ELEVEN RINGS Part 7

I've always felt that there is a strong connection between music and basketball. The game is inherently rhythmic in nature and requires the same kind of selfless, nonverbal communication you find in the best jazz combos. Once when John Coltrane was playing in Miles Davis's band, he went off on an interminably long solo that made Miles furious. "What the f.u.c.k?" Miles shouted.

"My axe just wouldn't stop, brother," Coltrane replied. "It just kept on going."

"Well, then, put the motherf.u.c.ker down."

Steve Lacy, who played with Thelonious Monk, set down a list of Monk's advice for the members of his combo. Here's a selection:

Just because you're not a drummer, doesn't mean you don't have to keep time.

Stop playing all those weird notes (that bulls.h.i.+t), play the melody!

Make the drummer sound good.

Don't play the piano part, I'm playing that.

Don't play everything (or every time); let some things go by ... What you don't play can be more important than what you do.

When you're swinging, swing some more.

Whatever you think can't be done, somebody will come along and do it. A genius is the one most like himself.

You've got to dig it to dig it, you dig?

What I love about Monk's list is his basic message about the importance of awareness, collaboration, and having clearly defined roles, which apply as much to basketball as they do to jazz. I discovered early that the best way to get players to coordinate their actions was to have them play the game in 4/4 time. The basic rule was that the player with the ball had to do something with it before the third beat: either pa.s.s, shoot, or start to dribble. When everyone is keeping time, it makes it easier to harmonize with one another, beat by beat.

The man who understood this better than anyone was Tex Winter, the other great basketball mind on the Bulls staff. Tex, an expert in free-flowing Western-style basketball, is best known for his work with the triangle offense-or triple-post offense, as he called it-which he learned playing for Coach Sam Barry at the University of Southern California. Although he didn't invent the triangle offense, Tex expanded it with several key innovations, including creating a sequence of pa.s.ses that led to coordinated movement among the players. Tex was also a gifted teacher who designed his own drills to make the players proficient in the basic actions.

When Tex was twenty-nine years old, he landed the top job at Marquette and became the youngest ever head coach of a Division I college. Two years later he took over the men's program at Kansas State, implemented the offense, and transformed the Wildcats into an NCAA tournament regular. During that period, Jerry Krause, then a scout, befriended Tex and spent a lot of time in Manhattan, Kansas, learning basketball strategy from him. At one point Jerry told Tex that if he ever became general manager of an NBA franchise, Tex would be his first hire. Tex didn't think anything of it at the time. Then, years later, when he was coaching at LSU, he saw a news story on ESPN about Krause being named GM of the Bulls and said to his wife, Nancy, that the next phone call he got would be from Jerry. He was right.

Ever since I started coaching in the CBA, I'd been looking for a system of offense that approximated the selfless ball movement we'd used with the champions.h.i.+p Knicks. I played around with the flex system-a fast-moving, flowing offense popular in Argentina and Europe-but it was limited. I didn't like the way the players had to s.p.a.ce themselves in relation to one another and there was no way to disrupt the offense and do something else, if the situation demanded it. In contrast, the triangle not only required a high level of selflessness, but was also flexible enough to allow players a great deal of individual creativity. That suited me perfectly.

The triangle gets its name from one of its key features-a sideline triangle formed by three players on the "strong" side of the floor. But I prefer to think of the triangle as "five-man tai chi" because it involves all the players moving together in response to the way the defense positions itself. The idea is not to go head to head against the defense but to read what the defense is doing and respond accordingly. For instance, if the defense swarms Michael Jordan on one side of the floor, that opens up a series of options for the other four players. But they all need to be acutely aware of what's happening and be coordinated enough to move together in unison so they can take advantage of the openings the defense offers. That's where the music comes in.

When everyone is moving in harmony, it's virtually impossible to stop them. One of the biggest converts to the triangle-eventually-was Kobe Bryant, who loved the unpredictability of the system. "Our teams were hard to play against," Kobe says, "because the opposition didn't know what we were going to do. Why? Because we didn't know what we were going to do from moment to moment. Everybody was reading and reacting to each other. It was a great orchestra."

There are all kinds of misconceptions about the triangle. Some critics believe that you need to have players of Michael and Kobe's caliber to make it work. Actually, the reverse is true. The triangle wasn't designed for the superstars, who will find ways to score no matter what system you use, but for all the other players on the team who aren't capable of creating their own shots. It also gives every player a vital role in the offense, whether they end up shooting or not.

Another misconception is that the triangle is far too complicated for most players to learn. In fact, once you master the fundamentals, it's far easier to learn the triangle than the more complex offenses prevalent today. The main thing you need to know is how to pa.s.s the ball and read defenses accurately. At one time most players learned these skills in high school or college, but that's not true with many of the young players coming into the NBA now. As a result, we had to spend a lot of time teaching them how to play the game, starting with the most basic skills, from dribbling with control to footwork and pa.s.sing.

Tex was a master at this. He had developed a whole series of drills to teach players how to execute fundamentals. He trained them to create the right amount of s.p.a.cing between one another on the floor and to coordinate their movements according to a basic set of rules. As far as Tex was concerned, the genius was in the details, and it didn't matter whether you were Michael Jordan or the lowest rookie on the team; Tex would badger you until you got it right.

Every year Tex, who loved inspirational sayings, would recite to the team his favorite proverb about the importance of learning the details:

For want of a nail the shoe was lost.

For want of a shoe the horse was lost.

For want of a horse the rider was lost.

For want of a rider the message was lost.

For want of a message the battle was lost.

For want of a battle the kingdom was lost.

And all for the want of a horseshoe nail.

One thing I liked about Tex's system, from a leaders.h.i.+p perspective, was that it depersonalized criticism. It gave me the ability to critique the players' performance without making them think I was attacking them personally. Pro basketball players are highly sensitive to criticism because almost everything they do is judged on a daily basis by coaches, the media, and just about anyone who owns a TV set. The beauty of the system-and this applies to all kinds of systems, not just the triangle-was that it turned the whole team into a learning organization. Everybody from Michael on down had something to learn, no matter how talented or untalented he was. So when I came down hard on a player in practice, he understood that I was merely trying to get him to understand how to work the triangle offense. As I said earlier, the road to freedom is a beautiful system.

Another aspect of the system I liked was its reliability; it gave the players something to fall back on when they were under stress. They didn't have to pretend to be like Mike and invent every move they made. All they had to do was play their part in the system, knowing that it would inevitably lead to good scoring opportunities.

The system also gave players a clear purpose as a group and established a high standard of performance for everyone. Even more important, it helped turn players into leaders as they began teaching one another how to master the system. When that happened, the group would bond together in ways that moments of individual glory, no matter how thrilling, could never foster.

Doug Collins wasn't as enamored with the system as I was. When he took over the Bulls in 1986, he made an effort to implement it, but he soon abandoned it because it didn't fit well with the defense he wanted to run. Collins was a strong believer in one of Hank Iba's cardinal rules: The guards should be on their way to half-court for defensive purposes when the ball is rebounded or inbounded. The challenge with the triangle offense is that it often requires guards to move into one of the corners to create a triangle with two other players. That makes it harder for them to get back on fast breaks.

So Doug moved away from the triangle but didn't replace it with another system. Instead he had the players learn a repertoire of forty to fifty plays that were constantly in flux. Then he would call plays from the sidelines as the game progressed, based on what he saw happening on the floor. This style of coaching, which is not uncommon in the NBA, was well suited to Doug. He had exceptional court vision and got energized by being actively involved in the game. The downside was that it made the players overly dependent on his minute-by-minute direction. It also turned everybody except Michael into a supporting actor, because many of the plays were designed to capitalize on his scoring genius. Too often the Bulls offense consisted of four players creating room for M.J. to work his magic, then watching him do it. The press had already started referring to the Bulls sarcastically as Jordan and the Jordanaires.

During training camp that first year, I told Doug I thought Michael was doing too much on his own and needed to emulate Magic and Bird in the way they worked with their teammates and transformed them into a team. I added that Red Holzman used to say that "the real mark of a star was how much better he made his teammates."

"That's great, Phil," Doug replied. "You've got to tell Michael that. Why don't you go tell him right now?"

I hesitated. "I've only been here a month, Doug. I'm not sure I know Michael well enough to tell him something Red told me." But Doug insisted that I go explain to Michael "the mark of a star."

So I went down to the media room where Michael was talking to reporters and pulled him aside. This was my first real conversation with Michael, and I was a little embarra.s.sed. I told him Doug thought he should hear what Holzman had to say about being a star, and I repeated Red's famous line. Michael studied me for a few seconds, then said, "Okay, thanks," and walked away.

I'm not sure what Michael thought of my p.r.o.nouncement at the time, but what I learned later was that he was much more coachable than other stars because he had such a deep respect for his college coach, Dean Smith. He also had a keen interest in doing whatever it took to win his first NBA champions.h.i.+p.

The only other occasion when I had a personal exchange with M.J. while an a.s.sistant coach was at a season-ticket-holder luncheon in Chicago. My son, Ben, who was in grade school, was a huge Jordan fan. He had several pictures of Michael in his room and had told one of his teachers that his dream in life was to meet his idol. The year before, when we were living in Woodstock, I had taken Ben to see the Bulls play the Celtics in Boston and he had waited for a long time after the game to get Michael's autograph. But when M.J. finally emerged from the locker room, he'd walked by without stopping. So now that I was with the Bulls I decided to take Ben to the season ticket holders' luncheon and introduce him to Michael in person. When we were there, I told M.J. about Ben's long wait in the Boston Garden. Michael smiled and was very gracious toward Ben, but I felt a little uncomfortable about putting him on the spot.

After that, I made a point of not asking M.J. for any special favors. I wanted our relations.h.i.+p to be squeaky clean. I didn't want to be his tool. Later, when I took over as head coach, I made it a policy to give Michael a lot of s.p.a.ce. I took care to create a protected environment for him where he could relate freely with his teammates and be himself without worrying about intrusions from the outside world. Even in those early days, the clamor of fans trying to get a little piece of Michael Jordan was mind-boggling. He couldn't go out to restaurants without being hounded, and the workers at most hotels would line up outside his room looking for autographs. One night after a game in Vancouver, we literally had to peel dozens of Jordan wors.h.i.+ppers off the team bus before we could pull out of the parking lot.

One of the players I worked with closely during my tenure as an a.s.sistant coach was Scottie Pippen. We both started with the team the same year, and I spent a lot of time helping him learn how to pull up and shoot off the dribble. Scottie was a quick learner and devoted time to absorbing how the triangle worked. He had been a point guard in college before becoming a small forward, and he had an innate sense of how all the pieces fit together on the floor. Scottie had long arms and excellent court vision, which made him the perfect person to spearhead our defensive attack.

What impressed me most about Scottie, however, was his development over time as a leader-not by mimicking Michael but by teaching his teammates how to play within the system and always offering a compa.s.sionate ear when they ran into trouble. This was critical because Michael wasn't very accessible and many of the players were intimidated by his presence. Scottie was someone they could talk to, someone who would keep an eye out for them on court. As Steve Kerr says, "Scottie was the nurturer; Michael was the enforcer."

The Bulls started to take off during my first season with the team, 198788. We won fifty games and finished tied for second in the tough Central Division. Michael continued to soar, winning his second scoring t.i.tle and his first MVP award. The best sign was the 32 victory over the Cleveland Cavaliers in the first round of the playoffs. But the Pistons rolled over the Bulls in five games in the conference finals, en route to the champions.h.i.+p finals, against the Los Angeles Lakers.

During the off-season Jerry Krause traded Charles Oakley to the Knicks for Bill Cartwright, a move that infuriated Michael because he considered Oakley his protector on the floor. Jordan made fun of Cartwright's "b.u.t.terfingers" and dubbed him "Medical Bill" because of his ongoing foot problems. But despite his small shoulders and narrow frame, Bill was a smart, rock-solid defender who could shut down Patrick Ewing and other big men. Once we ran a drill in practice that ended up pitting six-six Michael against seven-one Cartwright in a one-on-one battle of wills. Michael was determined to dunk over Cartwright, but Bill was equally determined not to let that happen. So they collided in midair and everyone held their breath while Bill slowly eased Michael to the floor. After that, Michael changed his tune on Cartwright.

Cartwright wasn't the only weapon the team needed to move to the next level. Collins was pus.h.i.+ng hard for Krause to find a strong, playmaking point guard who could orchestrate the offense like Isiah Thomas did in Detroit. But the team had already gone through several point guards-including Sedale Threatt, Steve Colter, and Rory Sparrow-trying to find someone who would meet Jordan's expectations. The latest candidate was Sam Vincent, who had come over in a trade with Seattle, but he didn't last long. So Doug decided to make Jordan the point guard, which worked fairly well but reduced M.J.'s scoring options and wore him down physically during the regular season.

At one point, Doug got into a heated argument with Tex about the point-guard dilemma. Tex suggested that if Doug inst.i.tuted a system of offense-not necessarily the triangle but any system-he wouldn't have to rely so heavily on a point guard to run the offense. By this time, Doug had grown weary of listening to Tex's constant stream of criticism, so he decided to banish him to the sidelines and reduce his role as a coach.