How to Be Like Mike (4 page)
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Authors: Pat Williams
Since I left as the Bulls’ coach over ten years ago, I’ve enjoyed watching Michael’s unbelievable success from afar. During the whole period, I’ve wrestled with two questions: did Michael respect me as a coach, and did I help him in his career?
So, you can imagine my feelings when my phone rang in late April 2001. It was Michael, asking me for my help and telling me he wanted me to come to Washington and coach his franchise, the Wizards. That was the ultimate sign of respect to me. Here was the greatest player of all time, building a team from the ground up, and he wanted me! Wow! That’s like a golfer getting a call from Tiger Woods asking him to play on his team.
Michael’s call to me closed the cycle of my life and career. I felt as if I had come full circle.
Pat Williams and Michael Weinreb have done an amazing job of research in capturing the essence of Michael Jordan. When you read about the eleven attributes that characterize Michael, I can assure you that you won’t become another Mike. There is only one Michael Jordan. But I can also guarantee that as you apply these characteristics to your daily regimen, you will be preparing yourself to perform at a championship level.
August 1, 2001
Washington, D. C.
A MEMORY OF A YOUNG
MICHAEL JORDAN
By Richard Neher
Michael’s Babe Ruth League Baseball
Coach
I coached Michael when he was thirteen, fourteen and fifteen years old. Michael Jordan was never an all-star when he played as a young boy. He was just a typical kid playing little league, but he was so loose and so competitive.
When Michael was thirteen, our team’s fifteen-year-old catcher got hurt and we were desperate for a replacement. The rail-thin Jordan volunteered—“I’ll catch, coach!” —even though it took him three bounces to throw the ball to second base. I turned down Michael’s offer. He came back at me with, “Coach, if they run, I’ll gun!” Even then, Michael thought he could do anything. He had that confidence.
We were playing Mutual of Omaha for first place that night and I stuck Michael back there. During infield practice, he bounced the ball to second and the other team started mocking him. Mike yelled at them, “You run, I’ll gun!” Sure enough, in the second inning he threw out three straight guys trying to steal —on the bounce!
As far as basketball, Mike was just another gunner as a ten and eleven-year-old. He’d take thirty shots a game and if you passed him the ball, it wasn’t coming back. In the ninth grade, he was just a 5'9" guard, that’s all. Don’t let anyone tell you they saw greatness back in those days.
August 1, 2001
Wilmington, North Carolina
By Harvey Araton
Sports Columnist,
The New York Times
My most vivid Michael Jordan memory is not one of him in the air or on the drive or celebrating the winning of another ring. It is a moment few of us outside the circle of these great athletes would ever be privileged to witness. I just got lucky. It was 1992, the Eastern Conference semifinals at Madison Square Garden, Pat Riley’s Knicks trying to stay alive and going about it in their new and brutish ways. It was the second half, the Knicks asserting control. Scottie Pippen had the ball in transition and seemed to be going in for a layup when suddenly he was hog-tied by John Starks and thrown to the floor. Time-out. Pippen, dazed, even bloodied, staggered to a seat on the bench. Seated at the edge of the press table, practically on the Bulls’ bench, I had a clear look into the team’s huddle, where, astonishingly enough, Jordan practically shoved Phil Jackson out of the way and kneeled right in front of his young and intimidated teammate. For about five seconds, he just stared at him, hard, and then he put his hand on Pippen’s knee. “Don’t you dare take that from them!” Jordan screamed. “Don’t let them do that to you! You’re getting the ball and you take it to the hole as hard as you can!” I will never forget the look in Jordan’s eyes that night. It was as controlled a rage as I’ve ever seen, which I’ve always believed was as essential to Jordan’s greatness as any part of his game. He had the ability to simultaneously balance anger and composure, regardless of the situation. If the opponent didn’t provoke him, Jordan found a way to inspire himself. If I had been Pippen that night, I would have been far more afraid to disappoint Michael than I would have been of Starks, Xavier McDaniel, Anthony Mason and Charles Oakley put together.
I am not a man who lives with a great deal of regret. But there are times, every so often, when I will spring forth from my bed in the middle of the night, hair standing in static spikes, and shake off the specter of a haunting nightmare. There are not many executives who can say they allowed the greatest athlete of the twentieth century to slide through their helpless grasp. And I’m one of them.
Allow me to explain.
I have spent my life in sports, in various front offices, in both baseball and basketball. By 1978, I was entrenched as the general manager of the NBA’s Philadelphia 76ers, who were coached by Billy Cunningham. And that fall, Billy Cunningham had a problem. It involved one of his players. His name was Lloyd Free. Eventually, Lloyd would change his legal name to World B. Free, and he would hover around the pro basketball world for what seemed like an eternity, taking ridiculously long jump shots and filling eager reporters’ notebooks with some of the ripest quotes they’d ever been given. He was an immense offensive talent, innovative and exciting and well-liked by the fans. It’s just that Lloyd sometimes forgot that he belonged to a team. He did not believe in the utility of the pass.
So in the fall of 1978, it was my job to trade Lloyd Free. And I tried. I really did. But Lloyd’s reputation preceded him. I couldn’t get anything done, couldn’t get anyone to risk their reputation on Lloyd. The season approached. The day before it began, I was rescued— by the Clippers, of all entities.
The Clippers were in San Diego back then. Didn’t matter. They were still hapless and bumbling and ill-managed, one of the most aimless franchises in the history of organized sports. Their new coach was Gene Shue, who had coached Lloyd Free in Philadelphia, and was now willing to gamble on Lloyd.
There was a catch, of course. He was willing to gamble on Lloyd in exchange for virtually nothing. Being desperate, I took the deal. I traded Lloyd Free to the Clippers for a first-round draft pick.
That is, a first-round pick in 1984. Six years hence. Which, in the transitional world of pro basketball, might as well have been the year 2050.
I probably don’t have to tell you that the local media roasted me. They thought I’d given Lloyd away, which I denied, even though, of course, I basically had. But what did I know? Chances were it wouldn’t even matter. This is a tumultuous business. Who knew where I would be in six years?
Six years later, in 1984, I was still in Philadelphia. And the Clippers were still awful. And we still had the rights to their number-one draft pick. This was before the draft lottery had originated, so the commissioner would simply flip a coin between the worst team in the Eastern Conference and the worst team in the Western Conference to determine who got the top pick. Barring some colossal reversals of fortune, the Clippers appeared destined for the coin toss.
We already knew this was a rich draft. Sam Bowie and Sam Perkins were the top seniors, and Hakeem Olajuwon and Charles Barkley were juniors who were expected to declare themselves eligible. So was a lanky guard from North Carolina whose name will figure prominently in this book.
We were busy reveling in the misery of the Clippers, anticipating the coin toss, when something catastrophic occurred. Houston, the only team in the West that could challenge the Clippers for the cointoss position, launched into a prolifically weird losing streak. I say weird because this was not the typically unwelcome nosedive. It seemed almost planned, premeditated, which, of course, it almost certainly was. Exhibit A: Elvin Hayes, who was then nearing senior-citizen status, played fifty-three minutes in one overtime game.
Still, on one of the final nights of the season, all we needed was for the Clippers to lose. Now, asking the Clippers to lose is not exactly a monumental request. This is a franchise that seemingly goes decades without winning a game.
But on this night, the Clippers won. And Houston lost. And in the end, we lost. We tumbled out of the coin toss, and the Rockets slipped in and won it and picked Olajuwon. Portland, picking second, chose Sam Bowie. We had dropped to the fifth pick, and chose Barkley. Not exactly a poor selection. But with the third pick, Chicago chose . . . well, you know who Chicago chose. Children in third-world countries know who Chicago chose. I can’t even repeat it right now. I just know that seventeen years later, it still haunts my dreams.
It’s easy enough to rationalize, to console myself with the notion that it’s technically not my fault, the way Houston conspired to ineptness. And that we might not have won the coin toss if we’d ever gotten that far. And that even if we had, we could have chosen any of that pool of players. And that we did get Barkley.
But Billy Cunningham was a North Carolina graduate. He had an unfettered pipeline to North Carolina Coach Dean Smith, and I don’t think Dean Smith would have allowed Billy to go away without picking his player.
So I think about it. Of course I do. Michael Jordan escaped me. That’s not a feeling you shake off in the span of a single lifetime.
This is fourteen years later, in 1998. I’m watching Game Six of the NBA Finals, Chicago versus Utah, and so is an overwhelming and curious segment of the world. We’ve begun to figure that this is it for Michael Jordan, that this is his final appearance in uniform, his glorious and final vanishing point from pro basketball. He’s not saying. He’s hiding behind a knowing smirk, but it’s implied.
The series has been grueling. Jordan’s legs are gone, but he continues to push toward the basket for lay-ups, for fouls, for free throws. There are 18. 9 seconds left when Jordan skulks in from behind and steals the ball from Karl Malone. The Bulls trail by a point. No time-out is called. And here is Jordan on the other end, never doubting himself, isolated on Bryon Russell, allowing the clock to drop below ten seconds, elevating fluently over a flailing Russell, letting go of a picturesque jumper, arm hovering like a beacon as the game-winning shot lands for his sixth NBA championship ring. This is how he walked away, scoring forty-five points, including his team’s last eight, frozen in a superlative moment amid the patina of victory. Fade out.
Weeks passed. That image glossed into a portrait in my mind. I thought ahead, about the future, about what would remain of that image a generation from now, if Jordan’s legend could persevere. I thought about my children, how their generation had never lived through the careers of Julius Erving and Larry Bird and Magic Johnson, how legacies congeal and grow musty and distant so alarmingly soon.
Part of my work comes as a motivational speaker. I craft my talks around the basic concepts of the human persona: speaking, listening, learning, the elemental skills and traits that shape us. And so I began to build a talk around the legacy of Michael Jordan, monikered after the old advertising slogan:
How to Be Like Mike.
I spoke to youth groups and corporate leaders. It was a speech that grabbed people, something they wanted to hear. “Can you imagine your organization with Michael Jordans running all over the place?” I’d ask the executives, emphasizing that I wasn’t merely talking about the Wednesday night basketball league. I tried to incorporate all that made Jordan one of the transcendent personas of the twentieth century. I’ve met Jordan a few times, but it was more the testimony of those who knew him that endeared me to the topic. “I’ll remember his greatness,” Bulls radio announcer Neil Funk told me. “It was like traveling with Babe Ruth. Or Elvis. Or any other great artist.”
Jordan is not a flawless man. Because of his extraordinarily public position, his shortcomings were often as widely exposed as his successes. But he is more than merely the sum of his talent, and the lessons of his life are significant enough that they deserve to be compiled here. And they deserve to be emulated. It is my wish that, by the end, you will see there is a way to do this without the benefit of a fade-away jump shot.
What I give you, then, are eleven chapters that encapsulate a persona as sweeping and immense as any this generation has ever witnessed. Here’s hoping that the moment will never fade out.
JORDAN ON FOCUS:
W
hat happens to clutch guys in big moments is that everything slows down. You have time to evaluate the situation, and you can clearly see every move you need to make. You’re in the moment, in complete control. It’s hard to get there; something has to have you thinking that you can do no wrong. But once you do get there, you can just come out at the start of a game and generate the feeling.
