How to Be Like Mike (16 page)

The most important thing I learned from big companies is that creativity gets stifled when everyone’s got to think within the box.

—David Kelley
EXECUTIVE

Much of what Jordan did was unprecedented in the NBA—his signature moves, his wagging tongue, his shaved head;he generated his own unique style. If we expect the upcoming generations to continue producing such unique genius, we have to encourage it. We have to applaud new ways of thinking instead of muffling them.

Control
(or, the Way We
Comprehend the Limits of
Our Responsibilities)

I
f you get yourself too engrossed in things over which you have no control, it will adversely affect the things over which you do have control.

—John Wooden

W
hen I was in Spartanburg, South Carolina, in the 1960s, running the Phillies’minor-league club, I was a mess. I worried about the weather and about our lousy record and about how that might affect our attendance and about how that might affect my upward mobility. I worried about everything; I worried until I nearly tore out my stomach lining.

My boss was awiseman. His namewas R. E. Littlejohn. He had a way with advice. One day he told me, “Control those things that you can control. Let the rest go.”

I still struggle with that. It’s hard to accept that things sometimes happen without your input, that there’s nothing you can do to change them. I did what I could in Spartanburg, and I do what I can now; sometimes it doesn’t feel like it’s enough. But it is an overwhelming task taking care of ourselves, of our own responsibilities, without delving into the problems of others.

My children are growing up. I can’t even control
them
like I used to. All I can offer them now is my attitude, my approach, and a promise that even if they do get a tattoo, I will still love them.

CHAPTER SIX

THE CHAMPION
OF THE
WHOLE WORLD

JORDAN ON INFLUENCE:

I
think everyone, when they’re kids, tries to pretend they’re someone else. I’d be playing basketball with my friends, or with my older brother, and I’d get the ball, and I’d say, “I’m David Thompson” or “I’m Walter Davis,” because they were older people who were playing basketball in North Carolina.

When you’re a kid, you don’t want to emulate someone. . . . You actually want to be that person. You don’t think of it in terms of wanting to grow up and be the same kind of person he is. You just want to be him, that’s all.

W
hether we want to admit it or not, we’re all hero worshippers. We don’t have cowboys anymore. We don’t have war heroes to admire. So most of the heroes today are athletes.

—Bobby Bowden
Florida State football coach

W
hen he was a rookie in the NBA, Michael Jordan bought himself a coat. It was a Russian raccoon coat, thick and gaudy W and made from expensive fur. To complement it, Jordan wore a host of glimmering necklaces and a few chunky rings. It wasn’t his style, really, but he was copying, trying to ingratiate himself. He dressed the way he saw others dressing. When he showed up at the NBA All-Star game that season, the players froze him out. They refused to pass him the ball. Behind Jordan’s back, they were talking. To them, the coat exemplified Jordan’s attitude; he was seen as showy and self-centered and focused on the flash of his game.

“Whoever I was trying to be that first year,” Jordan said, “it wasn’t me.”

So he changed his clothes. And he changed his image. He began wearing suits, mostly conservative in color and cut, yet with an understated elegance. Every night of his career, Jordan wore a suit, amid the frigid and sloppy Chicago winters, amid the stifling warmth of early summer. His career escalated;people began to watch him more vigilantly. He wore a suit for the brief walk from the hotel lobby to the team bus, from the team bus to the locker room, because every moment became an opportunity—to dignify himself, to elevate his image in the eyes of the children who idolized him.

“The fifteen seconds it takes for him to go from the elevator to the bus is the only time in some fan’s lives that they might see him,” wrote
Chicago Tribune
columnist Bob Greene. “Jordan wants those fifteen seconds to be dignified, because he knows those will be the fifteen seconds that they saw Michael Jordan.” Greene continued, “Mike plays every game as if it were his last because he knows that in the stands are some fans who will never see him play again, other than that night.”

The word
influence
is the best one-word definition of leadership. Leaders are people who influence others to think, feel or act in certain ways.

—Hans Finzel
AUTHOR

“The day after Michael had a big game in the finals, I was standing up and eating at Al’s Italian Beef on Taylor Street in Chicago,” said Bulls fan Steve Rodheim. “Standing next to me was a huge African-American policeman. We started talking about Michael and his performance. We talked about what Michael meant to the city of Chicago. I looked over and the policeman was sobbing. Big tears just rolling down his cheeks.”

There is a story that writer Pete Hamill tells, set in the dusty hills of central Mexico. There, Hamill found a young boy herding goats, wearing a pair of tattered jeans, sneakers tied with twine, and a bright red T-shirt with Jordan’s No. 23 on the back. Hamill approached the boy and asked him how he’d become such a Michael Jordan fan here, thousands of miles from Jordan’s direct sphere of influence.

Without heroes we are all plain people and don’t know how far we can go.

—Bernard Malamud
WRITER

“Porque su papa fue aesinado,”
he whispered.
“Y todavia es el campeon de todo el mundo.”

Translation:“Because his father was murdered. And he is still the champion of the whole world.”

In compiling anecdotes for this book, I spoke to a fan named Jack Cory, who was at an archaeological dig in Israel, just north of Jerusalem, when he came across a pair of young men who had been digging for seven years.

“Where are you from?” one of the men asked.

“Chicago,” Cory said.

And one of the men replied:“Oh! Michael Jordan!”

In 1991, the Bulls were in Los Angeles to play the Lakers in the Finals. On the bus, the players were teasing each other about who knew the most famous people. The debate raged on and Michael remained quiet. Someone yelled, “How about you, Michael?Who do you know who’s famous?” MJ said, “Who do you want me to call?” Someone said, “How about Janet Jackson?” MJ placed a call and said, “Hi, Janet. This is Mike. Give me a call.” Someone said, “Aw, you’re just faking it.” Thirty seconds later, the phone rang. It was Janet Jackson. John Salley said, “That’s when we knew there was us, and there was Michael Jordan!”

Tony Kornheiser, Washington sports writer, said, “I have a photo in my den that is very special. It was taken in a box on the night Jordan joined the Wizards. On the left is Ted Leonsis, then MJ, Abe Pollin and Bill Clinton. Let me tell you, Michael is clearly the focal point of the picture. You can
tell
that he is the sheriff.”

Top-Selling Issues of the
Chicago Tribune
since 1986:

1. Bulls Win 6
^th
NBA Title

2. Bulls Win 3
^rd
NBA Title

3. Bears Win Super Bowl XX

4. Bulls Win 4
^th
NBA Title

5. Bulls Win 1
^st
NBA Title

6. U. S. Fighters Attack Iraq

7. Bulls Win 2
^nd
NBA Title

8. Bulls Win 5
^th
NBA Title

Jordan is the anomaly, of course. Most of us are not afforded such great channels to influence people. We have to accomplish it on a smaller scale, amid our circle of acquaintances and family members and employees. But still, it is a crucial measure of our success as leaders: the attitude we leave in our wake. The example we set.

The Presence of
Greatness

F
ew things are harder to put up with, than the annoyance of a good example.

—Mark Twain

J
ordan’s influence on sport was as vast as any athlete’s in the twentieth century. It is difficult to even quantify Jordan’s effect upon the NBA itself. But the stories are universally glowing.

Vinny Del Negro was playing for San Antonio shortly after Jordan came back from baseball. He was guarding Jordan when they both went after a loose ball, and Del Negro grabbed Jordan by the arm, holding him back, and the ball tumbled out of bounds.

Jordan grinned. “You’ve learned a few things since I’ve been gone,” he said.

“That stuck with me,” Del Negro said. “The way he said it. The look in his eyes.”

At UCLA we have adopted twenty-three principles to guide our team. Why twenty-three? That’s in honor of Michael’s uniform number.

—Steve Lavin
UCLA
BASKETBALL COACH

Jerome Williams, the Detroit Pistons forward, saw Jordan in the locker-room hallway after the Bulls had beaten Indiana in 1997 to make the NBA Finals. Williams was standing around, waiting for his ride, and Jordan walked past and greeted him and said, “I just wanted to tell you that you had a good year. You’re a hard worker. You’re going to make it.”

“I’ll never forget that,” Williams said. “On MJ’s big day, he encouraged me.”

He did the same for so many of his teammates. With encouragement, with influence, he elevated their game. He empowered them. Jud Buechler, an unspectacular but steady member of the Bulls’championship teams, still remembers the first practice after Jordan came back from retirement. Jordan threw a pass, Buechler hit a shot, and Jordan gave him a high-five.
A high-five from Michael Jordan,
Buechler thought.

“I thought I was larger than life,” Buechler said. “I was ready to dive for loose balls, run through a wall. One little compliment from a guy like that is huge. If you’re Michael Jordan and you come to practice and start giving guys compliments, it goes a long way.”

“Late in my career, I was with the Cavs and we were playing the Bulls,” said former NBA player Scott Brooks. “I’m standing at the top of the circle during a free throw, right next to Michael Jordan. I thought,
This is kind of cool.
Michael says, ‘What’s up, Scotty?’ I thought,
He knows my name.
Then he says, ‘Scotty, you’ve had a great career. You should be proud of what you’ve accomplished. ’We were down by thirty at the time, but still—that made me feel so good.”

We are all afforded this position at some point: with our children, with our employees, with those who respect our accomplishments. It is up to us to empower those who will eventually inherit our tasks, just as it is up to us to accept the advice of those who came before us.

“If I had been born on an island, learned the game all by myself and developed into the player I became without ever seeing another example, then maybe I would accept being called the greatest,” Jordan said. “But I have used all the great players who came before me to improve upon my game. And somewhere, there is a little kid working to enhance what we’ve done. Unless they change the height of the basket or otherwise alter the dimensions of the game, there will be a player much greater than me.”

Just as Jordan emulated Walter Davis and David Thompson before him, so do Grant Hill and Kobe Bryant and the hundreds of other journeyman pros in the league attempt—if even for a moment—to approach Jordan’s genius. Even just to play against him was a thrill for the NBA’s next generation; there was always that romantic hope that they might absorb the tiniest sliver of his magic.

“I always dreamed of playing against Michael Jordan,” said forward BenWallace.

“When I first came into the NBA,” said ex-pro Tom Tolbert, “I found myself watching MJ in amazement. That’s not what you should be doing, but I felt like a fan.”

When Don Reid was a rookie in Detroit, his coaches specifically warned him not to stare at Jordan. “I still did it,” he said.