ELEVEN RINGS Part 12

CHAPTER 9

BITTERSWEET VICTORY

Human beings are not born once and for all on the day their mothers give birth to them, but ... life obliges them over and over again to give birth to themselves.

GABRIEL GARCiA MaRQUEZ

That summer Michael and Scottie headed to Barcelona to play for the Dream Team. Jerry Krause was not pleased. He argued that they should skip the Olympics and rest up for the coming season. But they ignored his request, and I'm glad they did. An important s.h.i.+ft took place in Barcelona that would have an enormous impact on the future of the Bulls.

Michael returned from the games raving about Scottie's performance. Before the summer, Michael had regarded Pippen as the most talented member of his supporting cast. But after watching him outplay Magic Johnson, John Stockton, Clyde Drexler, and other future Hall of Famers in Barcelona, Michael realized that Scottie was the best all-around player on what many consider the best basketball team ever a.s.sembled. Scottie, Michael had to admit, had even outshone him in several of the games.

Scottie came back with renewed confidence and took on an even bigger role with the Bulls. NBA rules prevented us from adding a third cocaptain to the roster (in addition to Michael and Bill Cartwright), but we gave Scottie that role ex officio. We also made B.J. Armstrong a starter, since John Paxson was recovering from knee surgery and his playing time was limited.

In The Tao of Leaders.h.i.+p, John Heider stresses the importance of interfering as little as possible. "Rules reduce freedom and responsibility," he writes. "Enforcement of rules is coercive and manipulative, which diminishes spontaneity and absorbs group energy. The more coercive you are, the more resistant the group will become."

Heider, whose book is based on Lao-tzu's Tao Te Ching, suggests that leaders practice becoming more open. "The wise leader is of service: receptive, yielding, following. The group member's vibration dominates and leads, while the leader follows. But soon it is the member's consciousness which is transformed, the member's vibration which is resolved."

This is what I was trying to do with the Bulls. My goal was to act as instinctively as possible to allow the players to lead the team from within. I wanted them to be able to flow with the action, the way a tree bends in the wind. That's why I put so much emphasis on having tightly structured practices. I would a.s.sert myself forcefully in practice to imbue the players with a strong vision of where we needed to go and what we had to do to get there. But once the game began, I would slip into the background and let the players orchestrate the attack. Occasionally I would step in to make defensive adjustments or s.h.i.+ft players around if we needed a burst of energy. For the most part, though, I let the players take the lead.

To make this strategy work, I needed to develop a strong circle of team leaders who could transform that vision into reality. Structure is critical. On every successful team I've coached, most of the players had a clear idea of the role they were expected to play. When the pecking order is clear, it reduces the players' anxiety and stress. But if it's unclear and the top players are constantly vying for position, the center will not hold, no matter how talented the roster.

With the Bulls, we didn't have to worry about who the top dog was, as long as Michael was around. Once I forged a strong bond with Michael, the rest fell into place. Michael related strongly to the "social bull's-eye" I described earlier because he envisioned the leaders.h.i.+p structure as a series of concentric circles. "Phil was the centerpiece of the team, and I was an extension of that centerpiece," he says. "He relied on me to connect with all the different personalities on the team to make the team bond stronger. He and I had a great bond, so everything I did, Scottie did, and then it fell down the line. And that made the whole bond stronger so that nothing could break it. Nothing could get inside that circle."

Scottie was a different kind of leader. He was more easygoing than Michael. He'd listen patiently to his teammates vent, then try to do something about whatever was troubling them. "I think guys gravitated toward Scottie because he was more like us," says Steve Kerr. "Michael was such a dominant presence that, at times, he didn't appear human. Nothing could get to Michael. Scottie was more human, more vulnerable like us."

The 199293 season was a long winter of discontent. Cartwright and Paxson were recovering from off-season knee surgeries, and Scottie and Michael were bothered by overuse injuries. I'd promised the players the year before that if we won a second champions.h.i.+p we wouldn't have grueling two-a-day practices during training camp. Instead we held one long practice each day, interrupted by breaks to watch game videos. But that schedule didn't work out very well because the players stiffened up during the breaks.

Some coaches like to run long practices, particularly after they've suffered a hard loss. My college coach, Bill Fitch, was a cla.s.sic example. Once he got so exasperated with our lackadaisical performance at a game in Iowa, he made us practice when we got back to the UND campus, even though the plane didn't arrive until after 10:00 P.M. I don't believe in using practice to punish players. I like to make practices stimulating, fun, and, most of all, efficient. Coach Al McGuire once told me that his secret was not wasting anybody's time. "If you can't it get done in eight hours a day," he said, "it's not worth doing." That's been my philosophy ever since.

Much of my thinking on this subject was influenced by the work of Abraham Maslow, one of the founders of humanistic psychology who is best known for his theory of the hierarchy of needs. Maslow believed that the highest human need is to achieve "self-actualization," which he defined as "the full use and exploitation of one's talents, capacities and potentialities." The basic characteristics of self-actualizers, he discovered in his research, are spontaneity and naturalness, a greater acceptance of themselves and others, high levels of creativity, and a strong focus on problem solving rather than ego gratification.

To achieve self-actualization, he concluded, you first need to satisfy a series of more basic needs, each building upon the other to form what is commonly referred to as Maslow's pyramid. The bottom layer is made up of physiological urges (hunger, sleep, s.e.x); followed by safety concerns (stability, order); love (belonging); self-esteem (self-respect, recognition); and finally self-actualization. Maslow concluded that most people fail to reach self-actualization because they get stuck somewhere lower on the pyramid.

In his book The Farther Reaches of Human Nature, Maslow describes the key steps to attaining self-actualization:

experiencing life "vividly, selflessly, with full concentration and total absorption";

making choices from moment to moment that foster growth rather than fear;

becoming more attuned to your inner nature and acting in concert with who you are;

being honest with yourself and taking responsibility for what you say and do instead of playing games or posing;

identifying your ego defenses and finding the courage to give them up;

developing the ability to determine your own destiny and daring to be different and non-conformist;

creating an ongoing process for reaching your potential and doing the work needed to realize your vision.

fostering the conditions for having peak experiences, or what Maslow calls "moments of ecstasy" in which we think, act, and feel more clearly and are more loving and accepting of others.

When I first encountered Maslow's ideas in grad school, I found them extremely liberating. As an athlete I was familiar with peak experiences, but I'd never fully understood the complex psychology behind them. Maslow's work opened a door for me to think more expansively about life. I was particularly drawn to his insights about how to get out of your own way and let your true nature express itself. Later when I became a coach, I found that Maslow's approach of balancing physical, psychological, and spiritual needs provided me with a foundation for developing a new way of motivating young men.

Our biggest enemy during the 199293 season was boredom. Life in the NBA can be a stultifying, mind-numbing experience, particularly when you're on a long road trip and every minute of every day is scheduled. My goal was to get the players to break free from their confining basketball coc.o.o.n and explore the deeper, more spiritual aspects of life. By "spiritual" I don't mean "religious." I mean the act of self-discovery that happens when you step beyond your routine way of seeing the world. As Maslow puts it, "The great lesson from the true mystics ... [is] that the sacred is in the ordinary, that it is to be found in one's daily life, in one's neighbors, friends, and family, in one's backyard."

To make your work meaningful, you need to align it with your true nature. "Work is holy, sacred, and uplifting when it springs from who we are, when it bears a relations.h.i.+p to our unfolding journey," writes activist, teacher, and lay monk Wayne Teasdale in A Monk in the World. "For work to be sacred, it must be connected to our spiritual realization. Our work has to represent our pa.s.sion, our desire to contribute to our culture, especially to the development of others. By pa.s.sion I mean the talents we have to share with others, the talents that shape our destiny and allow us to be of real service to others in our community."

To tap into the sacred in work as well as in life, it's essential to create order out of chaos. Teasdale quotes Native American songwriter James Yellowbank, who says, "The task of life is to keep your world in order." And that takes discipline, a healthy balance between work and play, and nourishment of mind, body, and spirit within the context of community-values deeply rooted in my own being, as well as my objectives for the teams I've coached.

Getting the players to turn inward wasn't always easy. Not everyone on the Bulls was interested in "spiritual" realization. But I didn't hit them over the head with it. My approach was subtle. Every year the team went on a long West Coast road trip in November when the circus took over the stadium for a few weeks. Before the trip I would select a book for each of the players to read, based on what I knew about them. Here's a typical list: Song of Solomon (for Michael Jordan), Things Fall Apart (Bill Cartwright), Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (John Paxson), The Ways of White Folks (Scottie Pippen), Joshua: A Parable for Today (Horace Grant), Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind (B.J. Armstrong), Way of the Peaceful Warrior (Craig Hodges), On the Road (Will Perdue), and Beavis & b.u.t.t-Head: This Book Sucks (Stacey King).

Some players read every book I gave them; others dumped them in the trash. But I never expected everyone's 100 percent engagement. The message I wanted to convey was that I cared enough about them as individuals to spend time searching for a book that might have special meaning for them. Or at least make them laugh.

Another way I pushed the envelope was to have experts come in and teach the players yoga, tai chi, and other mind-body techniques. I also invited guest speakers-including a nutritionist, an undercover detective, and a prison warden-to show them new ways of thinking about difficult problems. Sometimes when we were traveling short distances-between Houston and San Antonio, for instance-we'd load everybody onto a bus to give them a chance to see what the world looked like beyond airport waiting rooms. Once, after a hard loss in a playoff series with the Knicks, I surprised everyone by taking the team on a ferry ride to Staten Island, rather than making them go through another round of enervating interviews with the New York media. On another occasion I arranged to have the team visit my former teammate, Senator Bill Bradley, in his Was.h.i.+ngton, D.C., office, where he gave us a talk about basketball, politics, and race. He'd just delivered a resounding speech on the Senate floor (shortly after Rodney King had been beaten by L.A. police officers) in which he banged a pencil against the mic fifty-six times for the number of hits that King had taken. On one wall in Bradley's office hung a photo of the jump shot he missed in game 7 of the 1971 Eastern Conference finals that effectively ended the Knicks' hope of repeating as champions that year. Bill kept it there as a reminder of his own fallibility.

All these activities made us stronger not just as individuals but also as a team. "One of the best things about our practices," says Steve Kerr, who joined the Bulls in 1993, "was that they delivered us from the mundane. In the NBA if you have a coach that says the same thing every day and the practices are the same too, it gets old fast. But our communal gatherings were really important. Our team bonded in ways that the other teams I've played for never did."

For Paxson, our adventures outside of basketball routines were transcendent. "It felt as if we were part of something really important," he says. "We felt like the good guys because we were trying to play the game the right way. It was as if we were part of something bigger than the game. And it was reinforced after we started to win, because the fans would let you know how important it was to them. I still have people come up and talk to me about where they were when we won our first champions.h.i.+p and why it was such a priceless moment for them. We were playing the game the right way, and that's what people long for."

"Transcendent" isn't exactly the word I would use to describe the Bulls as the playoffs began in late April. We had struggled all season, limping along without Cartwright and other players who were nursing injuries. Although we ended up winning the division, we finished with 57 wins, 10 fewer than the year before. What's more, we couldn't count on home-court advantage throughout the playoffs, as we had in the previous season.

As soon as the playoffs began, however, the players s.h.i.+fted to another level. At least, that's how it seemed as we swept both Atlanta and Cleveland in the first rounds. But then we ran into the Knicks in New York and lost two games straight. This time the aspiring king slayer was John Starks, a quick, hard-driving guard with a deadly three-point shot who was giving Jordan endless grief on defense. With forty-seven seconds left in game 2, Starks went airborne over Michael and Horace for an in-your-face dunk that put the Knicks up by five. Pat Riley called Starks's move "the exclamation mark."

When we returned to Chicago, I showed the players a video of the dunk and told Michael we needed to stop Starks from penetrating our defense and cut off his post pa.s.ses to Ewing. That got Michael's attention.

But Michael's challenges weren't restricted to the basketball court. That week New York Times columnist Dave Anderson revealed that Michael had been spotted gambling in Atlantic City on the day of game 2, and Anderson questioned whether his late-night field trip had hampered his performance. All of a sudden an army of reporters descended on our training facility, asking detailed questions about Michael's gambling habits, which he found offensive. He stopped talking to the media, and so did his teammates. I thought the story was ludicrous. "We don't need a curfew," I told reporters. "These are adults. You have to have other things in your life or the pressure becomes too great."

Unfortunately, the story wouldn't die. Soon afterward a book was published by businessman Richard Esquinas claiming that Michael owed him $1.25 million for gambling losses on golf. Michael denied that the losses were that big, and it was later reported that he'd agreed to pay Esquinas a $300,000 settlement. Other stories began to surface about Michael getting fleeced for large sums of money by shady golf hustlers. As the coverage escalated, Michael's father, James Jordan, came to his son's defense. "Michael doesn't have a gambling problem," he said. "He has a compet.i.tiveness problem."

Fortunately, none of these distractions affected the team's play. If anything, they helped to focus everyone's energy on the task at hand. Michael roared out in game 3, shutting down Starks and leading the Bulls to a decisive four-game sweep. "The big thing about this team is everyone in here has a burning desire to win," said Cartwright. "Everyone in here really hates to lose. That's the att.i.tude we take onto the court. We just hate to lose, and when you have guys like that, they'll do anything to win."

The next series-the champions.h.i.+p finals against Phoenix-was billed as a showdown between Michael and Charles Barkley, who had emerged as a superstar that year after winning the MVP award and piloting the Suns to a league-leading 62-20 record. I wasn't that concerned about Barkley because our players knew most of his moves from his days on the 76ers. A bigger threat, I thought, was point guard Kevin Johnson, who spearheaded their lightning-quick fast break, the key to their high-scoring offense. I was also concerned about guard-forward Dan Majerle and his maddening three-pointers.

Johnny Bach encouraged me to stay with our full-court defensive pressure to contain Johnson-using B.J., Pax, and Horace to trap him in the backcourt-and it helped us steal the first two games in Phoenix. But when we returned to Chicago, the Suns came back to life and won two of the next three games, including a triple-overtime marathon in game 3. But Michael was unflappable. As we boarded the plane for game 6, he showed up smoking a footlong cigar. "h.e.l.lo, world champs," he said. "Let's go to Phoenix and kick some a.s.s."