ELEVEN RINGS Part 16

I was worried that they might get drunk on winning and run out of steam before we reached the playoffs. I considered slowing down the pace, but nothing seemed to stop this juggernaut. Not even injuries. Rodman injured his calf early in the season and was out for twelve games. During that time we were 10-2. Then in March Scottie missed five games with an injury, while Dennis reverted to his old ways and got suspended for six games for head-b.u.t.ting a ref and defaming the commissioner and head of officials. Still, we lost only one game during that period.

As we approached the seventy-game mark, the media hype was out of control. ABC News reporter Chris Wallace dubbed the team "the Beatles of basketball" and designated Michael, Scottie, Dennis, and me as the new Fab Four. The day of the big game-against the Bucks-TV helicopters shadowed our team bus all the way to Milwaukee, with crowds ma.s.sed at the overpa.s.ses on the interstate holding up signs of support. When we arrived at the Bucks' stadium, a crush of fans was gathered outside hoping to get a peek at Rodman's hair.

Naturally, we had to make the game dramatic. We were so wound up by the time the game started that we fell apart in the second quarter, hitting only 5 of 21 from the field for 12 points. But then we slowly clawed our way back in the second half and won in the final seconds, 8680.

The main emotion we felt was relief. "It was a very ugly game, but sometimes ugly is beautiful," said Michael. But his mind was already on the future. "We didn't start out the season to win 70 games,'" he added. "We started out the season to win the champions.h.i.+p and that's still our motivation."

We finished the season with two more wins, and Harper came up with a new Gershwinesque team slogan, "72 and 10 don't mean a thing without the ring." To inspire the players, I adapted a quote from Walt Whitman and taped it on their lockers before the first game of the playoffs, against the Miami Heat. "Henceforth we seek not good fortune, we are ourselves good fortune." Everyone expected us to dance our way to the champions.h.i.+p, and those are always the hardest kinds of games to win. I wanted the players to know that despite our remarkable season, the rest of the way wasn't going to be easy. They would have to make their own luck.

And they did. We swept Miami and rolled over New York in five games. Next up was Orlando. To prep the players for the series, I spliced a few clips from Pulp Fiction into the game tapes. The players' favorite scene showed a seasoned criminal, played by Harvey Keitel, instructing two hit men (Samuel L. Jackson and John Travolta) on how to clean up a particularly gruesome murder scene. Midway through the proceedings he quips, "Let's not start sucking each other's d.i.c.ks quite yet."

Ever since we were humiliated by the Magic in the 1995 playoffs, we had set our sights on a rematch. In fact, we had rebuilt the team primarily with Orlando in mind. But the first game was anticlimactic. Our defense was just too overpowering. Dennis held Horace Grant to no points and 1 rebound in the first part of the game. Then Horace hyperextended his elbow in a collision with Shaq and was out for the rest of the series. We also shut down two other players who had hurt us badly the year before: Dennis Scott (0 points) and Nick Anderson (2). We ended up winning 12183.

The Magic rebounded in game 2, but we broke their spirit when we erased an 18-point deficit in the third period and went on to win. They were also crippled by injuries to Anderson (wrist), Brian Shaw (neck), and Jon Koncak (knee). The only Magic players who posed any kind of scoring threat were Shaquille O'Neal and Penny Hardaway, but that wasn't enough. The series ended, appropriately, with a 45-point scoring blitz by Michael in game 4 on the way to four-game sweep.

The odds against our next rival, the Seattle SuperSonics, winning the champions.h.i.+p finals were nine to one. But they were a young, talented team that had won sixty-four games that season and could give us trouble with their out-of-the-box pressure defense. The key was to stop their stars, point guard Gary Payton and power forward Shawn Kemp, from building up momentum and outrunning us. I decided to put Longley on Kemp to capitalize on Luc's size and strength, and I gave Harper the a.s.signment of covering Payton.

At first it looked as if the series might be over early. We won the first two games in Chicago, buoyed by our defense and Rodman's 20 rebounds in game 2, during which he also tied an NBA finals record with 11 offensive boards. But Harper reinjured his knee that night and had to sit out most of the next three games. Luckily, the Sonics made a tactical error after game 2, flying back to Seattle Friday night after the game rather than waiting, as we did, until Sat.u.r.day morning to take a more leisurely flight. The Sonics still looked bleary-eyed on Sunday afternoon, and we were able to put them away 10886.

At that point the debate over whether the Bulls were the greatest team ever became pretty intense. I ignored most of the chatter, but I was pleased when former Portland Trail Blazers coach Jack Ramsay said the Bulls had the kind of defense that "defies a period of time." In my view, the team the Bulls most closely resembled was the 197273 New York Knicks. Like the Bulls, that Knicks team was made up largely of newcomers. The players were very professional and liked playing together, but they didn't spend a lot of time together off the court. I told the Bulls early in the year that as long as they kept their professional lives together, it didn't matter to me what they did with the rest of their time. These players weren't that close, but they weren't that distant either. Most important, they had a deep respect for one another.

Unfortunately the basketball G.o.ds weren't cooperating. With Harper injured, it was harder for us to contain the Sonics' attack, and we lost the next two games. Still leading the series, 32, we returned to Chicago determined to close out the finals in game 6. The game was scheduled for Father's Day, which was an emotional time for Michael, and his offensive game suffered as a result. But our defense was insurmountable. Harper returned for the game and closed down Payton, and Michael did a brilliant job of holding Hersey Hawkins to a mere 4 points. The player who stole the game, however, was Dennis, with 19 rebounds and a lot of key put-backs on missed shots. At one point late in the fourth quarter, Dennis fed Michael for a backdoor cut that put the Bulls up 6447 with 6:40 left. After the shot, Michael observed Dennis skipping downcourt, and they both erupted with laughter.

When the buzzer sounded, Michael gave Scottie and me a quick hug, darted to center court to grab the ball, then retreated to the locker room to get away from the TV cameras. When I got there, he was curled up on the floor hugging the ball to his chest, tears streaming down his face.

Michael dedicated the game to his father. "This is probably the hardest time for me to play the game of basketball," he said. "I had a lot of things on my heart, on my mind... . And maybe my heart wasn't geared to where it was. But I think deep down inside, it was geared to what was most important to me, which was my family and my father not being here to see this. I'm just happy that the team kind of pulled me through it because it was a tough time for me."

That was a poignant moment. But when I look back on that season, it's not the finale that stands out in my mind. It's a game we lost to the Nuggets in February that ended our eighteen-game winning streak. They call that kind of game a "bookie's dream" because we had flown to Denver from L.A. the day before and hadn't had time to adjust to the alt.i.tude change.

The Nuggets were a sub-.500 team, but they shot 68 percent in the first quarter and built up a surprising 31-point lead. Many teams would have rolled over at that point, but we refused to surrender. We did everything: We went big, we went small, we moved the ball, we shot threes, we sped up the tempo, we slowed it down, and midway through the fourth quarter we went ahead on a pirouetting breakaway dunk by Scottie Pippen. Michael led the comeback, scoring 22 points in the third quarter, but this wasn't a one-man show. It was an inspiring act of perseverance by everyone on the team. And even though we lost in the closing seconds, 10599, the players walked away feeling they had learned something important about themselves. They learned that, no matter how dire the situation, they would find the courage somehow to battle to the very end.

That night the Bulls found their heart.

CHAPTER 12

AS THE WORM TURNS

To dare is to lose one's footing momentarily. Not to dare is to lose oneself.

SREN KIERKEGAARD

Zen teacher Lewis Richmond tells the story of hearing Shunryu Suzuki sum up Buddhism in two words. Suzuki had just finished giving a talk to a group of Zen students when someone in the audience said, "You've been talking about Buddhism for nearly an hour, and I haven't been able to understand a thing you said. Could you say one thing about Buddhism I can understand?"

After the laughter died down, Suzuki replied calmly, "Everything changes."

Those words, Suzuki said, contain the basic truth of existence: Everything is always in flux. Until you accept this, you won't be able to find true equanimity. But to do that means accepting life as it is, not just what you consider the "good parts." "That things change is the reason why you suffer in this world and become discouraged," Suzuki-ros.h.i.+ writes in Not Always So: Practicing the True Spirit of Zen. "[But] when you change your understanding and your way of living, then you can completely enjoy your new life in each moment. The evanescence of things is the reason you enjoy your life."

Nowhere is this truer than in the game of basketball. Part of me longed for the great ride we had in 199596 never to end, but even before the next season started, I could sense change in the air. Little did I know that the next two seasons would provide me with some tough lessons on dealing with impermanence.

The summer of '96 was a period of great upheaval in the NBA-the sports equivalent of musical chairs. Close to two hundred players switched teams as a result of a free-agency boom that year. Fortunately, Jerry Reinsdorf opted to keep the Bulls roster virtually intact so that we could make another run for a champions.h.i.+p. The only players we lost were center James Edwards, who was replaced by Robert Parish, and journeyman Jack Haley, a friend of Rodman's from the Spurs whose primary job was being Dennis's minder.

The price tag for keeping the team together wasn't cheap: The Bulls payroll that year was $58 million plus, the highest ever in the NBA. The biggest line item, of course, was Michael Jordan's salary of $30 million. In 1988 Michael had signed an eight-year, $25 million deal with the Bulls that seemed like a big paycheck at the time but had long since been surpa.s.sed by several lower-level stars. Jordan's agent had proposed a two-year, $50 million deal to Reinsdorf, but Jerry opted for a one-year deal instead and soon regretted it. The next year he would have to up Jordan's salary to $33 million. Reinsdorf also worked out one-year deals with me and Dennis Rodman.

One of the biggest changes I noticed was a s.h.i.+ft in Dennis's level of interest in the game. During his first year with us he was driven to prove-to himself and others-that he could still play great basketball without losing control of his emotions. But now he seemed bored with the game and drawn to other amus.e.m.e.nts. In my amateur opinion, Dennis was suffering from attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, or ADHD, a condition that limited his ability to concentrate and caused him to get frustrated and act out in unpredictable ways. That's why he was so enchanted with Las Vegas, haven of endless distractions.

Now that Dennis had become a national star, the media world was offering him all sorts of opportunities that threatened to divert his attention away from the game even further. In addition to endors.e.m.e.nt deals and club appearances, he was costarring in the movie Double Team with Jean-Claude Van Damme and hosting a reality show on MTV called The Rodman World Tour. The event that garnered the most publicity, though, was the book tour for his best seller Bad as I Wanna Be, for which he appeared in a wedding dress and announced that he was marrying himself.

Another change that would eventually have a significant impact was the advancing age of our lineup. Rodman was thirty-five; Michael would be turning thirty-four in February 1997; and Scottie and Harper were in their early thirties. In general, the team was in excellent condition and played much younger than its years, but injuries were beginning to slow us down. Both Luc and Harp were recovering from off-season surgeries. And Scottie, who had played for Dream Team III in Atlanta during the 1996 summer off-season, was suffering from a sore ankle. I couldn't think of any top guards who'd done well in the NBA after age thirty-four. When would time run out for Michael Jordan?

Still, I was grateful that we hadn't been decimated by free agency like so many other teams. We could build on what we'd already achieved and deepen our relations.h.i.+ps with one another. I told the team that this might be our last run together, so we should make it something special. Michael had a similar point of view. When reporters asked him what he thought the impact of all the one-year contracts might be, he sounded like a Zen monk: "I think what we're showing is that we're going to play for the moment... . We're going to come out here and play each and every game like it's our last."

It certainly looked that way in the opening weeks. We had our best start ever: 12-0, including a 32-point blowout against the Miami Heat. But Dennis seemed detached, even bored in some of the games. And soon he started acting out, challenging refs and making inflammatory remarks about them to the media. In December we suspended him for two days for his offensive comments about NBA commissioner David Stern and other league officials. Dennis's erratic behavior and his disappointing performance were especially troubling because we were already missing center Luc Longley, who had injured his shoulder while bodysurfing in California. We'd arrived in L.A. on a Sat.u.r.day for a Sunday-night special at the Forum. Sunday afternoon I got a call from Luc: "Coach, I screwed up. A rogue wave caught me while bodysurfing and I separated my left shoulder. Sorry, mate." I gave him a pa.s.s and told him to get the medical attention he needed. We'd cover for him while he mended.

Things went from troublesome to worse. During a game in Minneapolis in January, Dennis was struggling for a rebound with the Timberwolves' Kevin Garnett when he collided with a courtside photographer and ended up kicking him in the groin. The NBA suspended him for eleven games, which cost him more than $1 million in lost income and fines. By the time he returned, Michael and Scottie had lost patience with him. "All I know is that Dennis doesn't give a d.a.m.n about most things," said Scottie. "I'm not sure he's capable of learning any lessons from his suspensions. I don't expect him ever to change because if he did, he wouldn't be the Worm, the personality he has invented for himself."

The Bulls went 9-2 with Rodman out, and the players were adjusting to the idea of going for the champions.h.i.+p without him. "We can be better with Dennis, we know that," Michael said. "But we can survive without Dennis, we know that, too. Our will to win is just as great without Dennis." When asked what advice he'd give Rodman on his return, Michael said, "I'd tell him to wear pants all the time."

Most of the players liked Dennis because he was our court jester. In Native American culture he would be known as a heyoka, which means "backward-walking man." Heyokas-also called tricksters-not only walked backward but also rode backward, wore women's clothes, and made people laugh. Dennis had a way of making everybody lighten up when things were tense. How could you get down on yourself when there's this crazy guy on the team who had dyed his hair with a big yellow happy face?

But Dennis also had a dark side. Once when he didn't show up for practice, I went to his house to see how he was doing. When I arrived, he was splayed out on his bed-nothing but a mattress on the floor-in a daze, watching videos. He'd gone on a bender the night before and was almost incoherent. I decided I needed to stay in much closer touch with him than I'd done in the past, especially since we'd let go of Jack Haley, who used to keep tabs on him between games. I suggested to Dennis that he start working with the team's psychologist, and he agreed to give it a try. But he refused to go to the man's office, so they held their first session in a shopping mall.

Other coaches had treated Dennis as if he were a child and tried to force him to submit to their will with rigid discipline. But that tactic had failed miserably. My approach was to relate to him as an adult and hold him accountable for his actions the same way I did everyone else on the team. He seemed to appreciate this. Once he told reporters that what he liked about me was that I treated him "like a man."

Shortly after Dennis returned from his third suspension of the season, Steve Kerr and Jud Buechler came to me and asked if the players could welcome Dennis back into the group with a special trip. Their idea was to borrow a bus the day after our game in Philadelphia on March 12 and return for a light practice the next day before our game that night with the New Jersey Nets. I agreed because I thought it would help weave Rodman back into the team faster-not to mention the fact that the Nets had the worst record in the league.

So the next day Dennis and his band of happy warriors set off in a bus they'd rented, which was plastered with promo photos for Howard Stern's movie Private Parts. The next morning I was eating breakfast with the coaching staff at the Four Seasons in Philly when the bus rolled up right in front of us and unloaded the players who were laughing, messing around, generally having a good time. I was thinking, This is going to be the worst practice we've ever had. I was right. The players were so out of it they could barely stand up, so I called off practice after forty minutes and told them to rest up for the game, which we lost, 9998. But in the end it was worth it. Making Dennis feel as if he were part of the team again was more important than another W in the record books.

After Dennis and Luc returned to the lineup, the Bulls roared back. Scottie was in his prime, orchestrating the action so well that Michael later dubbed him "my MVP." Michael was more relaxed and settling into a less energy-draining style of play, with more medium-range jumpers and less one-on-one aerial theatrics. But most of all the players had the look of champions. No matter what calamities befell them, they felt confident that they would find a way to deal with them together. There's a Zen saying I often cite that goes, "Before enlightenment, chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment, chop wood, carry water." The point: Stay focused on the task at hand rather than dwelling on the past or worrying about the future. This team was getting very good at doing that.

Unfortunately, the Rodman reprieve didn't last long. In late March he sprained his left knee and was sidelined until the end of the regular season. The team was headed for a big road trip to the East Coast at the time, and I was worried that if Dennis was left to do rehab on his own in Chicago, he might backslide again. So we devised a plan for him to stay at his agent's house in Southern California and finish rehab there.

It seemed like a reasonable idea. We a.s.signed Wally Blase, a young a.s.sistant trainer, to escort Dennis to his agent's house in Orange County and make sure he did his exercises every day. Before they took off, I called them both into my office and instructed them to go directly to California without any side trips. Then I gave Wally an eagle feather to seal the deal and told Dennis jokingly, "Take care of Wally and make sure he wears a condom."

"All right, bro," Dennis replied.

This was pre-9/11, and our security team figured out a way to get Dennis and Wally on the plane without going through the gate. So Wally's first inkling that this was not going to be a routine trip came when they were buckling up and the pilot announced that they would be landing in DallasFort Worth in two hours and twenty minutes. DallasFort Worth! Yikes! thought Wally. They hadn't even left Chicago and they'd already broken the first rule. Wally asked Dennis what was going on. "Don't worry about it, bro," he said. "I talked to my agent. We need to visit my mom in Dallas and take a look at the house I just bought her."

Rodman's plan sounded plausible. But when they arrived at the baggage terminal, two white stretch limos filled with scantily clad women were there to greet them. After visiting Mom, they cruised the Dallas clubs all night with the ladies, then returned to their hotel suite. Wally fell asleep on the couch.

The next morning Dennis woke Wally up at eight thirty. "Get up, bro," he said. "You can sleep when you're dead." They went to the gym, where Dennis worked out like crazy. Over breakfast Wally asked him when their flight left for California. "Not today, bro," Dennis replied. "Ever been to a NASCAR race?" It was the grand opening of the Texas Motor Speedway that day, and a top model Dennis had the hots for was going to be there. So they rented a helicopter and flew to the speedway to avoid traffic. When they landed, Dennis said, "Let's go meet the king, Richard Petty," and dragged Wally off to the VIP suite in the infield.