From the Pressbox

Wanted to respond to David from Toronto, who asked about Michael Jordan’s first “retirement” from the NBA. That was October 1993, with the news breaking during an American League Championship Series game between the Blue Jays and Chicago. Jordan actually apologized to the White Sox as his announcement completely pushed their playoff pursuit off the front pages.

I put “retirement” in quotation marks, since its long been rumoured that he didn’t actually step back, but was suspended because his gambling was out of control.

David, I don’t believe it.

It’s not because I’m hopelessly naive. There is plenty of circumstantial evidence.

Jordan announced his retirement three days before the NBA concluded an investigation into his wagering and found no violation of league rules. That’s certainly convenient.

He also made a weird comment, saying, “If the urge comes back, if the Bulls will have me, if David Stern lets me ... I may come back.”

There was definitely reason to be concerned. A businessman named Richard Esquinas claimed Jordan lost $1.3 million to him in golf bets during a 10-day period in 1991. He had cancelled cheques as proof. In 1992, during a police investigation into the death of a man named Eddie Dow, three cheques from the superstar totalling $108,000 were found – more gambling losses.

The most damaging came when Jordan was forced to admit under oath that he’d lost $57,000 to a man named Slim Bouler, who was on trial on drug and money-laundering charges. Initially, Jordan claimed that money was a loan.
This is the kind of slippery slope referee Tim Donaghy couldn’t overcome. This stuff sounds bad, yes, but the truth is Jordan isn’t the only one to have this kind of problem. What’s missing is any connection to Jordan and NBA betting, which would have gotten him tossed from the league.

The reason I don’t believe it is that there is no way this could be kept a secret. Somebody would have leaked it. While Jordan has many friends in the sports world, he also has many enemies. For example, Jordan hated Jerry Krause, the former Bulls GM. Krause did not draft Jordan (Rod Thorn did), but he was the guy who traded up to get Scottie Pippen and put together the supporting cast that Jordan could never have won without. Jordan mockingly called the chubby Krause “crumbs” because of the donut specks that would get all over his suits.

Jordan, Pippen (quite possibly the most overrated player in NBA history) and Phil Jackson hated Krause. All three publicly blamed him for the Bulls’ breakup after title number six in 1998. Krause was eventually fired as the Bulls fell apart and he swore at a reporter during a media conference on Christmas Eve. (Something Chicago ownership didn’t find as funny as I did at the time.)

Anyway, the point of my rambling is that thanks to Jordan, Krause never got the credit he deserved for building arguably the biggest NBA dynasty since the Bill Russell Celtics. This is a guy who would have known if Jordan was suspended for gambling. You think he’d protect such a secret now?

Imagine how much money anyone could make by writing a book with some sort of proof. You don’t even need to hate Jordan to be seduced by that kind of cash. It’s been almost 14 years. I just don’t believe everybody could keep this kind of secret that long.

What’s more likely to me is that after his father’s death, Jordan needed a break. James Jordan, probably Michael’s closest friend, was murdered while taking a nap in his car three months prior to Retirement I. Initially, there was speculation James was killed because of Michael’s gambling.

Jordan needed to get away.

Still in his athletic prime, his XXXL-sixed ego (not a criticism, it’s what made him so great) and incredible competitiveness meant he had to do something. Baseball was that diversion. That year in the minors, there was coverage, but it wasn’t ridiculous. As it became clear he wasn’t good enough to be a major leaguer, he wasn’t a huge story for the first time in over a decade.

He liked that for a little while, then remembered what he was missing. Jordan absolutely cannot stand to lose or fail. I’ve never seen anyone who hates defeat as much as him. He was cut by his high school team as a freshman, something that motivated him for the rest of his playing career. There is a great story in the book The Jordan Rules about how he lost at table tennis to a Bulls teammate, then bought a set for his home and practised until he could not only beat that player, but everyone else.

Another legendary tale is of him almost coming to blows with head coach Doug Collins because Collins lost track of the score in a practice scrimmage. Yikes!

During his season with the Birmingham Barons, Sports Illustrated put him on the cover with the headline stating: “Bag it, Michael,” with an article claiming he was embarrassing himself by trying baseball. Jordan was so furious that he refused to speak to the magazine for years.

There was no doubt, though, that he was going to allow himself to be remembered that way. Being called a failure, missing the spotlight and finally recovering from his father’s senseless death brought him back.

If he’s got a problem, it’s that he can’t adjust to post-basketball life. It’s telling that he retired and unretired a second time (in Washington). Unlike Magic Johnson and Charles Barkley, who really seem to enjoy their post-playing lives, Jordan just can’t move on. He almost destroyed his reputation in Washington, making a series of personnel blunders before being embarrassingly thrown out of the organization. A manoeuvre, by the way, that caught him totally by surprise.

(If you want an excellent read about his time there and how badly it went, find the book Nothing Else Matters by Michael Leahy. Superbly reported.)

Honestly, I think it kills him that he’s nowhere near as successful as an executive as he was a player. It’s not enough that he’s a hugely successful pitchman, or that he can bring in hundreds of millions as an animated movie star or that he’s one of a few athletes to host Saturday Night Live.

Nothing in life fulfills him like winning on the court. That’s why I think he retired and unretired the first time. He wanted to get away. But he can’t.

==
People have asked me what it was like to deal with him. I didn’t have as much experience with him as others did, but there was certainly enough to form a reasonable opinion.

The thing I admired the most was that he understood people bought tickets to see him. The first game after the Raptors traded Damon Stoudamire was against the Bulls. You knew it was going to be a slaughter. Toronto had only eight available players, and couldn’t have won with all of them on the court at the same time.

It was a beatdown of Biblical proportions. I can’t remember what the score was at the half, but it wasn’t close. And it wasn’t going to get any closer. The Maginot Line was impenetrable compared to the Raptor defence.

The next bit I remember like it happened five minutes ago, because my media seat was next to the Bulls bench:
Phil Jackson walked over to Jordan and said, “Michael, why don’t you take the rest of the night off.”

Despite the Bulls’ dominance, Jordan had only three points. That’s how bad the Raptors were that night. Noted draft bust Joe Kleine was killing them, for God’s sake.

He turned to Jackson and said, “Not yet. I haven’t given these fans their show yet.”

I almost fell over. Jordan went out in the third quarter and scored 19 points, many of them spectacular. When the buzzer sounded, he walked over to Jackson and said, “Now, you can take me out.”

That’s outstanding. By the way, the Bulls won 126-83.

==
Other things I remember:

He was ridiculously competitive. Like I wrote earlier, I’ve never seen anyone like him. Didn’t matter if it was Utah in Game 6 of the Final or the 5-26 Clippers in January. He wanted to win.

He could use anything as motivation. Former Knick coach Jeff Van Gundy once called Jordan a “con man” because he would talk to guys during free throws and sneak by them with the conversation as a distraction. He didn’t say it meanly. It was an observation. Whoops. Next time the two teams met, Jordan blitzed them for something like 45.

He never got enough credit for how good he was defensively. He took enormous pride in shutting other guys down.
It didn’t matter where you were in relation to Jordan. If you asked him a question, whether in a scrum or a formal gathering, he looked you right in the eye.

And, he was one of the first, if not the first, to refuse to talk to the media until he was impeccably dressed. It would take him a long time to be ready. I once asked him about it, and he said he always wanted to look first-class in public. He passed this advice onto Alex Rodriguez, among others.

==
To wrap, the guy from the Yukon who told me to fix my hair and write about something I know is now my friends’ favourite poster.

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