ELEVEN RINGS Part 6

The only team we worried about in 197273 was the Celtics, who had dominated the Eastern Conference with a 68-14 record. In the four years since Bill Russell's departure, GM Red Auerbach had re-created the team in the cla.s.sic Celtics tradition, with a strong, active center (Dave Cowens), a sly outside shooter (Jo Jo White), and one of the best all-around players in the game (John Havlicek).

Holzman wasn't a huge fan of Auerbach's because he used every trick he could to give his team an edge. Auerbach was a master of gamesmans.h.i.+p. One of his trademark ploys was to light a cigar when he thought his team had won the game, which infuriated his opponents, especially when the score was still close.

But Auerbach outdid himself in the 1973 playoffs, and it ultimately backfired on him. We met the Celtics in the Eastern Conference finals after beating Baltimore 41 in the first round. Boston had the home-court advantage in the series, and Auerbach took full advantage of it. Whenever we played in Boston, Auerbach made our lives miserable: He'd put us in locker rooms where the keys didn't work, the towels were missing, and the heat was set at over one hundred degrees and we couldn't open the windows. For this series, he put us in a different locker room for every game, and the last one-for game 7-was a cramped janitor's closet with no lockers and a ceiling so low many of us had to stoop to get dressed. Rather than demoralize us, as Auerbach no doubt expected, the locker-room gambit made us so angry it galvanized us even more.

No one had ever beaten the Celtics at home in a game 7 before, but we were still confident, because we had dominated Boston with our full-court press early in the series. The night before the big game, we were watching film of game 6 and noticed that Jo Jo White was killing us coming off high screens. Meminger, who was covering Jo Jo, started to get defensive, and Holzman snapped back. "I don't give a d.a.m.n about the screen," he said. "Find a way to get through the screen and stop this guy. Don't b.i.t.c.h about the screen, just get the job done."

The next day Dean was a man possessed. He went at Jo Jo early and shut him down, effectively short-circuiting the Celtics' offensive game plan. Then Dean came alive on the other end, breaking through the Celtics' press and igniting a decisive 3722 run in the second half. After that, Boston never recovered. The final score was Knicks 94, Celtics 78.

I've never seen Red Holzman happier than he was that night in the Boston janitor's closet. It meant a great deal to him to beat his nemesis, Auerbach, on his own turf. Beaming with joy, he came over to me and said with a wry smile, "You know, Phil, sometimes life is a mystery and you can't tell the difference between good and evil that clearly. But this is one of those times when good definitely triumphed over evil."

The champions.h.i.+p series against the Lakers was anticlimactic. They surprised us in the first game, but we closed down their running game after that and won in five. The postgame celebration in L.A. was a fizzle: just a handful of reporters standing around looking for quotes. But I didn't care. I finally had a ring I could call my own.

The next season-197374-was one the best of my career. I settled into my role as sixth man and averaged 11.1 points and 5.8 rebounds per game. But the team was going through a transformation that worried me.

The hallmark of the champions.h.i.+p Knicks was the extraordinary bond among the players and the selfless way we worked together as a team. That bond was particularly strong during our advance to the first champions.h.i.+p in 1970. After the arrival of Earl Monroe, Jerry Lucas, and Dean Meminger in 1971, the team chemistry s.h.i.+fted, but a new bond formed that was more strictly professional in nature yet no less effective. We didn't spend a lot of time with one another off the court, but we meshed brilliantly on the floor. Now the team was going through another sea change, but this time the effect would be more disruptive.

We struggled to hold things together during the 197374 season with Reed, Lucas, and DeBusschere hobbled by injuries, and we limped into the Eastern Conference finals against the Celtics after barely surviving a tough seven-game series with the Bullets. The pivotal moment came in game 4 in Madison Square Garden, with the Celtics up 21 in the series and young backup center John Gianelli and me trying to make up for our diminished big men. But this time there would be no magical Willis Reed epiphany. Boston's Dave Cowens and John Havlicek knew how to take advantage of our lack of strong front-court leaders.h.i.+p and outmaneuvered us at every critical turn in the second half. Boston won 9891.

The Celtics finished us off three days later in Boston en route to another successful champions.h.i.+p run against the Milwaukee Bucks. I remember sitting in Logan Airport with my teammates after that loss and feeling as if our once-glorious dynasty had come to an end. Lucas and DeBusschere had already announced that they were planning to retire. By the time the next season got under way, Reed and Barnett had also moved on and Meminger had been picked up by New Orleans in the expansion draft and traded to Atlanta.

Nothing was the same after that. I stepped in as a starter the next year to replace DeBusschere and played pretty well, but only three other members of the core team remained-Walt Frazier, Bill Bradley, and Earl Monroe-and it was difficult to forge the kind of unity we'd had before. Times were changing, and the new players flooding into the NBA were more interested in showing off their flashy skills and living the NBA high life than in doing the hard work of creating a unified team.

Over the next two years, we added some talented players to the roster, including All-NBA star Spencer Haywood and three-time NBA scoring champion Bob McAdoo, but neither of them seemed to be that interested in mastering the Knicks' traditional combination of intense defense and selfless teamwork.

Every day the gap between generations became more apparent. The new players, who were accustomed to being pampered in college, started complaining that n.o.body was taking care of their laundry or that the trainer wasn't doing good enough tape jobs. The old Knicks were used to taking responsibility for our own laundry because there was no equipment manager then, and strange as it may sound, was.h.i.+ng our own uniforms had a unifying effect on the team. If the newcomers weren't willing to wash their own gear, we wondered whether they would take responsibility for what they had to do on court.

It didn't take long to find out. Within a remarkably short time, the Knicks transitioned into a dual-personality team that could run up 15-point leads, then collapse at the end because we couldn't marshal a coordinated attack. We held several team meetings to discuss the problem, but we couldn't agree on how to bridge the gap. Nothing Red did to stimulate team play worked.

In 1976 the Knicks failed to make the playoffs for the first time in nine years. A year later Bradley retired and Frazier was traded to the Cleveland Cavaliers. Then Red stepped down and was replaced by Willis Reed.

I thought the 197778 season would be my last, but in the off-season the Knicks made a deal to send me to the New Jersey Nets. I was reluctant at first, but I agreed to come on board when coach Kevin Loughery called and told me that he needed my help to work with the younger players. "I know you're at the end of your career," he said, "but coming to New Jersey could be a good bridge between playing and coaching."

I wasn't that interested in becoming a coach, but I was intrigued by Loughery's maverick style of leaders.h.i.+p. After training camp, Loughery said he wanted to move me over to a.s.sistant coach, but before that could happen forward Bob Elliott got injured and I was activated as a player. Nevertheless, I got a chance that year to work with the big men as a part-time a.s.sistant coach and take over for Kevin as head coach when he was thrown out of games by the refs, which happened fourteen times that season.

Loughery, who had won two ABA champions.h.i.+ps, had an exceptional eye for the game and was gifted at exploiting mismatches. But what I learned from him was how to push the envelope and get away with it. Loughery was the first coach I knew who had his players double-team inbound pa.s.sers at half-court, a high-risk move that often paid off. He also adopted Hubie Brown's ploy of double-teaming the ball handler and made it a regular part of the defense, even though it wasn't strictly legal. One of his biggest innovations was developing out-of-the-box isolation plays for our best shooters. That tactic didn't exactly align with Holzman's model of five-man offense, but it fit the Nets lineup, which was loaded with good shooters, and opened the way for new forms of creativity to flower in the years to come.

Our star player was Bernard King, an explosive small forward with a superquick release who had averaged 24.2 points and 9.5 rebounds per game as a rookie the year before. Unfortunately, he also had a substance-abuse problem. One night that season he was found asleep at the wheel at a stop sign and was arrested for drunk driving and cocaine possession. (The charges were later dropped.) This incident pushed Loughery over the edge. He was known for being good at managing self-absorbed stars, but he felt he wasn't getting through to King and was losing control of the team. So he threatened to quit. When general manager Charlie Theokas asked Loughery to suggest a replacement, he put my name forward. I was a little stunned when I heard this, but it felt good to know that someone of Kevin's stature thought I could handle the job. Eventually Loughery backed down. Several months later, the Nets traded King to the Utah Jazz, where he spent most of the season in rehab.

At the start of the 197980 season, Loughery told me that he was going to cut me from the active roster but offered me a job as a full-time a.s.sistant coach at a substantial pay cut. This was the moment I had always dreaded. I remember driving my car to the Nets' training center in Piscataway, New Jersey, and thinking that I was never going to feel the thrill of battle again. Sure, I said to myself, I might have some high moments in the future, but unless I had to go through a life-and-death crisis of some kind, I'd probably never have another experience quite like the one I'd had as a player in the NBA.

Being a coach was not the same, or at least that was how I felt at the time. Win or lose, I'd always be one step removed from the action.

Somewhere on the outskirts of Piscataway, I found myself having an imaginary conversation with my father, who had died a few months earlier.

"What am I going to do, Dad?" I said. "Is the rest of my life going to be total drudgery, just going through the motions?"

Pause.

"How can anything else ever be as meaningful to me as playing basketball? Where am I going to find my new purpose in life?"

It would take several years for me to find the answer.

CHAPTER 5

DANCES WITH BULLS

Don't play the saxophone. Let it play you.

CHARLIE PARKER

This wasn't the first time that Jerry Krause had called me about a job with the Bulls. Three years earlier, when Stan Albeck was head coach, Jerry had invited me to interview for an a.s.sistant-coach slot. I was coaching in Puerto Rico at the time and arrived in Chicago sporting a beard and dressed for the tropics. Atop my head was an Ecuadorian straw hat with a blue parrot feather sticking out of it-very fas.h.i.+onable (and practical) down in the islands. Albeck took one look at me and invoked his veto power. Jerry had already rejected Stan's first choice for a.s.sistant coach, so Stan's veto may have been payback. In any case, I didn't get the job.

The second time around Krause advised me to lose the beard and wear a sport jacket and tie. The new head coach was Doug Collins, whom I'd played against when he was a star shooting guard for the Philadelphia 76ers. He was a smart, energetic coach whom Krause had hired to replace Albeck in 1986. Krause was looking for someone who could galvanize the Bulls' young players into a champions.h.i.+p-contending team-which Doug did. Johnny Bach, who knew Collins from their days with the 1972 Olympics team, said Doug reminded him of coach Adolph Rupp's famous p.r.o.nouncement that there are only two kinds of coaches: those who lead teams to victory and those who drive them. Doug was definitely in the second category. Although he didn't have a deep coaching background, he had boundless energy, which he used to rev up the players for big games.

Doug and I hit it off immediately. On the ride back to my hotel after dinner with Jerry, Doug said he was looking for someone with a history of winning champions.h.i.+ps to inspire the players. Two days later Jerry offered me a job as a.s.sistant coach and gave me one more piece of fas.h.i.+on advice. The next time you come back to Chicago, he said, bring along your champions.h.i.+p rings.

The Bulls were a team that was about to break loose. They still had a few holes in their lineup: Their center, Dave Corzine, was not that quick or skilled on the boards, and their six-eleven forward, Brad Sellers, had chronic injury problems. But they had a strong power forward, Charles Oakley, a solid outside shooter, John Paxson, and two promising rookie forwards, Scottie Pippen and Horace Grant, whom Bach called "the Dobermans" because they were fast and aggressive enough to play smothering pressure defense.

The star, of course, was Michael Jordan, who had blossomed the previous year into the most transcendent player in the game. Not only did he win the scoring t.i.tle, averaging 37.1 points per game, he also tested the limits of human performance, creating breathtaking moves in midair. The only player I knew who came close to Michael's leaps was Julius Erving, but Dr. J didn't have Jordan's remarkable energy. Michael would have a great game one night and follow it with an even more mind-boggling performance the next day, then come back two days later and do it all over again.

The Bulls' chief rivals were the Detroit Pistons, a rough, physical team that proudly referred to themselves as "the Bad Boys." Led by point guard Isiah Thomas, the Pistons were always spoiling for a fight, and they had a team full of bruisers, including Bill Laimbeer, Rick Mahorn, Dennis Rodman, and John Salley. Early in my first season a fight broke out between Mahorn and the Bulls' Charles Oakley that erupted into a melee. Doug Collins rushed on court to calm things down and was hurled over the scorers' table. Johnny Bach also sprained his wrist trying to be a peacemaker. Thomas boasted later that the Pistons were "the last of the gladiator teams."

The Pistons were a shrewd veteran team skilled at exploiting opponents' weaknesses. With the Bulls, that meant using physical intimidation and cheap shots to get the younger, less experienced players to lose it emotionally. But that tactic didn't work with Jordan, who wasn't easily intimidated. To contain him, coach Chuck Daly devised a strategy called "the Jordan Rules" designed to wear Michael down by slamming him with multiple bodies whenever he had the ball. Michael was an incredibly resilient player who would often make shots with two or three players hanging on him, but the Pistons' strategy was effective-initially, anyway-because the Bulls didn't have many other options on offense.

My job was to travel around the country and scout the teams the Bulls would be facing in the coming weeks. This gave me a chance to see firsthand how dramatically the rivalry of Magic Johnson's Lakers and Larry Bird's Celtics had transformed the NBA. Only a few years earlier the league had been in serious trouble, weighed down by drug abuse and out-of-control egos. But now it was soaring again with charismatic young stars and two of the league's most storied franchises playing an exciting new brand of team-oriented basketball that was fun to watch.

Even more important, this job was a chance for me to go to graduate school in basketball, with two of the best minds in the game: Johnny Bach and Tex Winter. I had just spent the past five years as head coach of the Albany Patroons and had experimented with all kinds of ideas about how to make the game more equitable and collaborative, including paying all the players the same salaries one year. We won the league champions.h.i.+p during my first season as coach, and I discovered that I had a gift for making adjustments during games and getting the most out of the talent on the roster. But after a while I realized that my biggest weakness as a coach was my lack of formal training. I hadn't gone to Hoops U or any of the summer clinics where coaches share trade secrets. Working with Johnny and Tex was my chance to play catch-up. In the process I realized that some of the long-forgotten strategies of the past could be revitalized and made relevant for today's game.

Bach was a master of Eastern-style basketball, the aggressive, in-your-face version of the game played east of the Mississippi. He grew up in Brooklyn and played basketball and baseball at Fordham and Brown before joining the navy and serving in the Pacific during World War II. After brief stints with the Boston Celtics and New York Yankees, he was named one of the youngest head coaches of a major college basketball team, at Fordham in 1950. Later he was successful coaching Penn State for ten years. Then he moved over to the NBA as an a.s.sistant coach and briefly served as head coach for the Golden State Warriors. In 1972, while he was an a.s.sistant coach of the U.S. Olympic team, Johnny hit it off with Collins, who played a pivotal role in the controversial gold-medal game. Doug scored the two free throws that would have won the game if an IOC official hadn't inexplicably decided to put three seconds back on the clock after the buzzer had sounded.

Unlike Tex, Johnny didn't subscribe to any particular system of play. He was a walking encyclopedia of basketball strategy who relied on his quick wits and photographic memory to devise creative ways to win games. When I was in the office, Johnny would often show up at my desk with dog-eared books by coaching geniuses I'd never heard of and videotapes of current NBA teams using moves invented years ago.

Once I was sitting at my VCR trying to decipher what kind of offense the Milwaukee Bucks were running, and I called Johnny over to look at the tape. He took one glance and said, "Oh, that's Garland Pinholster's pinwheel offense." Then he proceeded to explain that Pinholster was one of the nation's most innovative coaches in the fifties and sixties. He was a coach at small Oglethorpe College in Georgia and ama.s.sed a 180-68 record using the continuous-motion offense he'd invented before losing interest in basketball and going into the grocery business and state politics.

Bach, who focused primarily on defense, had a fondness for using military images and playing clips from old war movies to get the players ready for battle. One of his favorite symbols was the ace of spades, which the Marines in World War II used, according to Johnny, to honor their fallen comrades. If Johnny drew an ace of spades on the board next to an opposing player's name, that meant the Bulls defenders were to "kill" that player whenever he had the ball.

I wasn't as thrilled with war imagery as Johnny was, so I started using music videos (and later movie clips) during my talks. I started off with Jimi Hendrix's rendition of "The Star-Spangled Banner," then moved over to David Byrne songs and Freddie Mercury's "We Are the Champions." Eventually I learned to use the videos to get subtle messages across. During one playoff run, I created a video with the Talking Heads' anthem "Once in a Lifetime"-a song about the dangers of wasting the present moment.