The Jordan Rules (45 page)

When the Bulls arrived at the arena Sunday afternoon for the 4:00
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. start of Game 4 (NBC was trying to get as many games of this glamorous matchup as it could into eastern prime time), Pippen dressed quickly and went out to shoot. It was his habit now to be the first on the court before games. But security guards had the court blocked. The Lakers were going through a full practice. It seemed an act of desperation to the coaching staff, and Bach recalled an NIT game in which Abe Lemons had his team scrimmage at halftime after a poor opening half. Jackson remembered Hubie Brown in New York putting his team through similar rigors.

Pippen scored first for the Bulls, then Paxson hit a jumper and a three-point field goal, and then Cartwright hit two jumpers on the way to a team-high 9 points in the first quarter. The Lakers would storm the boards for 7 offensive rebounds in the quarter, but the balanced Bulls attack kept them within 1, 28–27, after one quarter. The Lakers, it would turn out, had taken their best shot.

Johnson took a rest early in the second quarter and the Lakers never recovered. They shot just 25 percent in the period and scored 16 points. Worthy was now in severe pain and would play just one more quarter in the series. Hodges came in and knocked in a pair of jumpers and Scott Williams hit a bank shot as the bench erupted in high fives. But Williams was mostly there to help bother Perkins, who would finish with an ignominious 1 for 15 as the Bulls played to his left hand and he missed shot after shot. It would be a moment of personal glory for Williams in the shadow of his own personal horror; the house where his father had shot his mother and then killed himself was just a few miles from the Forum. (Williams would occasionally go out onto his balcony at the Ritz and look toward the house, but he didn't want to go back there, and he refused to speak about his old neighborhood.)

Jordan scored 11 points while Levingston added 5 rebounds as the Bulls went to halftime leading 52–44. The Lakers had to win or face going down 3–1, a hole from which no NBA team had ever climbed—a ditch, Dunleavy would call it later—to win a Finals. And they were starting to lose sight of the light at the top.

Jordan sensed the third quarter was the time for the Bulls to jump on the Lakers. He saw that Johnson was particularly animated as he led the Lakers out of their locker room. When the Bulls' starters gathered in a circle for the start of the second half, Jordan said, “Magic's disgusted with them. Let's go!”

Jordan was right. Johnson cajoled and pleaded throughout the third quarter for his team to get something going. But the Bulls hit their first 5 shots to take a 14-point lead. “C'mon,” Johnson yelled, “doesn't anybody want to play?”

“We've got 'em,” Jordan thought.

The Bulls' defense was now suffocating the Lakers. They scored just 14 points in the third quarter and left the court to boos, trailing by 16, their one-time express train stuck in the yards, their players wearing the expressions of bored commuters.

The Lakers opened the fourth quarter with 7 straight points, but Perkins then missed a pair of jumpers, one a three-pointer after a Bulls turnover, and the Lakers would never recover. Hodges drove and put in a wild leaner and Jordan hit a jumper to get the Bulls back up by 13. And then Paxson thwarted every other Lakers hope: He hit a twenty-one-footer on a pass from Pippen after the Lakers scored 5 straight pints to energize the crowd, and then a twenty-footer after Divac drove and put in his own miss. With the Bulls ahead 91–79 with two minutes left, Jordan blocked a Perkins shot and then leaped into the second row to try to save the ball. An unnecessary move, though one with a message: We'll even outhustle you, baby. The Bulls won going away, 97–82.

The team of the eighties, the kings of the fast break and the Magic show, had been buried. The Forum was deathly quiet. There was something great happening, but there would be no applause. The Lakers' 82 points were a Finals low for them since the NBA adopted the twenty-four-second clock in 1954. They were the fewest points a team had scored in any Finals game in a decade. They were the fewest points the Lakers had scored in a playoff game in three years. The Bulls were now holding their playoff opponents to 91.6 points per game, an all-time low. Every Bulls starter had taken at least 10 shots, led by Jordan's 20. And Jordan had 13 assists, so not only was he leading everyone in scoring but he had as many assists as Magic Johnson. Jordan was especially enjoying that, even if Johnson would eventually nose him out in assists after Game 5.

It was over and everyone knew it, and Craig Hodges braced himself for the coming charge. It had almost become a ritual now, and, in fact, the players had started to feel sorry for Hodges: Early in the playoffs, Krause had been going around the locker room yelling, “Fifteen, fifteen,” for that was the number of games a team had to win to be champions. No one paid much attention, but the likable Hodges played along, and when Krause would come into the locker room after wins, Hodges would yell “Thirteen” or “Twelve” or “Ten,” as the countdown kept going. Krause liked that and was now running into the locker room and charging Hodges like a wild rhino.

“Hoooodddddgggyyy,” he would wail. “Twoooooo.”

“He's comin', Hodg, he's comin',” Armstrong began yelling.

“Look out, Hodg,” Grant was squealing. “Here he comes.”

The door burst open and Krause was there, yelling: “Hooooodddddggggg.” And now he was charging the naked Hodges.

King was making squealing sounds like a pig.

“Oonnnnnneee, Hooooodddggg, oooonnnneeee,” Krause yelled on the run.

The antics continued on the bus back to the hotel.

“Hey, P.J.,” Jordan yelled mockingly from the back. “I ain't goin' to no White House. I didn't vote for that guy. I know you didn't vote for him.”

Jackson said he hadn't voted for George Bush either, for Jackson said he wasn't really a member of any organized political party—he was a Democrat.

“Well, you won't go either, right, P.J.?” Jordan yelled. “You'll join me. We ain't going to no White House.”

“Tex, this is gonna be trouble,” Perdue was adding to the chorus. “You're gonna have to write another book. Everyone's gonna want the triangle.”

That night, Mike Dunleavy went to a favorite restaurant with his wife. Just moments before he walked in, Jackson and his wife walked in and were being seated. As Jackson moved to his seat, a big round of applause grew. Jackson looked around and began to nod when he noticed Dunleavy. The applause was for the Lakers coach. The Bulls weren't the heroes quite yet.

The scene reminded Jackson of a story he'd heard about football coach Don Shula of the Miami Dolphins. Shula vacationed at a remote retreat in Maine where he was sure he was unknown. One night, though, he walked into a movie and the nine people spaced out around the theater began applauding loudly. Shula was shocked and a little embarrassed. Could his fame have extended this far? He sat down and leaned over to a man sitting a few seats away and said, “I didn't think they knew me here.”

“Hell,” the man shot back, “I don't know who you are. But the guy said he wouldn't start the movie until he had ten people in the theater.”

Jackson stopped by and chatted with Dunleavy briefly and then the two couples ate dinner across the restaurant from each other.

The next game would be on Wednesday, so the players had some time on their hands. Pippen went to do that appearance with Arsenio Hall and several players went to a James Brown concert. Jordan played golf when Jackson gave the team Monday off after a brief stop to meet the media in the morning.

On Tuesday morning, a weary Jordan, wearing sunglasses, was last to step onto the bus for the trip to practice. He climbed to the top step. “Good morning, world champions,” he said.

Jackson tried to curtail the celebration. He showed tapes of Games 3 and 4, and pointed out that in Game 3 the Bulls were a Jordan shot away from losing and in Game 4 the Lakers had so many open shots that they just missed. The Bulls could easily be down 3–1, he said. No one was buying it, but practice was as hard as it had been in months, with players banging one another harder than any had been hit in the Detroit series.

“Last practice for the season,” Jordan said. “Let's make it a good one.”

On the threshold of his own personal redemption—he would gain the Finals' Most Valuable Player award in a unanimous vote a few hours later—Jordan was as nervous as a kid facing his first day of school.

“I don't know what to do,” he confided as he sat in his locker stall just before the start of Game 5. “I'm nervous. Should I pass? Should I shoot? I really don't know what to do. We're right here and there's no guarantee we'll ever be back. Who knows what this organization will do? I know what they said, but they wanted to make a trade as bad as I did. They just couldn't do it. But we're here. And now what do I do?”

What Jordan did to start the game was throw the ball to Paxson, who hit a jumper. So did Pippen, and Paxson hit another jumper. But both Bulls stars were nervous. Pippen hit just 2 of 9 shots in the first half, but Grant and Cartwright got 5 rebounds each and the Bulls were hanging in.

The consensus in the press room was that it would be over within minutes, that this would be a dolorous day in L.A. Worthy and Scott were both out. The Lakers started Terry Teagle for Scott and A. C. Green for Worthy. But the damage was being done by rookies Elden Campbell and Tony Smith. The Bulls had worried about Smith; he had beaten them in that February game after Johnson was hurt by penetrating and beating Paxson to the basket. And with Johnson on the floor, Jordan couldn't help out. The Bulls were grateful the Lakers hadn't gone to him sooner and had wondered why not throughout the series. He would hit 5 of 6 shots in Game 5. And Campbell was taking quick passes from Johnson, who would finish with a gallant triple double, and slamming around the late-rotating Bulls.

The Bulls were in a fight, trailing 49–48 at halftime. Jackson instructed his team at halftime to play their defense and the shots would come. Pippen finally started to shake loose, both rebounding and getting to the basket on the way to a game-high 32 points, the first time in the playoffs that a Bull other than Jordan would lead the team in scoring. But the score was still 80–80 after three periods.

With Green and Campbell doing most of the scoring, the Lakers took a 91–90 lead with 6:47 left. Time-out Bulls. The Forum crowd, much maligned by the Bulls in comparison to their home Stadium crowd, was playfully impassioned. Not only weren't they leaving early, as was their reputation, but they were cheering through the time-out. They were all standing. Was this smug, cool L.A.?

Jordan had taken 5 of the Bulls' 8 shots of the quarter so far. He had 26 points, apparently on the way to 40—and a trip back to Chicago for Game 6.

Jackson huddled with the coaches near the free-throw line while the starters took seats, as was the custom in time-outs. Jordan usually liked to peer out into the crowd during time-outs, but for the most part in these playoffs Jordan had been attentive. Jackson liked the eye contact he was getting from Jordan, and on several occasions just nodded to him in an unspoken “Okay, take over.” But Jackson didn't like what he was seeing now. He decided to be sharp with Jordan.

He kneeled in the huddle and stared into Jordan's blazing eyes.

“M.J.,” he demanded, “who's open?”

Jordan looked at him and didn't answer.

“Who's open?” Jackson asked again.

“Paxson,” Jordan said.

“Okay, let's find him,” Jackson said.

He clapped his hands and the team went back onto the floor.

Campbell, on his way to 21 points, slammed off a pass from Johnson for a 93–90 Lakers lead. Pandemonium. The Lakers had decided they would not let another team celebrate in their living room. It was just a matter of pride, Johnson had said earlier.

But Jordan found Pippen circling on the outside and Pippen dropped in a three-pointer to tie the game at 93.

Jordan stole the ball from Johnson, but Paxson missed. Jordan then stole the ball from Smith, and Pippen missed. “What the hell's going on?” Jordan thought. Smith missed, and Divac then blocked Cartwright, but Cartwright recovered and passed to Pippen nineteen feet away. Good!

Perkins lined one off the front rim—he was becoming adept at this—and Jordan took the ball up and found Paxson in the left corner eighteen feet away. Good!

It was 97–93 Bulls with 3:24 left.

Perkins tried a three-pointer coming out of a time-out and missed. Pippen recovered for his game-high 13th rebound, and found Paxson dashing to the basket. Paxson laid the ball in for a 99–93 Bulls lead with 3:03 left. He would score half his 20 points in the final four minutes of the game.

By this time, Jerry Reinsdorf and Jerry Krause had been brought to a room opposite the Bulls' dressing room to await the final moments. Sitting there was NBA commissioner David Stern. The three would go right into the Bulls' locker room for the trophy presentation if the Bulls won. Krause was up, pacing. His face was turning deep red and his jowls were shaking. He was having trouble breathing. “Jerry, Jerry, are you okay?” said Reinsdorf.

Krause didn't answer.

“Hey, it's only a game,” Stern said.

“No it's not,” Krause spit out.

Perkins came back with a driving bank shot, but Jordan weaved through the Lakers for a lay-up and a 101–95 Bulls lead with 2:27 left. Perkins was fouled and converted one of two free throws, and then Jordan passed in to Cartwright, who found Paxson lurking at the top of the key. Good!

Perkins came back with a drive, Jordan traveled, and Perkins hit a runner and was fouled for a three-point play. The Lakers had drawn within 2, 103–101, with just over a minute left. There was a chance.

This was it, Jackson thought on the bench as he watched Jordan dribble toward the basket. Jordan went left and then turned back to his right, but he was going across court instead of to the basket. He was not looking to shoot, Jackson noticed.
He was looking for Paxson.
He wasn't looking to score.