How to Be Like Mike (27 page)

Trust men and they will be true to you. Treat them greatly, and they will show themselves great.

—R
ALPH
W
ALDO
E
MERSON

He distributed his own tickets. He would pull out a list of names and match the names with each of the tickets with each of the seats. It was something that could have been done by a public-relations staff, by a personal assistant, by an intern, by anyone but him. But Jordan didn’t see it like that. “If someone has a problem with tickets,” he said, “I want them to know that I chose the location.”

He gave away his kindness, his respect, his trust. All he demanded in return were the same things.

“With me, once you feel like you can’t trust a person you once trusted, it’s over forever,” Jordan said. “I’m a person who keeps my word. I expect it from others as well.”

An Orlando television broadcaster, Greg Warmoth, once showed up after a Bulls shootaround. He found Jordan in the parking lot. He asked for an interview and Jordan declined. Later, a Bulls’ public-relations official said, “When MJ comes in the building, he’s on the clock. When he leaves, he’s off it.”

“In effect,” Warmoth said, “Michael said to me, ‘You’re late, and that’s not professional. ’”

Respect builds trust. Trust builds loyalty.

“Michael Jordan could have circumvented the rules of life because of his talent,” said
Sports Illustrated
photographer Walter Iooss. “But when he made a commitment to do something, he always followed through.”

He expected the same from his teammates. They had to earn his trust. Once they’d come through, he’d do anything for them.

“One year Michael won the slam-dunk contest and got a check for twelve thousand dollars,” said his former teammate, Elston Turner. “Next day, I walked into the training room and there was Michael, sitting at a table, writing each of us a personal check for one thousand dollars.”

He promised a championship ring to Bobby Hansen, the twelfth man on the Bulls roster in 1992. Hansen came to the Bulls in a trade with Sacramento. the first time Jordan saw him, he looked at his shoes.

“You can’t wear those,” Jordan said.

The next day, there were a dozen pairs of Nikes waiting in Hansen’s locker.

“My first game was at Boston,” Hansen said. “When I got in, MJ penetrated and kicked the ball out to me. I was wide open and Michael gave me that look, like ‘You’d better not miss this. ’ I hit the shot. He was the happiest guy in the building.”

Hansen didn’t see much playing time, but every time Jordan saw he was down, he’d walk over to him and say, “You hang in there. We’ll get you a ring.”

And they did. The Bulls beat Portland in the NBA Finals in 1992. The subs—Hansen among them—helped rally the Bulls from a fifteen-point fourth-quarter deficit in the last game. When it was over, Hansen chased down the game ball. He brought it to Jordan and said, “Do you want this?”

Jordan took it. It was a small token, a gesture of trust between teammates, between friends.

It’s That Simple

L
oyalty means not that I agree with everything you say, or that I believe you are always right. Loyalty means that I share a common ideal with you and, regardless of minor differences, we strive for it, shoulder to shoulder, confident in one another’s good faith, trust, constancy and affection.

—Dr. Karl Menninger

It is important to emphasize the rarity of the relationship between Jordan and Phil Jackson. When the Bulls signed Jackson to a one-year contract extension in 1997 after Jordan declared that he would not come back if Jackson did not come back, it defied every norm in a league in which the players dictate so much, in which it is not uncommon for players to form a mutiny to get rid of their coach.

As the lines of tension between Bulls players and coaches and management grew taut, here was Jordan, the preeminent athlete of his time, taking a stand for his coach. Declaring, “I won’t play. I’ll retire. It is that simple. I won’t play for another coach. I will totally retire. That clears up every question. If management is saying that Phil is out, then this is my last year.”

When I was with the Spurs one night in Chicago, I was lighting up on Ron Harper pretty good. Harper couldn’t check me, so he started trashing me, trying to throw me off my game. I went back at him, too. Later, at the other end, MJ walked past me and slugged me right in the stomach. I mean, he really popped me. He was saying, in effect, “Don’t mess with my teammates. You mess with them, you deal with me, too.”

—MontyWilliams
NBA
PLAYER

Say what you will about the egos involved, about the politics involved, about the intricacies of heated negotiations and contract talks between Jackson and Bulls general manager Jerry Krause and owner Jerry Reinsdorf. Jordan’s defiance stood for something more relevant than numbers; it was based on a sense of loyalty rooted in his childhood, a feeling toward his parents that led him to look in the stands before every game and locate where they were sitting.

“I’m a very loyal guy in a sense,” Jordan said. “I go to battle with very few people and I can’t see going into the trenches with someone who I haven’t gone through the whole process with.”

When we are debating an issue, loyalty means giving me your honest opinion, whether you think I’ll like it or not. Disagreement, at this stage, stimulates me. But once a decision has been made, the debate ends. From that point on, loyalty means executing the decision as if it were your own.

—General Colin Powell

Michael didn’t forget people. He didn’t lose his allegiances. He didn’t have to, but he took a stand for the players’ side during the NBA lockout. When he saw a few of his Barons teammates two years after they’d played together, on his way to the Bulls’ team bus after a game, he recognized them immediately. He asked about their families. He spent five minutes reminiscing with them. “Michael was so loyal,” said Chris Collins, the son of Jordan’s ex-coach, Doug Collins. “The day I signed to play college basketball at Duke (the archrival of Jordan’s alma mater, North Carolina), he gave me a big punch in the chest and said, ‘Now that you’re a rookie, I can’t talk to you anymore. ’ He was kidding, but he loved Carolina.”

“When Michael’s your friend, he’s your friend,” said major-league baseball player B. J. Surhoff. “He’s loyal beyond loyal.”

He still treats his college coach, Dean Smith, with the same reverence. Twenty years after Roy Williams first recruited him at North Carolina, Jordan still calls Williams “coach.” When one of his childhood heroes, David Thompson, would do pregame clinics for the Charlotte Hornets, Jordan would tell the kids, “David Thompson was the one I looked up to when I was your age.”

“I’m like a big brother to Michael,” said NBA Hall-of-Famer Julius Erving. “He treats all of us older guys with respect. He’s never forgotten that we’d paved the way for his generation.”

In my mind, loyalty is the greatest virtue. It’s the emotional glue that keeps organizations from crumbling; that keeps employees on board during tough times; that keeps customers on your side when competitors try to lure them away. It’s a virtue that reveals itself in small ways more often than it does in grand dramatic gestures.

—Mark McCormack
SPORTS EXECUTIVE

So here, then, is a more rounded portrait of the man. He could be stubborn and he could be forceful, but beneath the layers of fame and competitiveness and determination, there was humanity and there was dignity. If there wasn’t, this whole thingwouldn’t have worked. Jordan would have stumbled, would have been tripped up by the magnitude of his own fame. “Take away all of Michael Jordan’s glitz and glamour,” said Bob Costas, “and you’ll find that he is 100 percent genuine like no other athlete who has ever played any sport.”

Respect builds trust. Trust builds loyalty.

Michael understood the equation, that the sum of the equation was what yielded his own brand of social genius. He will be remembered most prominently for the grand brush strokes of a master on the basketball court. But it is in small ways, in moments of genuine compassion, of whimsy, of kindness, in moments between man and child, between man and man, that his legacy will continue to expand.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

THE RIGHT
CALL

JORDAN ON CHARACTER:

Y
ou find there is only one person who can define success in your life—and that’s you.

C
haracter is not something you have; it is something that shows itself in what you do.

—Jim Henry
pastor and author

A
nd so all that Michael Jordan has been taught, and all that Michael Jordan can teach us, can be brought together in a A single reflection of his character during a parking lot encounter on the campus of the University of North Carolina. One afternoon, long after he had become a star, Jordan was driving his Mercedes through the North Carolina campus, on his way to watch an exhibition basketball game. And the spots in the parking lot were full.

“Park over there,” said Jordan’s friend Fred Whitfield, who was in the car with him. He pointed to a handicapped space.

“No way,” Jordan said.

He gave two reasons why he wouldn’t. First, he said someone might need it. Second, Coach Smith would kill him if he found out.

“I wouldn’t be able to face him,” Jordan said.

This book offers a great many positive stories about Michael Jordan. But let’s make this clear: We are not proposing that Michael Jordan is without flaw, or that he is immune to failure. We are not saying that his every action is to be emulated, or that he should be deified in the way that America so often treats its heroes.

All we are saying is that Michael Jordan is a man who, despite those flaws, despite those failures, has earned his reputation. He’s a man who, in the face of extreme scrutiny, has formed a distinct character that is worth preserving. It is the product of upbringing, of Jordan’s parents, of his coaches, of the decisions he made to listen to and emulate those who came before him—those who set the type of example that breeds character. In turn, Jordan himself became a model. “He set the standard for superstar conduct, period,” wrote Rick Telander in
ESPN
magazine.

Cotton Fitzsimmons, the veteran NBA coach, once had breakfast with Jordan’s parents, and at one point Fitzsimmons said to Jordan’s mother, Deloris, “I hope he never changes.”

“As long as I am breathing,” Deloris Jordan replied, “he will not change.”

Bucky Waters, former college coach recalls a conversation he had with Deloris.

“Michael’s mother once told me that the summer he was twelve she said, ‘Michael, we’re packing a lunch every day and you’re going to the Y to play in their basketball program. ’ Michael protested vehemently and said, ‘Mother, I’m a baseball player. That’s my sport. I’m no good at basketball. ’ She said, ‘Well, this summer you’re a basketball player because you’re not going to be roaming around the city getting in to trouble. ’ ‘Four years later, ’ Deloris said, ‘we were getting calls from Dean Smith and others. We had no idea that this was going to happen with Michael. How could we have ever seen it coming?’”

Make your commitments to enduring values and institutions—honesty, integrity, trust, confidence, family and other matters of the heart. Go ahead and challenge the status quo, but you must also decide what lasts, what really counts, what no one can take away from you. These are your values, and they will accompany you wherever you work and wherever you live.

—Jack Rehm
AUTHOR

“Michael’s dad had the same temperament as Michael,” said sports scientist Jonathan Neidnagel. “They were both highly reflective and intense men. They had all this stored-up energy that they saved to use on their passions. That’s why they were so competitive. They were here-and-now guys, not big-picture people. Michael’s mother was totally opposite. She was more outgoing and communicative, more creative and more structured—very personable, very gracious. Michael had the ideal blending of his parents’ characteristics. It was a perfect human design.”

“I concentrated on teaching him values—the values any family would teach their kid,” said Jordan’s late father, James. “Michael was a good learner. We tried to teach him to be himself. Always like people. Never put yourself above anybody, but never put yourself below anybody. Always look at people eye to eye.”

Values inform our conscience which influences our behavior. Our behaviors determine the quality of our lives and the meaningfulness of our personal contribution to others, to life and to history.