Ed Vulliamy in Washington : Basketball
After six Naitional Basketball Association (NBA) championships – the latest won in an epic final series against Utah Jazz last month – Americans are accustomed to gravity-defying acrobatics from the Chicago Bulls. But not of this kind.
Last Thursday afternoon, the Bulls managed a contortion which beats almost any manoeuvre on the basketball court. This was not about scoring a slam dunk, but answering the biggest question in the NBA: will Michael Jordan come “home” to Chicago next season? Indeed, will he ever play again?
It was a duel of nerves, arrogance and raw influence between Jordan and the organisation with which his genius has become synonymous, the Chicago Bulls.
At the last minute (as is his wont on court as well) Jordan snatched victory, asserting his right to pick the team coach.
Everyone at the press conference had expected the Bulls president Jerry Reinsdorf to appoint Tim Floyd, an inexperienced but respected college coach from Idaho, to take over a dismembered Bulls team next season.
But while Chicago fans yearned to savour a final season of Jordan’s wizardry, the player had said he would refuse to play under Floyd. And he would consider returning to the Bulls only if his preferred coach – the triumphant but recently departed Phil Jackson – was also invited back.
Last week Reinsdorf said that Jordan enjoyed “no veto”, and promised to teach the superstar a lesson in arrogance. But he caved in on Thursday, appointing Floyd “head of basketball operations” rather than coach.
Instead Floyd becomes coach-in-waiting in case Jackson, who coached the Bulls to the title, wants to change his mind and come back.
The upshot is that we still don’t know whether Jordan will play again. If Jackson does return, Jordan might follow along with Scottie Pippen and the wild man Denis Rodman, who also said they would not work with Floyd.
If Jackson stays away, Floyd will take over a team containing only four members of the side who beat the Jazz. And Jordan’s bluff will be called for a third time.
This episode, coming in the middle of a lockout by club owners over collective bargaining in basketball, leaves another question unanswered: who runs the NBA?
The obvious answer appears to be Jordan. For many fans, this is fair enough; why shouldn’t Jordan have everything, anything, he wants?
Jordan’s silken magic has made him a phenomenon comparable only to Babe Ruth, Pele, Maradona or Muhammad Ali.
He is probably the world’s leading celebrity, possessing the most famous face and most-uttered name. He was recently voted “Greatest Man in the World” by students in China.
Jordan’s statue adorns the United Centre in Chicago, home to the Bulls, and the city authorities are seriously considering naming Lakeshore Drive – the grand highway that sweeps the shores of Lake Michigan – Michael Jordan Drive.
The film Michael Jordan: American Hero is currently casting in Hollywood and scheduled to begin shooting in September. It will be an unrestrained romance about a kid from North Carolina who dreams of stardom. Jordan also starred alongside Bugs Bunny two years ago in Space Jam.
Jordan is at the apex of a sponsorship conglomerate which has buried the notion that black sportsmen cannot attract the same kind of corporate loot as whites. The New Yorker magazine now describes Jordan as “the greatest corporate pitchman of all time”.
But does all this entitle him to dictate to the Bulls? Judging by Thursday’s performance, apparently so.
The build-up to this farce began last year when Jackson, the bearded Merlin of basketball, said he would return to the game for one more season, to win one more title for the Bulls. And what a season it was, at the end of which Jackson, needing a hip operation, said it had been “our last dance, a wonderful, wonderful waltz”.
Jackson added that he wanted no responsibility for whatever decision Jordan might make, but confessed: “I did tell him it was the perfect time to go.”
Floyd was an old friend of the Bulls’s chair Jerry Krause. Krause and Jackson were reportedly at loggerheads, so it was little wonder that Krause – also looking to cut a massive salary bill – threw Floyd a line. Floyd had been a prodigious coach for the Idaho college team, a specialist in defence.
Jordan’s reaction was: “I don’t want to play for a college coach. Jerry Reinsdorf made his stand on Phil Jackson, and that pretty much makes my stand. I always said I wouldn’t play without Phil Jackson. I don’t have anything against Tim Floyd but I just feel I don’t want to start over with someone who doesn’t know me.”
But Reinsdorf dug in and during a television interview said he regretted the vast salaries he had been paying both Jordan and Jackson.
Jordan looked set for a lesson learned, but added, mysteriously: “Whatever decisions they make, they make. I don’t control them.”
Then last Thursday Reinsdorf confirmed that “if Phil Jackson changes his mind Michael can have the coach he has always wanted”.
One could not help but feel sorry for Floyd. “If he can talk Phil Jackson into joining the team, I’m not going to do anything to deter that from happening. And I don’t feel it would be acceptable or appropriate for me to take this job if in any way it would prevent Michael Jordan’s return to the Chicago Bulls.”
Floyd even added: “I would step completely away if Phil wanted to coach this team. If he does not change his mind, then I wil be ready.”
Sally Donnelly of Time magazine and one of the Bulls’s loudest fans thinks it is the end. “The horse has bolted the stable,” she said. “Neither Michael or Phil will come back. There will be a team in Chicago called the Bulls, but the legend has ended.”
Back in 1993 Jordan said: “It’s human nature that when success comes around, everybody’s fat and everybody’s independent – when before, everybody’s supportive and tight. All championship teams go that way.
“That’s gonna be the ultimate destruction of this team.”
ENDS