The Jordan Rules (7 page)

One player Jordan did want on his team was Walter Davis, the high-scoring sixth man for Denver. Davis had been something of an idol for Jordan, who hadn't been very highly sought after in high school. The five-foot-ten-inch Jordan hadn't made the varsity at Laney High School in Wilmington, North Carolina, as a sophomore. He started to gain some recognition after his junior year at the meat-market summer camps where college coaches do their scouting. Jordan was interested in UCLA, but he didn't hear from the school. He thought about North Carolina State because of David Thompson, who was to kids then what Jordan is now: a high-flying basketball magician who could excite the crowd with his daring moves. But Jordan eventually decided on the University of North Carolina, whose symbol was Davis. Where Thompson represented the flamboyance of State, Davis's professionalism and cool demeanor reflected the integrity of UNC. Jordan spoke of Davis often when he first arrived in Chicago, although he stopped dropping his name after Davis's flings with cocaine. But one thing Jordan learned at North Carolina was loyalty. Coach Dean Smith always told his players to stand up for their own, and Jordan was always trying to get the Bulls to trade for someone from his alma mater.

Davis had kicked his habit and was staying out of trouble, which was vital to Jordan, for when he arrived in Chicago he found himself surrounded by very talented but very confused players. “I've always said, the best talent I ever played with was my first year with the Bulls,” Jordan noted. “But I call them ‘the Looney Tunes.' Physically, they were the best. Mentally, they weren't even close.” One of the reasons for this was made clear to Jordan when, as a rookie, he popped into a teammate's room and saw loads of white stuff that definitely wasn't baby powder. Two of his teammates, Quintin Dailey and Orlando Woolridge, would eventually go into drug rehabilitation, and others like Steve Johnson, Jawann Oldham, Sidney Green, and Ennis Whatley would fade into lesser roles. Actually, the dismantling of that team when Reinsdorf took over became general manager Krause's greatest achievement. He liked to call it “addition by subtraction” combined with the search for “OKPs” (our kind of people).

In the short run, Krause's strategy worked brilliantly. He traded Oldham to the Knicks for a first-round draft pick, which he later exchanged with Seattle for the pick that allowed him to select Scottie Pippen in the 1987 draft. That draft was, perhaps, Krause's greatest achievement in sports and the foundation for the Bulls' championship of 1991. Krause also traded Woolridge to the Nets for a first-round pick that he used to select Stacey King, who remained an uncut stone even as the Bulls pushed toward their title.

The title was Krause's goal, although few thought him capable of getting there. He really was just a scout, they'd say. He was a pretty good one, though. He'd grown up in Chicago and attended Bradley University in Peoria, where he liked to hang out with the athletes. He wasn't much of one himself, being roundish with narrow, distant brown eyes, so he became the manager for the basketball and baseball teams, charting plays and running errands. That willingness to do just about anything would mark Krause's climb up the ladder of sports management. He started hanging around with the baseball scouts who drove to the numerous semipro games around central Illinois in those days, and he eventually hooked on as a small-time scout. That led to a contract with Bob “Slick” Leonard, then playing with the old Chicago Packers. Leonard would become player-coach when the team moved to Baltimore, and he took the twenty-three-year-old Krause along as a sort of PR man and gofer. Krause scouted some for the Bullets; there are differences of opinion about whether he discovered Earl “the Pearl” Monroe, as he says he did. Krause eventually left to run a minor-league team in Oregon and then joined the Bulls in the late sixties. He was an exceptionally hard worker, almost single-minded in his pursuits and truly a believer in the notion that chance favors the prepared mind. His genius, if it would come, would be from the 99-percent-perspiration part. But his personal habits, like dressing in gravy-stained clothes and striving hard for a sense of humor, kept him from being accepted by the people he worked with. Krause would tell long stories of how various legends of the game had praised him for his work habits. He did work hard, but he could never understand that modesty is the only sure bait when you angle for praise. Krause also had an annoying habit of repeating his opinions. He'd scout a player and offer something like, “This kid can really get the ball. I mean, this kid can really get the ball. I mean really, this kid …” He drove Dick Motta nuts when Motta coached the Bulls, and that antipathy hurt the Bulls in 1990 when Motta was trying to trade Danny Ainge from Sacramento. Krause had some successes, like tabbing Cliff Ray in the third round of the NBA draft in 1971; Ray later ran into Krause and said, “Hey, aren't you the guy who was following me around campus?” Krause, one of the first in basketball to recognize the need to search for skeletons in players' closets, had been sneaking behind trees on the University of Oklahoma campus to watch whom Ray met with. But Krause had also touted Kennedy McIntosh as a first-round pick in 1971 and Jimmy Collins over Nate Archibald in 1970, and Motta lost faith in him. Krause moved on to Phoenix to scout for a while, returning to the Bulls as player personnel director only after Motta left.

Jordan didn't know anything about Krause when he joined the Bulls, but their relationship would sour quickly. Jordan was the one who nicknamed the GM “Crumbs” (“He always had doughnut crumbs on his lapel,” says Jordan), and by the 1990–91 season he was convinced that Krause was incapable of acquiring the kind of veteran talent Jordan felt was needed.

Jordan, who has been known to lead the team in mooing like a cow when Krause would appear in the locker room (others would hum the theme from “Green Acres”), lobbied extensively during the 1988–89 season for a trade that would bring New Jersey's Buck Williams to the Bulls. Jordan didn't particularly care for Horace Grant, Krause's other pick in the 1987 draft, never believing Grant would develop into a responsible player, and lobbied hard for Williams, who was represented by Jordan's agent, David Falk. But the Nets were still angry over the Woolridge deal; Woolridge had gone into drug rehabilitation and then left the team as a free agent after two seasons, so they weren't making it easy on the Bulls. Also, Krause has a deep reluctance to trade first-round picks, so Williams eventually went to Portland, and made it to the Finals before Jordan did, in 1990, when his team was beaten by Detroit in five games.

Jordan never cared for the Oakley-Cartwright trade—he never understood why a team would trade for a veteran like Cartwright and then the very next season go into the draft for three first-round picks (Chicago's own, the No. 6 pick from the Woolridge deal, and a No. 18 pick obtained in the Brad Sellers trade)—and he began to wonder more and more whether the Bulls were serious about winning or whether they merely wanted to keep the Stadium filled. He often believed they were content just to compete while he was at his peak, knowing that would be enough to draw the crowds, while they focused their efforts on building the winning team they'd need to keep attendance up in the years when his abilities would lessen or after he retired. Jordan understood, too, that a great effort was being made to shift some of the spotlight away from him and onto some of his teammates. “I know they're into this de-Michaelization,” he said during their 1989–90 season. “So I've just got to get mine now.”

Jordan had grown more and more resentful during the summer about his salary, even though it was easily the highest on the team. He knew that the Bulls, especially Krause, privately resented him because everyone credited the team's success to him rather than to good management and planning. Initially, the new organization focused its marketing on Jordan, selling Jordan as the Bulls. The campaign was a huge success. But now the marketing and basketball people, Jordan felt, were beginning to view him with jealousy. Jordan had heard about Krause bragging that he'd have two titles by now if the Bulls had Akeem Olajuwon instead of Jordan. And the marketing people had come to believe that their promotions, fancy light shows, and other gimmicks in the Stadium were as much responsible for a three-year run of sellouts as Jordan. So Jordan wasn't surprised when he saw a photo of Scottie Pippen on the team's pocket schedule for the 1989–90 season, the first time a player other than Jordan had been featured alone on a team publication during his time with the team. And now Jordan could see the plan for Yugoslavian superstar Toni Kukoc, whom the Bulls had drafted in hopes that he could be convinced to come to America. Already, he'd heard that the marketing staff was concentrating on endorsement opportunities for Kukoc; the Bulls had told Kukoc that even though they were offering him $1 million less than a team in Europe, he'd easily make that up in endorsement money. Jordan had become less and less cooperative with the team about promotions in recent years, so they decided to let him worry about himself; Kukoc would be “their” player.

Jordan's reservations about Kukoc weren't limited to marketing strategies. He would tell friends he didn't expect Kukoc to be a star in the NBA anyway. “Wait until he gets an elbow in the face from Laimbeer. He won't be going to the basket again. I know he looks good, but that's against college players. He has no idea what the NBA is all about.” And while the Bulls continued to pursue Kukoc, even Reinsdorf wondered what would occur when another player, one the Bulls would market as a future star, joined Jordan. “Does he want to share the spotlight?” Reinsdorf asked. “I wonder.”

One answer to that question was offered when Jordan refused Krause's requests to telephone Kukoc and urge him to come to America. “I don't speak no Yugoslavian,” Jordan told Krause with a mocking smile.

The biggest free-agent catch available over the summer was Sam Perkins, the Dallas forward from North Carolina. He seemed a perfect match for the Bulls. Jordan loved North Carolina players and Perkins, at 6-9 and 235 pounds, averaged about 15 points, could rebound some and was a good defensive player at both forward positions and even at center. But he'd already turned down $3 million from the Mavericks. Jordan had told the Bulls he doubted Perkins would leave Dallas because North Carolina players were drilled to be loyal. But the Bulls had other concerns. They were paying Jordan less than $3 million, and while they felt they could get away with Jordan being paid less than several other players around the league, they knew it would be intolerable for him to be the second-highest player on his own team.

“Falk [Jordan's agent] was getting ready to start knocking on the door,” acknowledged coach Phil Jackson.

Falk had pulled off what seemed like the deal of a generation when word leaked early in 1988 that Jordan would sign an eight-year, $25 million contract with the Bulls. It dwarfed other deals for superstars, but so did Jordan's popularity. Indiana general manager Donnie Walsh said, “We should all be chipping in to pay him. He does so much for the league.” Teams sold thousands of extra tickets whenever Jordan was in town, not to mention what he did for attendance in Chicago. The year before Jordan came, the Bulls' average attendance was 6,365. That grew to 11,887 in Jordan's first season, and to 17,794 by 1988. At the Bulls' average 1990 ticket price of about $25, it's easy to estimate Jordan's value to the Bulls at $5 million per year. And that's just in admissions.

When NBC outbid CBS for the NBA's TV rights starting in the 1990–91 season, it was a bonanza for the players. Under the players' basic agreement, players and owners had agreed to split league revenues, and the players' salaries were capped at a total of 53 percent of these revenues. With the new TV deal, revenues boomed and the amount of money available to players under the salary cap jumped way beyond any earlier expectations. By the start of the 1990–91 season, Jordan was only the seventh highest-paid player in the league (moving up to third highest for the 1991–92 season). And Reinsdorf had Jordan locked up for six more seasons in what now looked like a brilliant deal for the other side.

Reinsdorf knew Jordan wanted more money as others around him, like Cleveland's John (Hot Rod) Williams, signed huge contracts thanks to the expanded salary cap. Everywhere Jordan went were the signs that he was underpaid even at $3 million per year. Leafing through a preseason basketball publication, Jordan came across a picture of Williams and his children. Williams had on a Nike shirt and the kids were wearing Air Jordan sneakers. “He's making five million dollars,” Jordan would later note, “but he's got to pay me for the sneakers.”

While Reinsdorf was opposed to renegotiating earlier contracts, he recognized that Jordan was different—in fact, the eight-year deal had been a renegotiation of the seven-year, $6.3 million contract Jordan had signed when he first came into the league. Reinsdorf told Jordan after the 1989–90 season that he'd do something for him, even if Reinsdorf felt no personal urgency. There was talk about real estate partnerships and other equity deals, perhaps paying Jordan in cash up front for the season to give him quicker use of the money. Reinsdorf recognized what he had in Jordan; he'd often say Jordan was the Babe Ruth of basketball, that in generations to come people would talk about having seen him the way Reinsdorf's grandfather talked about having seen Ruth.

But Reinsdorf felt he had an ace in the hole against Jordan: “He's too worried about his image to complain about only making three million dollars,” Reinsdorf said.

If Jordan was a product of the American consumer society, with endorsement contracts from many of the most wholesome companies, he was also a prisoner of the image he'd created. He'd become the most visible spokesman for these products because of his unsullied image. He was handsome, with a quick, ingratiating smile. His name was never linked to scandal or even questionable habits, even though his first son was born out of wedlock.