Thank goodness for the consolation of gold and diamonds.
I recall that Allen Iverson had plenty of both in the late fall of 1996 as he made his way through his rookie year in the NBA.
When I interviewed him after just his second NBA game, played in Chicago against the Bulls, Iverson’s jewelry quickly grabbed my immediate attention. The necklace was a chainwork of gold with nice little diamonds set between each link. It was a long chain, reaching to his breastbone, where it was anchored by a gold and diamond crucifix.
“Wow,” I remember thinking. “Quite stunning.”
The bracelet was matching gold chain link and more sparkling stones. First he fiddled with it nervously on his right wrist while trying to answer reporters’ questions in the visitors’ locker room at Chicago’s United Center. Then he moved it to his left wrist, where he fixed the clasp and left it.
There might have been matching earrings, but I don’t remember. After all, it was an evening for jewelry, and my mind could only hold so many scintillating images.
Just a couple of hours earlier, the Bulls had gotten some gaudy accoutrements of their own, the rewards for their remarkably disciplined team play. The occasion was their first home game of the 1996-97 NBA season, which meant it was time for the members of the 1995-96 team to receive their championship rings. The Bulls’ jewelry came packaged in distinctive black boxes. A paperweight of gold, with an onyx setting, encrusted with 76 sweet little diamonds, one for each of the team’s record 72 wins that season, plus another four representing the franchise’s four NBA titles.
Each ring cost about $35,000.
The Bulls received them in a coronation ceremony that included taped flourishes of horns and a stroll by each player down a long red carpet out to the spotlight at center court. After that, Michael Jordan’s Bulls raised their fourth championship banner to the rafters, then proceeded to destroy Iverson’s Philadelphia ‘76ers. Destroyed them competitively. Mentally. Physically. Probably even spiritually.
Those Sixers featured Iverson and his talented young backcourt mate, Jerry Stackhouse, but they were through by the end of the third quarter, their team down by 30 points. They sat together on the floor, leaning against a press table, looking thoroughly befuddled and embarrassed. The Bulls, of course, had a way of doing that to people, particularly spirited rookies.
As early as his junior season in high school, Iverson was telling his coaches that he was good enough to take Michael Jordan. And that confidence wasn’t completely unwarranted. He had displayed his unbridled brilliance in two seasons at Georgetown and came to the NBA as the top pick in that spring’s draft. And Iverson had scored 30 points against the Milwaukee Bucks as the 76ers narrowly lost their league opener.
That had only given Philly’s young guards confidence that they could maybe outrun the elderly Bulls.
“They’re the world champions, but they’re gonna have to keep up,” Stackhouse had told me before the game. “We’re getting out.”
Things started out smoothly enough for Philadelphia. Iverson’s first shot was a silky three-pointer. But within minutes, Bulls forward Dennis Rodman had opened Iverson’s head and climbed right in. Rodman used sly comments and physical play to challenge Iverson.
Instead of the Sixers getting out and running, it was the Bulls who turned the game into a track meet as one Iverson penetration after another ended badly. Soon, Iverson was so distracted and distraught that Jordan felt the need to talk to him to calm him down.
“Allen got a little frustrated tonight,” Jordan said afterward. “I can’t say that I blame him. It’s a situation where he comes from a heck of a program at Georgetown that wins consistently. At this level, you have to learn to accept losing – not accept, but accept it in a way that’s a learning experience. You utilize it to make you better as a player.
“There are gonna be a lot of other players trying to get into your head, and if you let them into your head, you’re fighting a losing battle. You forget about the overall concept of what you mean to your team and what your team is trying to do.
“Once Dennis and some of the other players got into his head it became a game of individuality for him,” Jordan explained. “And that’s the thing he’s always gonna have to fight against. He’s an extremely talented player, and a very emotive player. So there’s a lot of envy out there, a lot of jealousy, because of what he’s gotten thus far. He’s got to learn to control those emotions.”
Matched against Chicago’s Ron Harper, Iverson had little trouble penetrating.
“He’s quick as hell,” Harper said. “I’ve never seen anyone that quick in my life. He went by me about three or four times. I was like, ‘Damn!’ I thought I could play defense.”
Yet Iverson’s penetration often left him making hasty interior passes to his teammates, most of which they fumbled, leading to turnovers and seemingly endless Bulls fastbreaks.
His coaches, Sixers head man Johnny Davis and assistant Maurice Cheeks, approached the aftermath with a grim resignation.
They had seen it coming.
Maurice Cheeks said: “He has great ability, and he just needs to learn how to play the game.”
Iverson himself agreed: “It’s timing, it ’s communication, everything,” he said, fumbling with the diamond bracelet.
Another keen observer was Bulls back-up guard Randy Brown: “Once they get established as a team and he becomes more of a team player, he’ll be a much better point guard. He’s young, he’s got a lot to learn. If he’s willing to learn it, he’s gonna be a great player.
“He’s playing a position where he’s got to get his teammates involved. If he’s not willing to do that, it’s gonna be a long process for him. But if he gets better at doing that, he’s gonna be a great point guard.”
As usual, though, the best advice and observations came from MJ.
“He’s got a lot of good basketball skills,” Jordan offered. “He’s gonna improve. Johnny Davis is giving him an opportunity to gain his confidence playing on this level. And I think that’s only gonna enhance his individual talent. But just like myself, at some point in time, he’s gonna have to learn how to blend in with the team. Certainly he’s got to make his team as good as possible and keep his teammates involved. I think he’s got unbelievable talent and quickness. He’s a little runt running around. A couple of times he could have gotten hurt, but he’s fearless. And that’s how we all are when we’re young.
“It was a frustrating night for them. Very frustrating. Believe me. I went through some of these nights, going against Boston and some of the better teams when I was coming up. You learn. You try to pick little motivational factors from games like this. It’s a lot of envy being on the other side, being the ones who are getting killed by 30. So it’s a motivational situation for them.
“They can look at it in a lot of different ways,” Jordan added, “but no matter how you look at it, it was a lesson. I mean basketball teaches you a lot of different things. If you’re willing to learn it, then you’re gonna get better. If you’re not, if you continue to fight it, then you’re gonna stay at the same level.”
Watching Iverson through his years in Philly, his stops in Denver, Detroit and now Memphis, you get the strong sense that 13 years later, through hundreds and hundreds of games and every kind of experience, the warrior who is AI has managed to make himself a very rich man, just as he has been able to score lots of points. Otherwise, he seems to have failed to grasp the lesson of the jewelry.
Those fundamentals of team play, the basic mind-set of the group, remain as elusive to him today as they were those very first nights in the league.
One of the game’s greatest talents just doesn’t get the idea of team. He never really has. Now in Memphis, Iverson has taken a leave of absence to deal with personal issues, following a stormy few weeks debating his role with the team.
When Iverson returns to the Grizzlies, his pro career will be down to the final act, if it isn’t already. Redemption is still possible for him, but for it to come, he’ll have to be blinded by the light.
I’m not going to hold my breath waiting for it to happen. But if you love basketball, there’s nothing you’d love better than seeing a supreme and fearless competitor like Iverson finally get the notion of team play. Some might say that an older player, especially a scorer like Iverson, can’t make such a transition. But JerryWest made huge changes in 1972, when new coach Bill Sharman asked West to back off of all the scoring he had done for a dozen years in the league as an off guard.
West became the Lakers true point guard for the first time in his career. Instead of scoring at a high pace, West took over the job of feeding the ball to his teammates (he would still average 25 points per game).
Iverson could gain much by agreeing to play something other than the dominant role he has insisted on throughout his career.
It would be good for him, good for the game, if he finally gave himself over to the idea of team. After years of ignoring the issue, it’s time for the Answer to realize that he must face up to the Question.
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.
For Phil Jackson, endings have always been much more powerful than beginnings.
But what would you expect from a guy who was raised by two itinerant fundamentalist preachers? Jackson grew up a son of the Northern Plains, in one Montana community after another, always facing “the rapture,” the belief that the world was soon coming to its glorious end.
“Every Sunday since I was born, the apocalypse has been coming next year,” Jackson once told Knicks teammate Bill Bradley in trying to explain his parents’ view of life. Jackson’s young world would be shaped by a growing awareness of his mother’s intense devotion and her focus on the moment of Christ’s return, what she called “the rapture of the saints,” and he would spend his childhood years anticipating that rapture.
Those childhood experiences brought him moments of terror, he once revealed.
And so he learned the power of endings. Anyone who doubts that only has to recall how he used the “end game” to motivate and focus a crazily fractured and distracted Chicago Bulls team to win the 1998 NBA championship. Jackson employed every mind game possible to squeeze a sixth title out of that club and even gave it a tagline as he was doing it, “The Last Dance.”
Hey, he’s a guy who’s made millions off a book titled “The Last Season.”
So Jackson’s recent noise about retiring after the 2010 campaign has to be taken with a grain of context. And that context is this: With Phillip Douglas Jackson you never know where the mind games end and the stark reality begins. That’s part of his motivational success in a business where you’re trying to shape, guide and control headstrong young millionaires in short pants.
We do know this fact. Tex Winter has worked with Jackson closely for years. He’s the guy’s mentor. Winter says that he’s never seen Phil tighten down the control like he has this season.
That, of course, has everything to do with the fact that he’s trying to push a talented young team to a championship, a talented young team that had its mental fragility exposed last year against the Boston Celtics.
It wasn’t easy for Jackson growing up with the isolation of being a son of the Holy Rollers, those folks who worshipped in tents and talked in tongues and based their lives on the notion that the world was going to end any day. But that experience is just one of many things in Jackson’s powerful bag of tricks, things that he has drawn upon over the course of his masterful career.
When Jackson coached the Bulls, some people in that organization chafed at things that he did, as have other coaches around the league. There’s the perception that he’s supremely arrogant.
But as one Bulls official once told me, “If you’re going to coach Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen you better have some shit with you.”
Jackson has always had some shit with him.
Maybe he is planning to retire. Maybe he isn’t. Only Phil knows. And maybe even he doesn’t know.
But we all know this: nothing in life is guaranteed. The opportunity for the Lakers to win is now. The sense of urgency must be huge.
That would seem simple and clear enough to most folks. But the young people in the NBA cash very big checks. They are veal, fed on the milk of potential. It’s always about what they’re going to do down the road. That’s how they’re evaluated. That’s why it’s so easy for them to miss the point, to make huge assumptions that just aren’t true. And in the process, they let the opportunity of a lifetime slip away.
That’s already a bitter cud that Jackson and Kobe Bryant and Shaquille O’Neal will have to taste every single day for the rest of their lives. Their silliness in 2004 (when they broke up a team that had won three titles) has cost the three of them dearly in terms of championships won.
They all acted like big brats and left huge winnings, the winnings of a competitive lifetime, on the table. They could have challenged Bill Russell and his Celtics. Instead, all they challenged was our patience. The three of them have been stalked by that truth since the day they parted in 2004 in a fury of bad adolescent gas.
So, it’s rapture time for Phil and his boys. It’s one of his many ways of saying it’s time to put aside childish things, time to focus furiously on the task at hand. There is no tomorrow.
Repeat that. There is no tomorrow.
If you think any other way, you’re just not a competitor. If you entertain any other thought, then the only rings you’re going to have are the smoke rings you’re blowing up each other’s asses.
Phoenix Suns fans these days are just starting to understand how Michael Jordan felt.
Jordan, you may recall, punched Steve Kerr in the face in a 1995 Chicago Bulls practice.
Kerr, as I remember, had the audacity to stand up to Jordan during one of those scrimmages where His Airness was heaping abuse on teammates.
Kerr is the GM of the Suns these days, and it seems he’s up to his old tricks.
And this is where things get dicey. If you loved the old Suns regime led by the mad scientist of basketball, Mike D’Antoni, then you probably want a shot at Kerr yourself.
On the other hand, if you’re less of a dreamer and you subscribe to what, 75 years of basketball precedent and history? If you do that, then you’re probably inclined to agree with Kerr that if the goal in the NBA is to win a championship, then the Suns probably needed to change to a philosophy that actually has a chance of producing that outcome.
The circumstances make for a fascinating debate and one very ugly transition.
That transition, of course, began in the middle of last season when Kerr traded the Matrix, Shawn Marion, an open-court machine of a forward, to the Miami Heat for Shaquille O’Neal.
At the time, I equated the move to owning a garage filled with sleek Ferraris and suddenly adding to it a lumbering Mack Diesel belching black smoke.
That’s exactly what the situation has proved to be.
After last season, D’Antoni departed Phoenix for a job with the New York Knicks, where he has resumed his mad, fun experiment. And I must admit that I love watching his Knicks play these days (I always love the rebirth of a dead franchise), just as I loved watching those Suns of the past few seasons running up and down the floor, jacking up shots, sharing the ball, scoring lots of points and even giving an occasional nod to defense.
By the way, I also loved Pete Maravich’s performances with the old Atlanta Hawks. I remember my shock at interviewing Richie Guerin, the tough old pro who coached those Hawks, and hearing him say that he was nauseated by the Pistol’s approach to the game.
So this is hardly a new argument. The concept of basketball as entertainment began to take root back in the 1930s and ’40s with the Harlem Globetrotters and other barnstormers. They started out playing the game straight but soon found they could make much more money and gain much more attention if they focused on entertainment and the gags.
Red Auerbach of the Boston Celtics took an early stand on this issue. Yes, he finally agreed to take the fancy dan passer Bob Cousy as his point guard, but Red didn’t stop till he got the no-nonsense Bill Russell as his post player.
Those old Celtics teams won lots of championships, and even though the game changed, Red didn’t allow dancers or silly marketing games in his Garden.
For Red and the long line of great competitors of the sport, it’s all about the winning of championships. Nothing else matters. Let me repeat that. Nothing else matters.
I love being entertained by the Knicks and those Suns of D’Antoni’s. Do I care if they win championships? Not a lick. I’m not a serious fan of either team.
D’Antoni’s point, of course, is that he can win a championship playing with an up-tempo, quick-shooting style. He’s swimming upstream against years of evidence to the contrary, but I’m entertained at watching him try.
Kerr, on the other hand, has a different experience with the game. He’s played for two great coaches — Phil Jackson and Gregg Popovich— who built multiple championships around great post players. Jordan is the game’s greatest weapon, and Tim Duncan and O’Neal aren’t far behind.
Kerr saw a chance to get O’Neal and figured that with the right approach there was still a championship or two with the Diesel. Last year he struggled, but this year O’Neal is showing signs of rounding into form (at least that’s what longtime Shaq critic Tex Winter thinks. Even so, it’s not so much about building around Shaq per se as it is building an organization that relies on a sound system of basketball).
Kerr, meanwhile, has been busy disassembling the old team and building something that has a chance to win. I know this. I’ve spent some time over the years discussing basketball philosophy with Kerr and he knows what he’s doing.
I also understand that Steve Nash is decidedly unhappy with the circumstances. He’s had a lot of fun and earned a lot of recognition playing a key role in the D’Antoni experiment. But understand this: Until somebody actually wins a championship playing that madcap way, that’s all it is: a fun experiment.
The guy I feel sorry for is new Suns coach Terry Porter. He’s a solid basketball guy who’s stuck in the driver’s seat during a head-spinning transition. And most real transitions are like this. Very, very ugly until all at once they turn pretty. The longer they take, the uglier they are.
With the NBA’s complicated personnel rules and salary-cap system, transitions are oh so slow and tedious, not to mention dangerous. Taking a stand in the NBA can cost you your job in a blink. That’s why most GMs don’t want to take a real big stance. They want to go with the flow and cash those big checks until the vibe runs out.
Kerr’s far from perfect, but he’s got way too much integrity to sell out like that. He’s gonna try to do the right thing, no matter what.
The thing that may seem curious to most fans is that they remember the old Steve Kerr, the son of the career diplomat, the darling of University of Arizona basketball, the fan favorite in both Chicago and San Antonio, the guy who hit that winning shot for Bulls title no. 5, the guy who made those big shots for the Spurs.
What I recall most about Kerr is what a great voice of reason he was for the Bulls back in 1998 when the team was being ripped apart by a battle between Jackson and Jordan on one side and team management on the other. In those days, Kerr was the guy with the thoughtful, clear approach, the smooth communication.
Why doesn’t he play that card more today and talk more to the fans in Phoenix?
The answer there is pretty clear too. Kerr has never been one to engage in shouting matches or heated conflict, although he’s not afraid of taking a stand either (Jordan can attest to that).
No, when it comes to difficult transitions in basketball, it’s most about biting your lip and getting ‘er done. It’s about walking the walk, not talking the talk right now.
I have no doubt that if ownership stays behind him (and of course that depends a sophisticated fan base that loves and cares about winning NBA basketball) then Kerr will see this transition through. And Phoenix will have a shot at winning a title.
Kerr knows that championship moments mean so much more than a little nightly fun. And he’s always been willing to take a punch in the face to prove it.
Tex Winter never pays much attention to what Shaquille O’Neal has to say. “He’s colorful, isn’t he?” the 86-year-old hoops guru says with a chuckle.
On the other hand, Winter watches very closely what Mr. O’Neal, the Phoenix Suns center, does on the floor.
It takes a lot to impress Winter, Phil Jackson’s longtime mentor and now a consultant to the Los Angeles Lakers. However, Winter admits to being impressed with what he’s seen of Shaq this year. “I think he’s in pretty good shape,” Winter said. “He’s a little thinner, a little better conditioned, a little more mobile, moving a little better than he has the last few seasons.”
Winter has viewed with curiosity the Suns’ acquisition last season of the behemoth O’Neal. At the time, Winter said it didn’t make clear sense, adding the big, lumbering fella to a team that was built to run. But having watched them adjust, Winter has come to believe that the Suns probably need to embrace O’Neal a little more than they have, to go ahead and find their new identity. In Shaq’s parlance, that would translate to “give me the ball and let the big dog eat.” “There’s a certain way you have to play with Shaq,” Winter observed. “Get him the ball on the low post, and go from there.”
A guardian of the game who never hesitates to criticize a superstar, Winter had his conflicts with O’Neal when the big guy was with the Lakers. Winter, though, conceded that “Shaq’s probably not getting it enough at this point.”
Of course, it probably would work better for the Lakers if the Suns remain conflicted and caught at crossed purposes. The competition in the Western Conference is already tough enough. O’Neal had recently implied that Jackson was somehow to blame for O’Neal’s feuding with Kobe Bryant.
Winter has long been on the record that Jackson, as Lakers coach, bent over backward to coddle O’Neal to the detriment of Bryant. As for O’Neal’s allegation that Jackson was behind the conflicts with Bryant, longtime Laker observers know that O’Neal had an aggressive agenda against Bryant months before Jackson or Winter came to the team in 1999.
Winter also paid little mind to the recent dust-up between the Lakers Trevor Ariza and teammate SashaVujacic. Ariza got upset with Vujacic for taking a badly missed three-pointer instead of moving the ball. The two had to be separated by teammates. Winter himself was never shy about making his opinions known. Lakers assistant Brian Shaw chuckles about Tex getting upset with him when he was a Lakers guard.
So it’s not surprising that Winter didn’t see anything too wrong with Ariza getting ticked off.
“I don’t blame him,” Winter said. “Good for him. I’ve always tried to let people know they’ve gotta play the game right. I don’t like people to discredit the game of basketball.”
Winter also noted that Jackson moved quickly to talk to Ariza about losing his temper. “Phil won’t let things hang,” Winter said. Of course, assistants sometimes had to step in back in the day when Winter, then Jackson’s assistant with the Chicago Bulls, would get upset with Luc Longley or some other transgressor.
Then again, there’s much about Ariza that brings the days of yore to mind for Winter. “Ariza’s got tremendous reach. He’s active,” Winter said. “When he’s playing defense he’s a little bit like (Scottie) Pippen with those long arms and the way he anticipates the passing lanes and gets his hands on the ball. “I’m not saying he’s another Pippen,” Winter added quickly but acknowledged that Jackson and his Lakers coaching staff have mentioned Ariza and Pippen in the same breath.
Longtime observers will recall that the great Pippen at 6-7 offered tremendous defensive versatility. He was able to sink into the lane to help defend the post, then showed the quickness to recover to the perimeter. “Ariza plays a little differently than Pippen on the help defense,” Winter said.
But the 6-8 fourth year forward reminds Winter of Pippen, Michael Jordan and Ron Harper, the Bulls triumvirate that ruled the league as stealers from 1996 to 1998. “Pippen and Jordan and Harper were good at laying back there and then jumping in and playing the passing lanes,” Winter said. “That’s why we (the Bulls) were a very good defensive club with those three guys. Ariza does that too. We need more like him.”
Winter was quick to add that this 2008-09 version of the Lakers is showing much defensive promise. Kobe Bryant has offered encouraging flashes of inspired defensive play. “Kobe will overplay and gamble a lot,” Winter said, acknowledging that such a ploy was also a Jordan trait. “But Kobe doesn’t lay back and come up with the basketball.”
It seems Winter is suggesting that Bryant add such a wrinkle to his portfolio, so keep a lookout for that at some point this season. “They’re working hard on defense,” Winter said of the Lakers. “They’re not the old Bulls. They’ll have their own character.”
The Lakers, of course, will have to improve dramatically as a defensive unit if they want to erase the memories of the hurting that the Boston Celtics put on them in the championship series in June. The pain of that loss seems to have added purpose to Jackson’s approach as well. “It’s motivated him to the point that he wants to get with it,” Winter said of the Lakers coach. “And he is getting with it. He’s controlling things a lot more than he did in the past.”
Then again, Jackson has more to control this time around. The Lakers are a very deep team. “He likes it,” Winter said of Jackson’s attitude toward the depth.
Asked if he thought this Los Angeles club has even more depth than the great Bulls teams that won six championships, the coach replied, “We had some pretty good subs in Chicago. But I don’t know if we had a team where the subs can play as many minutes as these Lakers guys can.”
Winter also is pleased that Bryant “has settled in to a team role” despite transgressions here or there that have left Jackson complaining a bit to reporters. “Kobe’s gotta hit shots,” Winter said. “He’s gotta take those outside shots. They’re important to the team. He cant’ go to the basket all the time.”
It’s a question of balance for Bryant, Winter said. The All-Star guard has to keep a steady mix between shooting and driving. That sounds simple, but it’s never easy to measure balance over the course of a game. “Kobe just can’t rely on one thing or the other too much,” Winter said. “Kobe wants to involve everybody else, and that’s good. But sometimes it’s maybe too much so. With players like Kobe and Jordan, it’s always a question of balance.”
Winter is preparing to rejoin the team in Los Angeles after taking a couple of weeks away to deal with the painful shingles that have bothered him for three years. Seemingly concerned about his mentor, Jackson suggested Winter contact his “holistic” doctor in New York who helped Jackson deal with hip pain. Winter has made the contact and is hoping for results.
Meanwhile, he’s eager to get back to the team to take his mind off the pain. Winter was also mindful of the passing this week of Pete Newell. Winter recalled that his Kansas State team went to Berkeley in December of 1958 and beat Newell’s Cal team that went on to win the NCAA championship that spring of 1959. Winter’s K State team spent part of that reason ranked number one in the country. But his club lost to Cincinnati and Oscar Robertson in the Midwest Regional Final, 85-75.
Newell’s club went on to beat Robertson and Cincy in the national semifinals before nipping West Virginia and Jerry West for the NCAA title. “Pete Newell was a great coach and especially a great teacher,” Winter said.
It’s been 10 years since Jerry Krause, Phil Jackson and Michael Jordan parted company in a hail of spite and anger after winning six championships together with the Chicago Bulls.
It’s unlikely that the three ever posed together for a photograph, even in their sunnier days, but if they had Krause would have been the short dumpy guy looking entirely out of place.
The caption for that photo might have noted that Jordan was the one with the fierce presence and incredible talent and Jackson was the one with the cunning.
And Krause?
Well, he was the one with big enough balls to stand up to both of them.
It’s unlikely that Krause will ever join the other two in the Hall of Fame, but if he does, the display might well be a huge set of cojones.
Jordan, you may recall, was the most intimidating presence in the history of the game, on and off the court. That was his gift and his curse, all rolled into one. It was his gift because he rode that Alpha Male nature to the heights of the sport, scaring everybody in his path along the way. The curse was that his talent transformed those around him into fawning groupies and sycophants. Everywhere Jordan turned, he encountered people eager to tell him what he wanted to hear.
Even Jackson, hugely intimidating in his own right, chose his words carefully and stepped softly around His Airness.
Krause, on the other hand, charged right in like the bull that he was, cocksure in his own view of things.
Krause was the one who just knew the Cinderella Bulls had to have Bill Cartwright to upgrade their center play with smarts and toughness. So he traded away Charles Oakley, Jordan’s dear friend and partner in crime, to get Cartwright. It was just one of several Krause acts that Jordan never forgave.
“We didn’t win until we got Bill Cartwright,” Krause told me in a long conversation a few months back. “People today don’t realize how good Bill Cartwright was.”
Cartwright was the key to the Bulls’ first three championships from 1991-93, Krause said.
“Then the second group of three (1996-98) started when we got Dennis (Rodman). Without Dennis, we wouldn’t have done that.”
Jordan signed off on the Rodman acquisition, but there were plenty of other times Krause didn’t hesitate to run afoul of the team’s star.
Jordan lobbied hard for the drafting of Joe Wolf, a University of North Carolina star. Krause ignored him and drafted Horace Grant, another key in Chicago’s long, strange run of success.
Since the glory of his playing days ended, Jordan has struggled to find success and happiness in the game he virtually owned as a Bull.
Jordan has never phoned Krause, although he did contact him through an intermediary for the pivotal 2001 NBA draft. Jordan was an owner/executive for the Washington Wizards, and Krause was still working for the Bulls. They were both trying to sort out which big men to take among Tyson Chandler, Kwame Brown and Eddy Curry. Jordan made Brown his infamous selection, while Krause scooped up Chandler and Curry for Chicago.
“Michael didn’t try to pick my brain,” Krause said. “Michael didn’t have any respect for anybody’s brain. He did have Rod Higgins do a lot of his talking.”
Since his Bulls tenure ended a few years back, Krause has returned to his original love, scouting baseball.
Although Jordan is in charge of basketball operations for the Charlotte Bobcats these days and he could probably use Krause’s counsel on personnel issues, it’s not likely that the two will ever mend their differences.
And Krause scoffed when asked if he and Jackson would be getting together any time soon for a reunion of those great Bulls teams.
“I haven’t spoken to Phil since the last day he was with us in 1998,” Krause said.
Like Jordan, it would probably behoove Jackson to slice off a huge piece of humble pie and give Krause a call. After all, Jackson is in Los Angeles trying to duplicate the incredible feat they all accomplished together in Chicago – to build a championship team around a 2 guard.
Krause is quite a student of the game and he loves to point out that Chicago holds a distinction among all the great basketball teams.
“We were the only ones to build a championship team around a 2 guard,” he offered, adding that even attempting such a thing is almost silly. “That’s what I’m proudest of. It’s the hardest thing to do, really, really hard to do.”
WINTER
Their differences are enough to make you wonder how Krause and Jackson ever came to work together, but that in itself is the bittersweet heart of this story.
If Krause ever writes an autobiography, he plans to call it “One Million National Anthems.” That’s because he’s knocked around the games of baseball and basketball for years as a scout, taking bad flights, eating bad food, hanging out at practice, always looking for the hidden truth.
Even before that, when he was a student assistant charting plays at Bradley University, Krause caught his first glimpse of Tex Winter, then the coach at Kansas State. Krause was intrigued by the triangle offense and Winter’s intelligence and integrity.
“I liked what Tex did. I thought, ‘Boy, if he ever got good players that offense would be something.’”
Winter moved around in his coaching career as Krause moved into the netherworld of scouting, all the while keeping an eye on Winter and his teams. When Winter took the job at Northwestern, “we became better friends,” Krause said.
Winter recalls that he spent a lot of time with a projector, going over film, showing Krause a lot about the triangle.
“I wanted to learn about it,” Krause said. He also had hopes of becoming an NBA general manager someday and he offered promises that as soon as he did, he would hire Winter.
“I want you with me,” Krause told Winter. “I want you to teach the big people and to coach the coaches.”
“I always said, ‘I’m gonna hire him as an assistant coach, and I’m not gonna worry who the head coach is going to be,” Krause recalled.
In 1985, Krause’s labor came to fruition. He was hired as GM of the Bulls as Jordan was entering his second season. Sure enough, one of the first calls he made was to Winter.
First, Krause hired Stan Albeck as head coach. But Albeck didn’t want to listen to Winter and didn’t want to use the offense.
Krause also wanted him to hire a goofy young assistant named Phil Jackson. Krause had discovered Jackson, a lanky big guy at the University of North Dakota, while scouting small college ball. Krause had quickly come to believe that Jackson had a bright future. But Albeck absolutely refused to hire Jackson, who was viewed as something of an oddball back in the 1980s.
Krause fired Albeck and promoted a bright young coach, Doug Collins.
Krause wanted Collins to hire Jackson, but the new coach was reluctant.
“I went around some things with Doug, but I finally got Phil on his staff,” Krause said.
Once there, Jackson soon began working with Winter and learning from him. But like Albeck, Collins didn’t want to listen to Winter. He even barred Winter from Bulls practices at one point.
Finally, Krause grew fed up, fired Collins and hired Jackson as his head coach.
At last, Krause had the two people he had dreamed of putting in charge. It was the beginning of a coaching partnership that would win nine NBA titles.
“Phil was the first person to understand how good Tex was,” Krause said. “I give Phil a lot of credit. Phil is the best brain picker I have ever known. Phil has picked Tex’s mind for years. I’m a great brain picker myself. I’ve picked Tex’s mind for years. But Phil is by far the best I’ve ever seen because he took a genius and picked his brain. I hired Phil because he was a brilliant defensive coach. When Phil said he wanted to use Tex’s triangle, I said, ‘That’s great.’”
Krause doesn’t take credit for it, but the two would become the core of a great coaching staff, that included Johnny Bach, Jimmy Rodgers, Frank Hamblen and Jimmy Cleamons.
“I do believe the coaching staff we had in Chicago is the best staff in the history of the game,” Krause said. “They were a tremendous complement to Phil.”
For several years, Jackson and his staff proved the perfect match for Jordan, Scottie Pippen and the assemblage of talent. However, Krause’s strong personality wore on Jackson season after season.
Winter grew to become a moderating factor between the two. He said Jackson spent several years bending over backward to please Krause, but by late 1995, Jackson had grown weary of the process and began to rebel.
That rebellion grew into open warfare by 1996. Some accuse Jackson of using Jordan’s and Pippen’s dislike of Krause to motivate the team and drive the Bulls along a bitter road to their last three championships.
Krause soon found himself caught up in the web of Jackson’s mind games and the coach’s ability to use the media to achieve his goals.
“He’s always operated that way,” Krause said of Jackson. “Believe me, he’s stirred the pot with me a number of times. That’s the way he does things. I know the act, believe me.”
Observers watched Krause’s own hubris feed into the end game in Chicago. The team and coaching staff broke apart after the sixth title in 1998. Krause’s vision of Jackson and Winter had been special, then it turned into his nightmare.
Jackson “rode off into the sunset” was how the media termed the parting. Krause says he was disappointed in 1999 when Winter told him he was leaving the Bulls to accept a job working with Jackson and the Lakers.
“I wasn’t happy about it when he left,” Krause said of Winter, one of the elite few whom Krause calls ‘Coach.’ “I told him that. But Coach is still Coach with me. I don’t call many people coach. You gotta earn that with me.”
Now in his late 60s and still living in the Chicago area, Krause offers a matter-of-fact view of the experience and shows some callouses.
“I’ve got tapes of every game that was played in that era,” he says. “I’ve never looked at ‘em.”
Jackson was voted into the Hall of Fame last year, which served to remind Krause of his frustration at not getting the Hall to recognize Winter as an all-time great coach.
Winter is one of the game’s ultimate “geniuses,” he says.
Krause himself was on the selection committee for the Hall several years ago and resigned in protest over the issue.
“I did everything I could do,” Krause said, adding that the politics of selection has made Winter’s recognition as one of the game’s all-time great coaches an impossibility. “It ain’t gonna happen.”
He has grown to accept that reality as he has everything else that came to pass. He says he has moved on to his new life in baseball and is enjoying it immensely.
Don’t expect a warm reunion of one of pro basketball’s great teams, he says.
“It’s past history. It’s done. Phil is a great coach. For a long time, he was very easy to work with. Then he was not so easy. That’s life. Things change. Phil is Phil. I’m proud I hired him.”
I wrote a Kobe Bryant/Michael Jordan feature for Lindy’s Pro Basketball 2008 Preview, the magazine that I have edited for the past 15 years. I sat down with Jordan for about 20 minutes over the offseason, which is the basis for the article, titled “In Michael’s Image.” I asked Jordan about Kobe Bryant and the loud criticism directed at the Lakers star for being a Jordan wanna be, an imitator.
Jordan and Bryant are close, which perhaps explains why Jordan said he doesn’t see what all the big fuss is about. After all, human behavior is mimetic. That’s what humans do. They copy and ape another.
Jordan acknowledged Bryant is the best of a generation of players who have tried to be like Mike.
“But how many people lighted the path for me?” Jordan asked. “That’s the evolution of basketball. There’s no way I could have played the way I played if I didn’t watch David Thompson and guys prior to me. There’s no way Kobe could have played the way he’s played without watching me play. So, you know, that’s the evolution of basketball. You cannot change that.”
Phil Jackson and Tex Winter, who coached Jordan in Chicago and Bryant in Los Angeles, have long marveled at the alpha male nature of both players. What critics perhaps still don’t yet grasp is that the issue involves personality types.
It’s impossible to copy a personality type. That’s a genetic trait. Copying Jordan’s physical abilities would be nearly impossible to do. Then, to duplicate his uber mind-set? Such a constitution is rare indeed.
“I tend to think how very much they’re alike,” Winter explained to me. “They both display tremendous reaction, quickness and jumping ability. Both have a good shooting touch. Some people say Kobe is a better shooter, but Michael really developed as a shooter as he went along. I don’t know if Kobe is a better shooter than Michael was at his best.”
Forget about jumping as high or shooting as well, who could work as hard as Jordan? Who’s willing to live a life of day-to-day, unbending grind? Who has the fierceness? The relentless desire that wears everyone else on the team out?
Jackson always pointed out that Jordan’s personality was great for winning games, but it tended to grind on the teammates around him.
Jordan sees these traits in Bryant and admits to being more than a casual observer. He’s fascinated by Bryant’s career, even able to relive some of his own experience by watching Kobe. After all, he too played for Jackson in Winter’s same triangle offense.
Perhaps nothing emphasizes the alpha male traits they share better than their similar reaction to injury.
Bryant, of course, was diagnosed with a torn ligament and an avulsion fracture last season. That means that the ligament pulled away from the digit and took a chunk of bone with it.
The injury isn’t so much continually painful as it is a source of numbness, unless someone strikes it during a game. Then it can become quite painful. It immediately raised questions about how the injury would affect Bryant’s shooting, a question that gets bandied about on the Internet.
Bryant could have had surgery during the season, but he wanted to keep playing.
He could have had it over the summer, but he wanted to play in the Olympics.
He could have it late in the offseason, but he has a serious agenda for the Lakers for 2009. That agenda doesn’t allow him to miss the early months of the season.
So he’s going to play on.
“I have always felt that I can still focus and play at a high level even through various injuries,” Bryant explained on his website. “That’s really just part of the game. When the doctors told me recovery from a procedure could be 12 weeks, I just decided now was not the time to have surgery. What it really came down to for me is that I just didn’t want to miss any time ‘punching the clock’ for the Lakers, given all we are trying to accomplish as a team this NBA season. I am just really excited and looking forward to being there with the guys when camp opens in a few weeks. That is a real bonding process and if I can avoid being on the sidelines for that, God willing, I will.”
Old-timers will recall that just three games into his second NBA season, Jordan suffered a broken navicular tarsal bone in his left foot, an injury that had altered or ended the careers of several NBA players. He missed the next 64 games, then insisted on coming back to play at the end of the season, even though doctors explained that he risked perhaps a 15 percent chance of ending his career.
Jordan didn’t care. He was determined to play.
“That’s the way Mike was,” Mark Pfeil, who was then the Bulls’ trainer, told me. “If he didn’t think something was gonna hurt him, he’d focus past it and play. Sprains, groin pulls, muscle spasms, flu, Michael’s first question always was, ‘Is it gonna hurt me to play?’ If I told him no, it was gone. He’d focus past it.”
“I didn’t want to watch my team go down the pits,” Jordan explained. “I thought I was healthy enough to contribute something.”
With Jordan back in the lineup, the Bulls went 6-7 over their last 13 games and despite a 30-52 finish somehow made the playoffs. In the first round of the playoffs, the Bulls encountered the Boston Celtics, who were on their way to their 16th world championship. Boston swept Chicago, but not before Jordan set the NBA abuzz with a 63-point performance in a double-overtime loss on in Boston Garden.
“That’s God disguised as Michael Jordan,” Larry Bird said afterward.
Critics want to make much of Bryant’s decision as some sort of PR move, or perhaps yet another attempt to mimic Jordan.
Actually, it’s pretty simple. Bryant and his Lakers got their butts kicked by Boston in the league championship series. Bryant and his team lost Game 4 after holding a huge lead.
Winter, a longtime Bryant mentor and observer, noted that he outcome was a huge setback for someone with the stated goal of becoming the game’s greatest player.
For Bryant, the agenda is to get into training camp with his team to get ready to compete in 2009. He wants to win, and he can’t do that sitting out in September, October and November. He’s got a young team that he needs to lead, to drive.
Thank goodness for the consolation of gold and diamonds.
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.
For Phil Jackson, endings have always been much more powerful than beginnings.
Phoenix Suns fans these days are just starting to understand how Michael Jordan felt.
Tex Winter never pays much attention to what Shaquille O’Neal has to say. “He’s colorful, isn’t he?” the 86-year-old hoops guru says with a chuckle.
