How to Be Like Mike (10 page)

D
on’t wish it were easier. Wish you were better.

—Jim Rohn
author and speaker

A
s the dutiful, sometimes distracted and rather harried father of nineteen—yes, you are reading that right—biological and A adopted children, it is an element of my duty to douse the fires that sprout forth in youth. So a few months ago I made a speaking appearance in Gainesville, Florida, then went off to fulfill my commitment as a father by springing for dinner for my twin South Korean sons, Thomas and Stephen, who were mired in summer school at the University of Florida.

We met at a Mexican restaurant. We sat, and as the waitress slid bowls of nacho chips and salsa in front of us, I asked howschoolwas going, and the trouble began.

“Dad,” Stephen said, “Thomas isn’t doing so well.”

I turned to Thomas. He said nothing. So I turned back to Stephen. “Since you seem to be your brother’s spokesman this evening,” I said, “perhaps you can tell me why he’s not doing so well.”

“Thomas is burned out,” Stephen said.

I pivoted back to Thomas, who wore a despondent frown. He nodded. “Dad,” he said, “I’m burned out on school.”

“So?” I said.

“So I think I need a summer off.”

Burned out?
I thought. Thomas was taking a few paltry summer session credits, and he was burned out. I straightened. My voice tightened, wrapped in the paternally stern tone of a father who had heard this a thousand times before.

“Tom,” I said. “Get over it.”

Before he could speak again, I was in the midst of a rather dutiful lecture about responsibility, about dedication, about the constancy of work. “I haven’t had a summer off in forty-five years,” I said. “And neither will you. So get used to it.”

I am happy to report that Thomas got an A in summer school. And neither he nor Stephen will ever dare to use the phrase “burned out” in my presence again.

Genius, Upgrading Genius

M
ichael Jordan’s sophomore year at North Carolina ended with the Tar Heels losing to Georgia in the NCAATournament’s Elite Eight. There were four weeks left in the semester, and Dean Smith went out of town to recruit, leaving Roy Williams in charge. “The big push has to be on school,” Smith told Williams. “No basketball. And besides, they’re tired. They need a break.”

So Williams met with Jordan and told him to shut down for a while. Jordan agreed. “I’ve been playing ball for three years without a break,” he said. “I need to get fresh.”

At lunch that day, Williams went for a run. Afterward, in the locker room, he saw Jordan, walking past with a ball in his hands.

“I thought you were resting,” Williams said.

“Coach,” Jordan said, “I can’t do it. I’ve got to work on my game.”

“In 1985, after Jordan was named NBA rookie of the year, he came back to Chapel Hill and said to Roy Williams, ‘I’ve got to talk to you, ’” said Jordan biographer David Halber-stam. “ Roy said, ‘Sure, Mike. ’Michael said, ‘No, coach. In private. ’They went out to the bleachers and Michael said, ‘Coach, what do I have to do to get better?’ No player worked like Michael.”

Michael had that rare capacity to be a genius who wanted to upgrade his genius.

—John Bach

The first Bulls practice after Jordan made his comeback to basketball in 1995 ended with Michael walking to the baseline, on his own, and running windsprints. Without a word, all eleven of his teammates joined him.

The coaching got better in the Eastern Conference, because we put in so much time thinking, studying and preparing for MJ.

—Jeff Van Gundy
HEAD COACH
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Former Bulls assistant coach John Bach had a term for it, for Jordan’s perpetual willingness to labor at the game. “Vaulting ambition,” he called it, and what he meant was that every year Jordan would spend the off-season improving portions of his game that he felt were lacking, so that he could more readily play through fatigue, through pain, through illness. He improved his ball-handling. He became a defensive stopper and a perennial member of the NBA All Defensive First Team. He improved his shooting, staying late at practice, challenging the long-range shooters until he was good enough to shoot in the NBA All-Star Game’s three-point contest. When his body wore down against thicker opponents, he began lifting weights so he could handle himself in the low post. Toward the end of his career, during the summer he made the movie
Space Jam,
Jordan had a court put up on the set, which is where he developed a wicked fallaway jumper that became his latter-day trademark. When he found out Scottie Pippen could dunk with his left hand, he learned to do it himself. “Michael was always trying to figure out how to turn his weaknesses into strengths,” said Phil Jackson.

Michael once observed, “I have always approached practice as a kind of proving ground, especially with rookies. They might have seen me on television, read about me . . . and might think they know what I’m all about. . . . I want them to know it isn’t gossip or rumors. I want them to know it all comes from hard work. Every time I stepped on the court, even though I was on top of the world, I felt like I had something to prove.”

Success isn’t something you chase. It is something you have to put forth the effort for constantly; then maybe it’ll come when you least expect it. Most people don’t understand that.

—Michael Jordan

“We fight human nature in this business,” said NBA assistant coach Jim Boylen. “It’s the ‘Get-By’ Theory: most guys will work just as hard as they must in order to achieve success. Michael fought human nature. Despite his success, he never got comfortable or satisfied. He always needed more.”

“Michael had a rare quality—a sense of how good he would become,” said David Halberstam. “And he knew he’d have to pay the price to do the things he wanted to do on the court.”

Somebody asked Jordan, after he won his fifth championship in 1997, why he’d bother to keep playing. “Because,” he said, “I still think I can get better.”

The average person puts only 25 percent of his energy and ability into his work. The world takes off its hat to those who put in more than 50 percent of their capacity, and stands on its head for those few and far between souls who devote 100 percent.

—Andrew Carnegie
INDUSTRIALIST

The National Commission on Productivity once found that only two of every ten employees work to their full potential, and that half of the workforce expends only the minimum amount of energy needed to get by. Which means there are great and expansive numbers of our workforce (perhaps even some at the National Commission on Productivity) who waste their days attempting to shake an extra Three Musketeers bar from the vending machine, or who hide behind the walls of their cubicle playing Tetris.

Which makes those of us who actually do throw ourselves into work that much rarer, that much more valuable, that much more inclined toward success. One author’s study of self-made millionaires revealed, rather unsurprisingly, that none of them were among those who worked a pedestrian forty hours a week or less, fighting away the cobwebs of boredom while clocking in and out.

Few people, during their lifetime, come anywhere near exhausting the resources dwelling within them. There are deep wheels of strength that are never used.

—Richard Byrd
R
EAR
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DMIRAL

It was not uncommon for Jordan to become embroiled in fights during practice. He didn’t tolerate mediocrity, even on a lazy midseason afternoon with nothing at stake. He had this need to establish himself, to elevate himself and to prove himself with every drill, as if, at all times, his reputation was perched over a pot of boiling water, on the verge of withering. At North Carolina, he’d stay after practice and challenge his teammates to one-on-one contests. Shooting, dunking, dribbling. He’d stay until he won something.

The day after North Carolina lost to Indiana in the NCAA Tournament, ending Jordan’s junior year—the year after Williams first advised him to take a break— he was once again in the gym, practicing. Later that spring, his Carolina teammate, Steve Hale, saw Jordan in the gym, playing in a pick-up game with nine fraternity guys. “Why bother?” Hale asked.

“Working on my game,” Jordan replied.

Always. During the season, during the off-season; even now, in retirement, he continues to push himself. In shootarounds, he would arrive five minutes earlier than everyone else and stay five minutes later. Once, in San Antonio, says former NBA coach Bob Hill, Jordan rode a bike to a health club to lift weights, then rode the bike back to the Alamo Dome in time for practice. The day after the now-immortalized “Sick Game” in Utah, Jordan spent ninety minutes in the gym.

“I would use one word to describe Michael,” said Charles Barkley. “
Obsessive.
He was obsessed with being the greatest player possible. Everything he did was designed to be done better than anyone else.”

One of the rules I have for myself when I work out is that I’m always going to be the last player off the field. If I’ve been taking grounders for two minutes or twenty minutes, and another player comes out to join me, I’ll stay on the field and continue working until he’s done.

—Derek Jeter
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ANKEES SHORTSTOP

“In 1984, when we were on the Olympic team together,” said University of Iowa basketball coach Steve Alford, “MJ would always play after practice with Chris Mullin or me. He knew we could shoot, and shooting was the weak point of his game. By the end of the summer he was winning most of the games of HORSE we played. He amazed me. He worked so hard, even though he didn’t have to.”

On the day of a game against Barkley and the Phoenix Suns in 1993, broadcaster Nick Pinto got to Chicago Stadium early in the afternoon to deliver some tapes. There, on the court, hours before tip-off, was Michael Jordan.

“He’s been here all day,” a security guard said. “Shooting free throws.”

There is a story about a trip to Boston during Jordan’s rookie season that coach Stan Albeck likes to tell. Albeck had the bus arrive at Boston Garden early one day. He had a reason for doing it. He was doing it for Michael. He led the team inside. The Garden was empty and silent. Then, from nowhere, they heard footfalls, and when they looked up, they saw Larry Bird running the concourse. Then running the steps. Bird worked up a sweat, then began shooting. Jordan’s eyes glazed over. “You could see then,” said Albeck, “that he knew that was what it took.”

That same year, when Jordan hurt his foot, he came back to Chapel Hill to do his rehab work. Every morning, former Carolina assistant Randy Weil would look out his office window and see Jordan, working on the same moves again and again. “In the game it looks like he’s just reacting,” Weil said, “but I know differently.”

He studied all of the game’s anomalies. When the Bulls moved from Chicago Stadium to the United Center, players began to get the sense that the rims on the baskets were stiff, and this made the shooting tougher. Early one afternoon, sportswriter Kent McDill showed up for a game and found Jordan out there, studying the rims. He’d shoot, miss, slam dunk, and hang on the rim, trying to loosen it up, to solve the puzzle, to develop the smallest advantage.

The tougher you are on yourself, the easier life will be on you.

—Zig Ziglar

Once, at a basketball camp, an attendee asked him, “How many hours did you practice as a kid?”

“I never worried about time,” Jordan replied. “I never watched the clock. I practiced until I got tired or until my mama called me for dinner.”

“The 1984 Olympic team was playing an exhibition game at Madison Square Garden against an NBA All-Star squad,” said Pacers assistant coach Vern Fleming. “At a time out, Bobby Knight yelled at us, ‘Why don’t you go out there and do what he does in practice every day?’ Bobby was pointing at Michael.”

“Practice is what made Michael go,” said Jordan’s former coach in Chicago, Doug Collins. “Every day, he had this need to show he was the best. It became part of Michael. Some guys take nights off. Some guys take days off. He never did that. Throw away all the talent. The way he practiced put him on a level above everybody else.”

We’re at the heart of Jordan now, poking at the purring engine that started him on the path to transcendence. Without the inclination, without the ceaseless work ethic, Jordan is merely another talented athlete gliding through an admirable career, but nothing historic. Without the work ethic, Jordan would have fizzled in his late twenties and flagged in his early thirties, when his natural gifts first began their slow fade, when he was no longer the league’s most spectacular athlete, outjumping and outdunking and outrunning everyone.

When I stop working, the rest of the day is posthumous. I’m only really alive when I’m working.