it meant fighting through the physical defenses night after night in an age when the NBA allowed very physical defense; it meant overcoming the daily pain and the nagging injuries that accompany age. Yet even there, Jordan forged an edge.
“Between games, Jordan can bounce back from injuries that would sideline other players for weeks,” Bulls trainer Chip Schaefer pointed out. “He has a remarkable body.”
And a remarkable will. Nobody worked harder at the fundamentals of the game; nobody worked harder at conditioning. Not only the greatest player, he was the greatest practice player. The stories of his intensity in Bulls scrimmages were legendary.
“At my age, I have to work harder,” Jordan explained. “I can’t afford to cut corners.”
He never did.
And so, now, as he prepares to enter the Hall of Fame in the grandest introduction ever, I feel mostly sadness. This is it, the final reality is settling in.
I interviewed him last year during the pre-draft camp in Orlando as he watched a crop of college players try to impress NBA executives, and I remember feeling sad after that talk too and thinking he was born to compete, not to sit around bored, studying lesser beings.
In the end, I’m just like that 12-year-old kid with the bad marker. I don’t want to see him writing on air. It’s very hard for me to think of Michael Jordan as a relic.
I just wish he could play forever.
AceV Said,
September 10, 2009 @ 8:43 pm
Thanks for this awesome article!
jigs Said,
September 11, 2009 @ 12:27 am
the best there is
the best there was
and the best there ever will be
HoopsHype.com NBA Blogs - Roland Lazenby » Celebrate MJ going into … | Jordan today Said,
September 11, 2009 @ 2:11 am
[...] Read more from the original source: HoopsHype.com NBA Blogs - Roland Lazenby » Celebrate MJ going into … [...]
Beta721 Said,
September 11, 2009 @ 2:50 am
Well said. Every average to below-average player raking in 5+ million per year needs to bow down to Jordan’s feet and kiss the ground he walks on for revolutionizing the marketplace they play in.
There is only one Michael Jordan.
sam Said,
September 11, 2009 @ 4:45 am
great article, wish he would come back!
Ryan Said,
September 11, 2009 @ 5:41 am
kobe is better.
Tood Said,
September 11, 2009 @ 8:41 am
ryan is deluding himself for saying kobe is better. he must be too young to have watched jordan on a nightly basis.
MartyMar Said,
September 11, 2009 @ 8:44 am
Living in Chicago, I got the MJ experience first hand and boy was it nice. How often do you see a 36 year dominate in basketball? Most people dont remember his first few years in the league but i have a pretty lenghty MJ DVD collection and the game was simply too easy for him the first few years in the league. C’mon, he AVERAGED 28.2 as a rookie and took a lottery Bulls team to the playoffs as a rookie. He was the best in the NBA from day one.
Anton Said,
September 11, 2009 @ 9:33 am
MJ is the greatest hands down. I have the argument with a few of my friends who think MJ would not be able to compete in todays NBA and be as dominant as he was during hist time… I laugh at those who think Kobe and LBJ and D Wade are better than he was…He laid the foundation for those players to be who they are today…staples of MJ’s game is in each and every one of the players, not to mention most players in the league today. Congrats Mike! Thanks for the memories! Thanks for the opprotunity to “Be Like Mike”!
Trott Felipe Said,
September 11, 2009 @ 10:14 am
There’s an “I” in “win.”
ryan Said,
September 11, 2009 @ 10:33 am
My family used to watch bulls games and during the playoffs we would make a ritual of ordering out and watching the games michael would dominate it was so great. When he retired the first time as a a small kid i remember crying.
I too wish he could play forever.
Romeo Montague Said,
September 11, 2009 @ 11:56 am
Kobe would average 23-4a game in the defensive era Jordan was in…Jordan would average 40+ with the zone & no Gand checking and sissy fouls being called …vince carter woulda lasted 3 yrs in the league in the 80’s
Steve L Said,
September 11, 2009 @ 12:08 pm
Kobe is better? Ease up off the meth there Ryan.
dennis Said,
September 11, 2009 @ 12:13 pm
watching mike play is like reading shakespeare or keats. like watching marlon brando or al pacino work. like listening to mozart or beethoven. he is paul and john. there will never ne another michael jordan and my only sadness is that my 3 year old son will never see him play.
Frank B Said,
September 11, 2009 @ 12:19 pm
Michael Jordan was a great player, certainly one of the greatest, but this type of idealization of a fellow human being is a little over the top, isn’t it?
When Michael Jordan came in, my first thoughts about him were what a gunner he was. At North Carolina, he had been part of great teams, and was a great team player, but when he got to the pros, his instinct to win seemed to cause him to launch the ball virtually every time he touched it. And statistics aside, in Jordan’s first years in the NBA, he wasn’t a champion like Magic Johnson or Larry Bird had accomplished early in their careers.
I contrasted Jordan’s approach to Julius Erving, who in the ABA had dominated the ball just like Jordan did, but when he got to the NBA sacrificed his game for the good of the team. Sacrificing his game was not something that Jordan seemed to be interested in; remember there is no I in team, but Jordan once said there is an I in win!
It didn’t seem possible to me that someone who demanded the ball as much as Jordan did in the NBA was going to be a championship player. Phil Jackson proved me wrong.
Roland, the media like you can spin Michael Jordan into some time of deity, but Jordan was a flawed human being just like the rest of us. How many teammates did he cuss out for not giving him the ball? How about his hatred of Isiah Thomas and keeping him off the Dream Team? Do you really think that he was that interested in baseball or do you think gambling might have been a factor in him leaving basketball? How many times can we watch him commit an offensive foul on Byron Russell in the NBA finals and pose after his “great” play?
Did we enjoy watching him play? Of course. Was he the absolute greatest of all time? According to the media, yes.
It is so silly to try to label one person the greatest. Wilt Chamberlain averaged 50 points a game and had a myriad of rules changed to try to slow him down. Bill Russell was on 11 championship teams for crying out loud and some of those other Boston guys weren’t too bad either. Magic Johnson was on NCAA and NBA champions in back to back years. Kareem Jabbar dominated the game in his younger years and won championships in his 40s. My favorite player to watch of all time was Dr. J.
Congratulations to Michael for an incredible career. Let’s not hype him to superhuman status however.
Michael Jordan Said,
September 11, 2009 @ 5:24 pm
Weak article. Why isn’t anybody writing about John Stockton or David Robinson, it’s not even like Jordan was the only great basketball player of his era. He is the most skilled b-baller ever, but the best is Bill Russell, and true basketball scholars know this to be true.
Kevin Mitchell Said,
September 11, 2009 @ 9:19 pm
Thank you Michael for adding to our lives. Your gifts, grace and dominance will be missed. “Air Jordan” will be flying through the skies forever and never touch the ground again. There will never be another one like you…
Jams Said,
September 11, 2009 @ 9:28 pm
MJ was good but everyone needs to quit jock-riding, its ridiculous.
gala Said,
September 12, 2009 @ 8:03 am
coz david robinson isn’t worth writing an article. he never won anything. the averys, the timmies, the kerrs did, hell even juwan howard had more heart AND will.
shay Said,
September 12, 2009 @ 6:04 pm
hey mike…i disagree about russell BUT i like what you think about writing about someone else cuz although mj is the best i am tired of hearing about him cuz quite frankly he is arrogant and annoying….dont believe me just watch his speech last night
Roland Lazenby Said,
September 12, 2009 @ 10:16 pm
Frank,
Thanks for the insightful comment. I’m busted. But I hope the article is clear from the start that Jordan turned me into a fan. It wasn’t something I was looking to do.
In my defense, I’ve written an entire book a decade ago, Blood On The Horns, on MJ’s ruthlessness as a leader. But having documented all that and so many other elements of his personality, the thing that continues to astound me personally is his global magnetism. It was very over the top, and that’s what I sought to remind readers of here.
Thanks,
RL
Russell faced an entirely different world than Jordan. Greatest force in an era where the NBA was only 10 teams and our culture was blatantly racist. For years, Russell’s Celtics never sold out their home opener after winning NBA championships. Folks didn’t care.
Jordan made them care. Yes, so many things facilitated his financial success. But the primary thing that drove it was Jordan’s special and mysterious Chi.
And I still marvel at it.
Tong Said,
September 12, 2009 @ 11:45 pm
tarnished his legacy. he was bitter. everyone cringed.
we get it michael. you’ve won. now move on.
http://sports.yahoo.com/nba/news?slug=aw-jordanhall091209&prov=yhoo&type=lgns
van gundy was right. jordan is a con man. a bitter, sad man.
ddddd Said,
September 13, 2009 @ 1:24 pm
It was so easy to hate on Jordan back in the day…
He made players that worked hard and did it the right way look average. He would make anyone look foolish that put a pair of shorts on in a gym. Your Bryon Russells, Nick Andersons, John Starks’s and anyone else you threw in front of him were simply like annoying little gnats. He squashed them without a problem sometime in the 1st quarter every single night and didn’t even phase his jumpshot.
Obviously its still pretty easy to hate him now. Face it, as much as we all hated him back in the day he revolutionized basketball and ripped the hearts out of nba fans night in and night out. People who say Kobe or Lebron is better are just looking for a way to beat Jordan nowdays even though the guy is retired!
Give the guy his due… Say what you want about his speech.. That was how he succeeded in life period. It doesn’t work for everyone, but the cocky determiniation and the desire to live up to his cockiness is what made him excell thrive dominate and be the best ever.
coolstar Said,
September 13, 2009 @ 10:21 pm
Jordan once again tarnished his image during his HOF speech. he just doesn’t get it: being a great player doesn’t give you the right to demean your teammates, fire coaches, and generally be a miserable human being.
Yes, it gives you the ABILITY to do all the above, but not the RIGHT. Year after year, he just becomes more and more bitter and a worse and worse basketball executive. I’d take one David Robinson, one Tim Duncan, and 0.25 Bill Russell’ over 10 Michael Jordans.
Roland Lazenby Said,
September 14, 2009 @ 12:50 am
Yes, he was a model basketball player. But like some other great ones, Jordan harbored and nurtured his animosity and grudges. Made him a great basketball player. But that doesn’t necessarily make for a great human being. Having just finished an intense study of Jerry West, he too harbored long-term grudges, although he made some peace as he aged. Jordan hasn’t turned 50 yet. Maybe he’ll ease up then. Maybe not.
travis Said,
September 15, 2009 @ 12:59 am
give Michael a break. Doesn’t this give you guys one bit of insight as to what creates greatness?
its focus, its doing what no one else would do, he may be misunderstood only because we all have no idea how he became the greatest of all time.
at the start of his speach he said what is it that you would want to know about me that you dont already know…. and he gave it beautifully. we all knew all the other bs about his career but he gave us an insight into what made the best. take jordans traits into any area of your life and you would become the best at it. he gave the formula. its called leverage.