Blood on the Horns: The long strange ride of Michael Jordan’s Chicago Bulls

Blood on the Horns: The Long Strange Ride of Michael Jordan’s Chicago Bulls by Roland Lazenby © Copyright 2014 Diversion Book. THE REAL LAST DANCE Looking back 25 years after Jordan’s final Championship In 2020, my wife digitized the many cassette …

Blood on the Horns: The Long Strange Ride of Michael Jordan’s Chicago Bulls by Roland Lazenby © Copyright 2014 Diversion Book.

THE REAL LAST DANCE
Looking back 25 years after Jordan’s final Championship

In 2020, my wife digitized the many cassette tapes of my interviews from 35 years of writing about pro basketball. In there was a gem I had never listened to, from an April 1991 game between the Washington Bullets and the Lakers. Jerry Krause, the Bulls GM at the time, had worked for both organizations as a scout and now some years later had come to the game in Washington in a moment of immense pride, to quietly show off a bit and perhaps even gloat.

His Bulls were playing very well that spring and seemed on the brink doing great things.

A short, odd little fat guy—Michael Jordan had famously nicknamed him ‘Crumbs’ for the evidence of his snacks often found on his shirts—Krause had spent years suffering ridicule while knocking around as a scout in pro basketball, a business of very large men.

In the 1970s, Krause had finally reached what seemed like the pinnacle when he was named GM of the Bulls, only to be fired after a few weeks on the job.

Like that, he had gone from a crowning achievement to immense public ridicule. If it seemed everybody in his hometown Chicago was laughing at him, that’s only because they were.

Yet by 1985, the Bulls were something of a laughingstock themselves, and financial whiz Jerry Reinsdorf was able to buy them for a pittance, about $14 million.

Reinsdorf promptly stunned fans by hiring Krause to be his GM, and the short, little fat guy set about rebuilding the team.

This time Krause had a vision, albeit an odd one. He wanted to hire a retired college coach, Tex Winter, who had long been the proponent of a quirky offense, the triangle, or triple-post.

JEFF HAYNES/AFP via Getty Images

More important, Krause wanted to hire a young goofball named Phil Jackson as his head coach with the idea that Winter would mentor him to greatness.

It would take a while to get Jackson in place, in part because he had written a memoir about playing for the Knicks in which he talked about taking LSD on the beach in California after New York defeated the Lakers for the 1973 NBA title.

Nobody wanted to hire a coach who took LSD, but Krause paid the matter no mind. He had known Jackson for a decade and saw his odd genius.

Krause would also become excited about several players including a relatively obscure prospect out of Central Arkansas named Scottie Pippen.

The Bulls struggled for some time to overcome the Bad Boy Pistons, but in that late April 1991 Chicago finally seemed on the way to doing that.

Thus, Krause stood alone outside the Bullets locker room that night, seemingly waiting for reporters to notice him and interview him. I recall almost feeling sorry for him standing there and recorded about five minutes with him that night as Krause spoke grandly of his own work in assembling a team around the young superstar Jordan.

It was a conversation I had frankly forgotten until a quarter century later when it literally leapt out from that newly digitized archive.

Sure enough, Krause’s instincts had been spot on. It had all fallen in place for Jordan, Pippen, Jackson, Winter and their Bulls. They would win the ’91 championship, then five more over the next seven seasons.

Listening to that tape of Krause at the brink of their greatness and knowing how it would all go from that early moment of his eager pride to a bad end, how all the happy days would evaporate in 1998 in a very public and dramatic ugliness, I was struck with an overwhelming sadness.

I later did an extensive interview with Krause on the tenth anniversary in 2008 when he told me he had videotape of every game played in the championship years.

He had not viewed them even once, he told me with great bitterness.

AP Photo/Beth A. Keiser

THAT LAST DANCE

By that 1998 season, after so much success, the Bulls were caught in the throes of a non-sensical struggle for control of the team, with Jackson, Jordan and Pippen pitted against Krause, who announced before the season began that Jackson would not be allowed to return as coach in the fall of 1998.

“This is it,” Krause had said. “Phil and I know it. We all know it.”

In announcing his move, Krause did not identify exactly what had led to Jackson’s scheduled departure, but the relationship between the coach and GM had obviously turned from love and respect to hatred.

The son of two fundamentalist preachers, Phil Jackson had been heavily influenced by the “rapture” or the idea of the end times. Thus, he always seemed to think in terms of the “last” this or that. He had dubbed the showdown with Krause “the Last Dance.” Later, as coach of the Lakers he would write a book about his battles with Kobe Bryant and call it the “Last Season.”

It was a good name for the events in Chicago in 1998.

No matter where he played, the buildings virtually sparkled for Jordan that season. Each game, as he stepped onto the floor for introductions, he was greeted by the flashes of a thousand small cameras. The phenomenon was most brilliant at the United Center in Chicago, where the introductions would build to a crescendo of noise and light until Jordan’s name was called as the fifth starter, and the arena became a pulsating strobe. Later, at the opening tip, these same lights would again flicker furiously. But they were most maddening during free throws, when Jordan went to the line, and the rows of fans behind the basket would break into a dizzying twinkle, bringing to mind a mirror ball at a junior prom.

In one of our several one-on-one interviews that season, I asked Jordan how he could possibly shoot free throws under the conditions, he smiled and replied, “I got used to that a long time ago.”

He had always been a superstar who understood and accommodated his fans. That was particularly true that spring, as indications grew that it could well be his last. The camera lights were by far the warmest measure of his popularity. Each time he made a spectacular play, Michael Jordan’s world glittered, a twinkling firmament of adulation that served as a backdrop for his every move.

Despite all the trappings of the moment, my numerous conversations with Krause revealed that the GM was eager to end the Jordan era so that he could prove that he could rebuild the team without Jordan. I thought he was crazy.

I in turn went to Jordan to ask why they all couldn’t just sit down and talk out their differences. He replied that wouldn’t be possible because Krause had gotten in the way of winning too often.

I realized then that Jordan was confident he would defeat Krause just as he had overcome the entire NBA.

Jordan was wrong, of course. He did not understand just how badly Jackson wanted to get away from Krause, that the coach would “ride off into the sunset” at the end of the season.

Jordan also couldn’t fathom that Jerry Reinsdorf—who had realized hundreds of millions in wealth with the growth of the Bulls by then—didn’t want to give Pippen a large contract, even though the forward had been underpaid for years and had been a magnificent player for the team.

As it sadly unfolded, Jackson would leave, Pippen would be traded, Jordan would retire, and Krause would fail miserably in his attempts to rebuild the team and eventually be fired.

It would indeed prove to be the Last Dance for both Krause and Jordan.

I interviewed Krause extensively again in 2012. By then he had grown to accept everything that had come to pass.

“It’s past history,” he said. “It’s done. Phil is a great coach. For a long time, he was very easy to work with. Then he was not so easy. That’s life. Things change. Phil is Phil. I’m proud I hired him.”

Blood on the Horns: The Long Strange Ride of Michael Jordan’s Chicago Bulls by Roland Lazenby © Copyright 2014 Diversion Book.

Magic: The Life of Earvin ‘Magic’ Johnson

Magic: The Life of Earvin ‘Magic’ Johnson by Roland Lazenby © Copyright 2023 Full Court Press, Inc. By March 1990, Jerry West had had a good long look at Magic Johnson, had witnessed it all up close, first the transformation Johnson had brought to …

Magic: The Life of Earvin ‘Magic’ Johnson by Roland Lazenby © Copyright 2023 Full Court Press, Inc.

By March 1990, Jerry West had had a good long look at Magic Johnson, had witnessed it all up close, first the transformation Johnson had brought to the Los Angeles Lakers a decade earlier, and then all that followed: the championships, the MVP seasons and performances, the virtual onslaught of victory and success, the building-pumping celebrations at timeouts after every fast-break run, the high fives and hugs and general glee that shook both Los Angeles and the National Basketball Association out of the deep slumber and ennui that had settled over the American pro game like a blanket in the late 1970s.

All that Jerry West had witnessed unfolded in sharp contrast to his own Hall of Fame career that saw West and his Lakers teammates suffer through the agony of seven losses in the league’s championship series between 1962 and 1970 only to finally succeed on the eighth attempt, a seemingly joyless victory in 1972 that had been met by numbness and confusion and conflict in the locker room afterward.

With all the winning in the 1980s, Johnson had helped a bit to shoo away the pesky ghosts and demons that for far too long occupied the belfry of Jerry West’s personal torment. Johnson and West had quietly formed a partnership over the years, the executive’s agony balanced by Johnson’s great joy and success.

That contrast, in part, was the reason this writer had traveled that March of 1990 to interview West over two days in a hotel room in Dallas, where West had gone to scout college basketball talent in search of the next good player for the team.

By that time, West, the self-appointed guardian of the Lakers, was on his way to becoming what many considered the game’s top front office figure. West “could spot talent through the window of a moving train,” L.A. Times columnist Jim Murray would declare during the era.

West, indeed, was a manic genius and a nearly impossible perfectionist.

He could see so many things in the furious action on the court and was known as an “active” general manager, the kind who never hesitated to address problems he saw with Lakers players. Just how “active” was West? One former Lakers head coach, Del Harris, explained in a 2004 interview that the team was never really his, but Jerry’s.

Earvin ‘Magic’ Johnson drives to the basket to make a layup shot over Blair Rassmussen of the Denver Nuggets during their NBA Pacific Division basketball game on 21st November 1990 at The Forum arena in Inglewood. The Lakers won the game 141 – 121. (Photo by Stephen Dunn/Allsport/Getty Images)

During the Showtime era, West the GM was both vigilant and instructive with so many players, but he revealed over that weekend in 1990 that over the years he had hardly ever said a word to Johnson about his play and even then only if he thought Johnson was becoming “predictable.”

The great Magic predictable? You might just as well have accused Marilyn Monroe of lacking her steamy charm.

At that moment in 1990, Magic Johnson was perhaps the sporting world’s most widely admired and successful star. Over the years, it seemed that just about everybody had come to love Magic. And that had included a high school junior in Wilmington, North Carolina, way back in 1980, by the name of Mike Jordan.

Yes, as a teen, the once and future king of basketball had had one true idol—Magic Johnson. Even then, Jordan’s competitive nature rendered him absolutely unsparing in his disdain for rivals and other players. Yet Jordan tried to mimic so many things he saw in Johnson’s play that for a time he even fancied himself a point guard, attempting in high school practice each day the no-look passes and brilliant fast-break play of his idol.

How great was the infatuation? Jordan gave himself the nickname “Magic Mike” and by his senior year in high school had a vanity plate by that same title for his very first car. Jordan drove all over his hometown proudly telling the world that he was Magic Mike. Yet when Jordan got to the University of North Carolina as a freshman the next fall, coach Dean Smith promptly advised him to lose the nickname.

There was only one Magic, Smith supposedly explained.

Jordan, of course, went on from there to become what fans worldwide would call “the God of basketball.”

At times over his career, Johnson himself had occupied a similar roost in the hierarchy of the sport. In fact, his accomplishments and infectious style of play defined the great Showtime era of Lakers basketball with a team that so often seemed to play beyond the reach of everybody else. As such, Johnson came to occupy a status as the game’s last great analog star, one who finished his playing career in the early 1990s only to watch the digital world rapidly overtake the game as well as its messaging and marketing, just in time to lift up that kid from Wilmington who once considered himself Magic Mike. These circumstances help explain a belief among many serious students of the game as well as among many, many fans, that Magic Johnson, along with Jordan and others, should be in the conversation as perhaps the greatest basketball player of all time.

“I never quite understood why he’s never been involved in the conversations for the greatest player ever, what he brought to the game,” remarked longtime NBA coach Alvin Gentry, a comment echoed many times over by numerous veteran observers of American pro basketball.

The argument goes that if Michael Jordan is indeed the so-called God of Basketball, at the very least, Johnson is the Other God, one who accomplished so much in addition to presiding over what many consider to be the greatest era in the history of the game, the 1980s.

For others, such lofty status seems an odd place for a player who, by his own admission, never jumped all that high; who was considered to have a suspect jump shot; who by far prized winning over scoring or acrobatics, who came into the NBA with what many experts considered a weak left hand, a serious limitation for anyone attempting to survive as a point guard in the league, especially a tall person with an impossibly high dribble ripe for the plucking.

“I still had doubts about myself,” Johnson himself would confess, looking back on his early days as a rookie in 1979. “I wasn’t sure I could make it in this league.”

Which, in turn, helps explain why that March of 1990, long after he had seen it all, Jerry West revealed that he wasn’t convinced in 1979 that the Lakers should have taken Magic Johnson as the number one overall pick in the NBA draft.

Speaking for recorded interviews, West said Johnson’s great run of leadership and success would remind him of a conclusion about scouting talent: You could see what players could do on the floor, their physical capabilities, but you couldn’t always read their hearts.

“I thought he would be a very good player,” West admitted. “I had no idea he would get to the level that he did. No idea. But, see, you don’t know what’s inside of people. Physically, you can see what they can do on the court. The things you could see you loved. But you wondered where he was going to play in the NBA, how he would be able to do it.”

That comment then pretty much summed it up: Earvin “Magic” Johnson was defined as that unseen quality, that great mystery of human performance that made the business of talent scouting seem so uncertain.

West paused a moment in the interview, searching for an answer to his own question about Johnson’s greatness, then added, “Through hard work, he just willed himself to take his game to another level. I don’t think anyone knew he had that kind of greatness in him. The athletic ability is the easiest thing to see, but it does not constitute what a great basketball player is.”

Asked to expound on greatness, West observed that while there were a number of very good players at any given time in pro basketball, truly great players could be counted on one hand.

Looking back on the 1980s, West said, “Obviously Magic Johnson is one of them. Larry Bird. “Obviously Michael Jordan,” West added, then let the thought trail off from there.

The tremendous challenge to being a truly great player is hard for the public to understand or even see, West finally offered. “It is a burden.”

As for the nature of Johnson’s particular greatness, West said, “It’s like a macho thing. Magic Johnson had a macho-ness that came out in him, a desire that ‘No one is gonna beat me.’ ”

Johnson would display that quality night after night over many seasons, that vast intangible factor, prima facie evidence that he possessed perhaps the biggest heart in the history of a game of very big hearts.

Magic: The Life of Earvin ‘Magic’ Johnson by Roland Lazenby © Copyright 2023 Full Court Press, Inc.

Earl the Twirl: My life in basketball

From Earl the Twirl: My Life in Basketball © 2024 Earl Cureton and Jake Uitti by permission of McFarland . Earl Cureton: “I don’t remember the exact time I made it into Houston, maybe around 3:30 or 4 in the afternoon Texas time. But I was ready. A …

From Earl the Twirl: My Life in Basketball © 2024 Earl Cureton and Jake Uitti by permission of McFarland.

Earl Cureton: “I don’t remember the exact time I made it into Houston, maybe around 3:30 or 4 in the afternoon Texas time. But I was ready. A team assistant coach, Larry Smith, picked me up. His nickname was “Mr. Mean,” but he was great to me. After we shook hands, I told him I had to go to baggage claim to get my stuff. He said, “Earl, there’s no time to wait for the bags. We have to go now.” All I had was my carry-on in my hand. He said, “We’ll get someone to get your stuff later. Let’s go!” So, I jumped in a car with him, and we went straight to the arena. By the time I made it to the locker room in Houston, the rest of the team was already on the court warming up. The team had my jersey all ready, name printed on the back and everything, hanging in a locker. I jumped into the uniform, number 35, warmups and all, and I got a quick physical examination from the doctors right there in the locker room.

I was cleared to play, so I made my way out to the court. I went directly to the bench, watching the players as the early minutes of the game ticked away. When the first time-out was called and the Houston players came toward the bench, I came out and high-fived them. They all looked at me like, “Who is the heck this guy?” I hadn’t even been introduced to anyone yet and I was already trying to bring the positive energy. The team brought me my contract while I was on the bench and I turned around and signed it as slyly as I could, trying to avoid any possible TV cameras. It was April 21, 1994, and I was officially back in the NBA.

The team’s coach Rudy Tomjanovich asked me if I could give them a few minutes that first night and I said, “Sure can!” After all that, I knew I could give them a few, even if it made me puke in the locker room later.

As it turned out, the Rockets didn’t need me in that game. The team flew out to Dallas for the next game that night after the one we played. But I still didn’t have any clothes! So, waking up the next morning and before the next game, I called a lady friend I knew out there in Dallas and asked for some help. She picked me up at 9 in the morning to go shopping so I could get something to wear.

When she picked me up, though, Rudy saw me get into her car and he shook his head as if I was on my way to a booty call or something. I told him, “Coach! I didn’t get my luggage! I don’t have any clothes, no underwear or anything!” I’d later tell him I was spoken for, with Judith at home.

Rudy had a good laugh about it all. He is from Michigan, used to play at St. Cecilia, so we had a bond even beyond the Rockets. With my lady friend I went and got what I needed from the store. And that night in the game, Coach T subbed me in and I got my first run with the Rockets. I played 11 minutes in that game against Dallas, grabbing three rebounds. And even though we lost, playing with the team felt right. In a strange way, it felt like I’d been playing with these guys my whole life. Like the Hornets a few years before, it felt like family.

I knew how to come off the bench, knew how to stick to my role. That’s a major way to succeed in the league, especially if you’re not a star, and I’d been doing it most of my career, especially in the more recent years. I knew how to box out, stick my elbows into guys, and create space. It was what the team needed when Dream [Hakeem Olajuwon] was on the bench. For the last game of the regular season, we played in Denver, and I got in the game to play 19 minutes.

I grabbed nine rebounds (four offensive) and scored four points, too. Not bad for a guy who was playing in the YMCA like a week before!

Then the playoffs began. In the first round, I didn’t play very much—heck, I was still learning the playbook. The team didn’t much need me, anyway. We were the West’s No. 2 seed, and we played Portland in the first round. We beat the Trailblazers 3–1. The West’s No. 1 seed, the Seattle SuperSonics, didn’t have it so good. They ended up losing in the first round, which took out one of our top competitors. Basketball fans will remember Denver’s Dikembe Mutombo holding the basketball under the basket at the end of that series, lying on his back, in a joyous, emotional celebration. Mutombo’s Denver squad was the first No. 8 seed to beat a No. 1 seed in NBA history. They did it in five games while, simultaneously, making our route to the Finals that much easier.

Denver later lost to Utah in the next round, their joy ultimately short-lived. In our next round series, we played Phoenix. In that one, my teammate Carl Herrera went down with an injury, dislocating his shoulder, which meant I had to step up and play much bigger minutes. Carl was a talented power forward. He was 6’9″ and while his numbers were never huge, he knew how to do a lot of things well that helped a team win. Strangely, we went down 0–2 to Charles Barkley and Phoenix, losing the second game in overtime. But we won the next three, to take a 3–2 series lead. We lost to them in game six and then we won in game 7. To be thrown into a playoff series with only two regular-season games to get my legs and learn the offense is quite a challenge. Thankfully, Dream did so much for us that most of the guys didn’t have to worry too much on the offensive end.

Our plays pretty much involved throwing the ball to Dream and letting him go to work. He was too good and would score nearly every time if the opposing team didn’t double-team him. And if they did, we had shooters like veteran Kenny Smith, rookie Sam Cassell, bench leader Mario Elie, NBA icon Robert “Big Shot Bob” Horry, the fiery Vernon Maxwell and more who could shoot the long ball with the best of ’em. We also had Otis Thorpe, the big fella, who would roll to the rim for an easy dunk if he had the space. Even our backup point guard Scott Brooks could put it in the basket if need be.

Sam Cassell in particular was crucial for us that series. He was a tough guy from Baltimore. I remember before one game in the playoffs that season, he came on the bus in just his sweats. No suit. He was a rookie, but a cocky one. He had a pillowcase with all his gear in it. When he got on the bus, he said to the whole team, all of us dressed in some of our finest threads, “I don’t know where the fuck y’all going, but I’m going to play. I ain’t going to party.”

Sure enough we won that game, Sam hitting huge shot after huge shot. But even with all his work, it was Hakeem who carried us for the lion’s share of the series.

BOB STRONG/AFP via Getty Images

With Dream that dominant, all we had to do was make good decisions with the ball and where we cut without it, and he’d do the rest. Dream was so good that he didn’t need another all-star on the team to succeed. That season, he won the regular season MVP, Defensive Player of the Year and, later, in the Finals, he would win the coveted Finals MVP. That’s an impossibly good season. Maybe the best for a player ever.

Thankfully, I was able to come in and fit in and help where I was needed. The team leaned on me especially when Carl went down. I played well against Phoenix, and, against Utah in the Western Conference Finals, I banged bodies with Karl Malone, making him work hard for his shots. We beat the Jazz 4–1. When Dream hit the clinching shot against Utah, I ran to him from the bench and embraced the man of the hour.

I’d played with Moses Malone and other greats. But, to me, in that moment, Dream was the best big man ever to do it. Sports Illustrated quoted me after the game when I said, “All Dream’s energy was gone, but he knew we needed him to take that shot. And when he made it, I came out to get him, because I knew it had come straight from his heart.”

When we got to the NBA Finals, Carl came back from his injury and I was more than happy, for the sake of team chemistry, to let him take back his role in the rotation. When he came back, he told me, “I’m worried about my job.” I said, “You don’t have to worry, Carl. I want to win this ring.” I didn’t play much in the Finals against our opponents, the New York Knicks, but I knew I helped the team get there in important ways. In fact, Dream said as much. In a press conference, he told reporters that the team benefited from my presence big time. He gave me a lot of props, which felt incredible to be seen in that way. I was proud, knowing I did all I could to help the Rockets, bringing championship experience and a willingness to contribute. Heck, going into the Finals, I was the only one on the team with a ring.

In the Finals, my old friend Doug Collins announced the series. It’s funny how life can come that way. Doug, who let me go in Chicago, was now out of a job, himself, and here he was talking about me in the Finals, talking about how I was one of the oldest players in the league, still doing it. I couldn’t help but smile at that one. But beyond anything with basketball that series, one of the biggest things people remember is the infamous white Ford Bronco.

During the fifth game in the Finals, on June 17, famed football star OJ Simpson fled down a southern California highway in that white Ford Bronco, making international news. As much as we didn’t want it to affect us for the rest of the series, it was a distraction. Nobody knew what was happening. We lost that game and in the locker-room, we tried to figure out what everyone was buzzing about in the stands. As it turned out, there’d been two murders and Simpson was a suspect. Today, everyone knows now how that all played out.

To that point, Hakeem had enjoyed a long career in the NBA, drafted in the same year as Michael Jordan. He was picked first overall in 1984. He finished his career a 12-time all-star, averaging well over 20 points in his first 13 seasons. But he’d never made it over the hump in the Finals.

After getting out of the Western Conference, we met the Knicks. They even went up 3–2 in the series against us. And all the while I was writing a column for the Houston newspaper called “Earl’s Pearls,” rattling off my thoughts. When the series started, we won the first game 85–78. New York won the second 91–83. We won the third 93–89. Then New York won the next two 91–82 and 91–84. But we won game six by two points, 86–84. In that one, New York’s John Starks, one of his team’s best players and a former grocery bagger, had one of his best games, scoring 27 points on 9 of 18 shooting.

Spike Lee, the Knicks’ legendary fan and movie director, yelled at us the entire series from the sidelines. I’d met Spike years before, introduced to him by the great Knick, Bernard King. We’d met at a restaurant in New York, Jazzabell’s Soul Food. At the time he was an up-and-comer. Now, in ’94, he was a film giant. But he couldn’t do much for the Knicks, except shout from the sidelines behind his big-rimmed glasses. Spike had recognized me during the series, yelling, “Earl the Twirl!” Dr. J was around those Finals too, doing some television. I made sure to say hello to him. It turned out, for one broadcast, he’d forgotten his dress shoes. Knowing we wore the same size, 15, he asked if I had an extra pair. I obliged.

Back to the Finals: in the series-deciding Game 7, everything was close, but then, just one game removed from his highlight game six heroics, Starks, the former CBA player, the star shooting guard for the team, had maybe his worst game ever, going just 2 for 18 and 0 for 11 from three-point range. He just kept shooting and missing. I felt bad for him, but his failure was, in the end, our triumph. We took the deciding game, 90–84, in Houston, in front of our 16,611 fans. When the final buzzer sounded, I looked for Judith.

Dream, who I’d backed up in the playoffs for about 10 minutes per game, had outdueled the Knicks’ star, center Patrick Ewing. Due to his play, we’d won. I’d won my second ring. The first ring came in a sweep, now the second had come in seven hard-fought games. Rollercoasters.

In our celebration, the champagne flowed like water. It was special for me because I knew I’d contributed to a Finals win at a time when I could have easily been out of the league. I hadn’t just sat my butt on the bench. I was helpful, especially against Phoenix and Utah, with Carl out.

You need players like me to win big. It may not have worked out with the Clippers, Bulls or Hornets, but all those teams weren’t ready to win, anyway.

With Philly, I was a necessary piece. In Detroit, I helped the team figure out their identity. Now, in Houston, I was the final piece to a championship-winning puzzle. I’d even gotten a call from Magic during the Finals to head out on his touring team but I’d had to decline. History awaited. And for Dream to later say he doesn’t know what the team would have done without me made it that much sweeter.

For all those who doubted me, how about that one? Now I had the distinction of being a two-time NBA champion, with rings earned nearly a dozen years apart. Now, I was 36 years old and feeling like a kid again.

When we got our rings, they read, “Clutch City.” That’s right.”

From Earl the Twirl: My Life in Basketball © 2024 Earl Cureton and Jake Uitti by permission of McFarland.

https://www.jakeuitti.com

Mark Termini: Words to Negotiate By

Excerpted from the new book Words to Negotiate By (Copyright © MTA Publishing, 2023). Words to Negotiate By is the first publication from multibillion-dollar sports attorney and agent Mark Termini. Over the course of his career, Mark Termini has …

Excerpted from the new book Words to Negotiate By (Copyright © MTA Publishing, 2023).

Words to Negotiate By is the first publication from multibillion-dollar sports attorney and agent Mark Termini. Over the course of his career, Mark Termini has negotiated more than $2 billion in professional sports contracts. From Ron Harper, Jim Jackson, Rod Strickland, Kevin Edwards, Earl Boykins, Calvin Booth, Damon Jones, and Kosta Koufos to Eric Bledsoe, Tristan Thompson, LeBron James, Ben Simmons, J.R. Smith, John Wall, and Draymond Green, Mark Termini has personally devised and negotiated some of the most impactful contracts (and holdouts) in NBA history.

You can find more information about Words to Negotiate By at marktermini.com and on Amazon, where individual copies are available for purchase.

Preferred pricing is available for volume orders of Words to Negotiate By. To place a volume order, please call (440) 717-1517 or email wtnb@mta-books.com.

Game Changer: An insider’s story of the Sonics’ resurgence, the Trail Blazers’ turnaround…

Excerpted from Game Changer An Insider’s Story of the Sonics’ Resurgence, the Trail Blazers’ Turnaround, and the Deal that Saved the Seahawks, published on October 10, 2023 by Flash Point. Though I don’t believe that Dunleavy had “the toughest job …

Excerpted from Game Changer An Insider’s Story of the Sonics’ Resurgence, the Trail Blazers’ Turnaround, and the Deal that Saved the Seahawks, published on October 10, 2023 by Flash Point.

Though I don’t believe that Dunleavy had “the toughest job in the NBA,” I will concede that he had some hot heads on his team, and hot heads are hard to coach. Rasheed Wallace, for example,  set a league record in 1999-2000 by getting 38 technical fouls. The next year, he broke his own single-season record by getting 41 technicals in 80 games. Rasheed had a notoriously quick temper, and once you get a reputation for technical fouls, refs are quicker to call them.

I’ll never forget the time Rasheed got a technical for looking at NBA official Ron Garretson the wrong way – literally. Another time, he tossed the ball toward a ref after the official made a questionable call. Sheed claimed he was just giving the ball to the ref. Another official on the floor saw it differently, came running from the other end of the court, called Sheed for a “tech,” then ejected him for mouthing off about it. After the game, Rasheed spotted the ref who threw him out of the game, Tim Donaghy, and got in one more dig. The ensuing altercation made a bad situation worse for Rasheed. The NBA suspended him for seven games and fined him about $1.3 million. (Years later, Tim Donaghy served 15 months in prison time after pleading guilty to federal charges in a gambling scandal, admitting to taking thousands of dollars from a professional gambler for inside tips on games and other misdeeds.)

Rasheed’s wealth of technical fouls led to a rule change that virtually assures his record will never be broken. Since 2006, NBA players automatically get suspended for one game without pay after receiving 16 technical fouls. After that point, players receive the same suspension for each additional technical foul. Rasheed eased up later on in his career, but by the time he retired, he ranked third in NBA history with 317 technicals, behind Charles Barkley (329) and Karl Malone (332). Though it’s not a statistic players brag about, the list of the league’s 10 most prolific technical foulers includes some of the best ballers of all time: Gary Payton ranks fourth (250), Dennis Rodman fifth (212), Russell Westbrook sixth (173), Kevin Garnett seventh (172), Kobe Bryant eighth (166), Shaquille O’Neal ninth (150), and Jermaine O’Neal 10th (146).

Technical fouls aren’t necessarily a bad thing. They can motivate individual players and ignite the whole team. The other team might make one free-throw, but that extra point often pales in comparison to the jolt of energy that fires up a team rallying around the teammate who got the technical. That said, there was no justification for Rasheed getting a “T” every other game.

There was a lot more to Rasheed than his hot temper. He was a smart guy and fiercely loyal to his teammates. Because he was one of our best players, the media always wanted to talk to him after games. But he didn’t want to talk to them. He didn’t like how they rarely asked him about basketball, and how they typecast him and most of his teammates as “Jail Blazers.” Over and over, the NBA fined him for refusing to talk to the media.

One time, I called him into my office and said, “Sheed, this is a lose-lose. You just got fined another $30,000. We just got fined $30,000, and the league is threatening to suspend you.” Then I offered him some advice. “Look, just because you’re being interviewed at a post-game press conference, you don’t have to answer every single question. You certainly don’t have to answer it the way they’re hoping you will. You can control the narrative. If they ask you a question you don’t like, you can say, ‘I don’t know about that, but I can tell you this …’ Or you can talk up how well one of your teammates played. You can just answer in a positive way.’”

He looked puzzled, and asked, “What do you mean?”

“Well,” I said, “they might say, ‘Hey, Rasheed, we heard one of your teammates was smoking dope last week’ right after we won a playoff game. And you can say, ‘Hey, I’d like to talk about the game. It was amazing. Both teams played hard. It was really well-fought.’”

So, he went into the press conference and answered every single question, 10 or 20 of them, the exact same way: “Hey, man. Both teams played hard.”

“Rasheed, what was that play designed in the last couple minutes?”

“Hey, man … both teams played hard.”

“Rasheed, what were you thinking when so- and- so blocked that shot?”

“Hey, my man, both teams played hard.”

It became national news. Rasheed got fined for it. And so did the Blazers.

To this day, every now and then, a professional athlete who’s dodging a question will wink and say, “Hey, my man, both teams played hard.”

Another Rasheed Wallace quote became the stuff of NBA legend. Every time an opponent he fouled missed a free throw, he’d shout “Ball don’t lie!” Depending on the referee, he might get a technical for that — or thrown out of the game entirely.

I loved Rasheed. His teammates did, too, though some grew tired of all the negative attention his tantrums generated.

Life in the G: Minor league basketball and the relentless pursuit of the NBA

Zeroing in on the G League’s Birmingham Squadron and four of its players – Jared Harper, Joe Young, Zylan Cheatham, and Malcolm Hill – during the historic 2021-22 season, Life in the G: Minor League Basketball and the Relentless Pursuit of the NBA …

Zeroing in on the G League’s Birmingham Squadron and four of its players – Jared Harper, Joe Young, Zylan Cheatham, and Malcolm Hill – during the historic 2021-22 season, Life in the G: Minor League Basketball and the Relentless Pursuit of the NBA details the relentless pursuit of the NBA dream. This excerpt focuses on the assignment of NBA players to the G League.

“You can’t play where you want to go if you’re not perceived as somebody who just plays hard as shit,” head coach Ryan Pannone said.

Once again, the Squadron had lost. And once again, Pannone found himself stressing the same message in the ensuing film session. An embarrassing clip played on the screen – after an ugly turnover, no one on the team had hustled back on defense.

“Look at the guys who have made it from here to the NBA,” Pannone continued. “Alex Caruso… I’m sure everybody saw the quote he had.”

Player-development coach Andrew Warren pulled it up on his phone and read it aloud. “The stuff I do is not always glamorous,” Caruso, the Chicago Bulls guard and former G Leaguer, had told reporters. “It’s stuff that wins basketball games. That’s what I love doing – winning.”

At 2-5, clearly Squadron players weren’t doing the winning stuff, like hustling back on defense after an ugly turnover. “It’s the little things that win games that truly fucking matter,” Pannone said. “You can go down the line of the guys who have made it.”

Pannone was right. If you performed such an exercise, you would find a lot of guys just like Caruso – gritty, tough, reliable, blue-collar players: Gary Payton II, Robert Covington, Danny Green, Fred VanVleet, Jonathon Simmons.

Before film ended and practice began, Pannone announced that the Pelicans would be assigning three players for the team’s next game (also against the Mexico City Capitanes): third-year center Jaxson Hayes, rookie forward Trey Murphy III, and undrafted two-way guard Jose Alvarado. “This is the G League,” Pannone said. In other words, this is what you should expect. “I understand how that impacts some of you individually.” Rotations would change. Minutes would decrease for certain players. Hayes and Murphy would be inserted into the starting lineup, replacing Malcolm Hill and James Banks. Alvarado would get extended run off the bench, cutting into Joe Young’s playing time.

Some frustration was to be expected in these situations. Assignments often brought tension to G League locker rooms—even more so in the D-League days, when there were fewer one-to-one affiliations and teams were shared among multiple NBA franchises. Back then, D-League coaches had to earn the trust of various NBA front offices.

“As a D-League team, you had to develop relationships—you may have had two or three NBA teams that worked with you,” said Jay Humphries, who coached the Reno Bighorns from 2008 to 2010. “But you had to develop a relationship with the management of the NBA team to make them comfortable. And typically during that time, when a player was brought down to your team, he would play a majority of the minutes, plays were going to be really focused on him and [based on] the conversations that you’ve had with the coaches, management, general manager of the team that’s sending him down about working on the things that he needs to get back.”

Even as the D-League evolved into the G League, the expectation remained that assignment players, or two-way players, would receive ample opportunity to shine, regardless of how that impacted others on the roster. It created a strange dynamic. An awkward dynamic. “I had a really positive experience in Sioux Falls. To be honest with you, I think part of that was the fact that I was on a two-way,” Miami Heat guard Duncan Robinson, who played thirty-three games with the Sioux Falls Skyforce in 2018–19, said. “I think it’s a little bit different. Not that I got preferential treatment, but I was kind of in and out, especially toward the second half of the year, and when I was in Sioux Falls and playing with the team, I was featured a lot on offense, plays were run for me, and all that sort of stuff. I’m very aware that I was in a privileged position relative to some of my peers out there.”

In some cases, assignment players did receive forms of preferential treatment, even when it wasn’t requested. “I remember on normal planes, as an NBA player, I would get first class, but the other guys, they would be in eco,” said former Houston Rockets center Clint Capela, who was assigned to the Rio Grande Valley Vipers during the 2014–15 season. “Sometimes I felt kind of weird. For some players in the U.S., when they’re like top players or whatever, it’s normal for them to have special favors. But for me, where I’m from in Europe, usually if we’re on the same team, everybody is treated equally. I felt kind of weird to be the only one in first class, the only one with my own [hotel] room, and I remember my per diem was more than everybody else’s too.”

Capela tried to support his teammates however he could, paying for dinners and passing on insights about the NBA. His mindset on the court, though, was to dominate everyone. “I felt that I had a duty to prove myself, to prove that I deserve to have that kind of sticker on my back that I’m an NBA player, even though I was younger,” he said. “I always went hard at practice, made sure to dominate every single time, and to also let the Houston Rockets know that every time I go out there and play, they have to pay attention also. I also felt that I had that duty to be dominant all the time.”

That was a mentality shared by most assignment players. Coming from the NBA, those players were supposed to be better than everybody else. “I do think that when you’re sent down from your NBA team, that is the attitude that you have to have in order to not stay there,” Humphries said. “I don’t belong here with these guys.” Of course, if it leaned more toward cocky than confident and inspired a selfish approach on the floor, that attitude had the potential to spark conflict. Squeaky Johnson even recalled one player who was sent down to the Austin Toros getting into an argument with a coach and shouting, “I make more money than you!” Which, to be fair, was definitely true.

Mix some or all of these aspects together – the mindset of assignment players, the minutes they took from everyday G Leaguers, the preferential treatment they sometimes received – and the results could be… interesting. Or, as longtime G Leaguer Scotty Hopson put it with a laugh, “That’s a recipe for a disaster.” Hopson had experienced both sides of the arrangement; he had been the G Leaguer whose minutes were reduced due to the transfer of an assignment player, and the assignment player who took minutes from a G Leaguer.

“Now when I see somebody not handling it the way I would, I go say something,” Hopson explained, referencing the situation from the perspective of a G Leaguer, “because I’ve been there before and I don’t want them to suffer from a lack of humility, you know what I mean? Because it’s not that deep – it’s not about you right now. I would hate to see somebody fail from that as opposed to their performance.”

When the Game Was War: The NBA’s Greatest Season

Larry Bird vs. Dominique Wilkins, excerpt from When the Game Was War: The NBA’s Greatest Season by Rich Cohen, Random House (Sept. 5, 2023).

Excerpt from When the Game Was War: The NBA’s Greatest Season by Rich Cohen, Random House (September 5, 2023). You can buy the book HERE

Boston had blown through the Knicks in the first round, then met the Atlanta Hawks just as the Hawks were hitting their stride. Detroit – whom the Celtics would face if they reached the conference finals – had to watch and wait.

Boston crushed Atlanta in Game 1 at Boston Garden, with the front line –  Larry Bird, Robert Parish, and Kevin McHale – combining for 85 points. They did the same in Game 2. Then, on the way to Atlanta, seemingly every Celtic caught a cold. In addition to cortisone, the doctor was shooting players full of antibiotics. The ball looked like it weighed a hundred pounds in Bird’s hands at the Omni Coliseum in Game 3. He played forty minutes and led Boston with 22 points, but the numbers give the wrong impression—he belonged in bed. The Celtics, having sneezed themselves into a stupor, lost three out of the next four games, setting up a Game 7 in Boston Garden that some consider the greatest game ever played.

“The game started, and even though the crowd was crazy, I remember it being quiet,” Atlanta guard Tree Rollins said. “I could hear sneakers screeching on the floor. I could hear coaches screaming out plays. I could hear my teammates talking on offense and defense. That was the highest level of concentration I attained as a player.”

McHale scored 33 points that night. Doc Rivers collected 16 points and 18 assists. Danny Ainge hit two big 3s late. But Bird vs. Dominique Wilkins was the show.

“We were running downcourt, me, Bird, and Kevin Willis,” recalled Wilkins, who was shooting hoops behind his house in suburban Georgia as he told me this story decades later. “Kevin reaches across to me and says, ‘Don’t let that son of a gun score anymore, man.’ And I’m like, ‘Shut up. He can hear you!’ And I look over, and Bird’s eyes are like this big. I knew it was on after that. Those are the words that woke him up. That’s really when the shootout began.”

“My mindset in the playoffs was you play, see how the game is going, figure out what your team needs, and do that,” said Bird. “We were rolling early and I was just trying to feel out the game. Dominique was scoring and I just watched. Then, in the fourth, I got hot. That’s when Dominique and I started matching basket for basket.”

“Bird was hitting impossible shots,” said Willis. “Dominique, he was not going to be shown up, especially in a big game. So it became a show. Even though we were in the game, we were really just watching the show.”

“It was like HORSE,” said Atlanta forward Cliff Levingston. “Bird makes this shot off the glass. Dominique comes down – off the glass. Bird goes all net. Dominique goes all net. Larry gets a layup. Dominique gets a layup.

“Larry would tell you where he was going to shoot the ball, and how he was going to shoot it,” Levingston continued. “He would take you all over the floor, setting picks, coming back, and next thing you know, you look up and he’s on his favorite spot and you’re like, ‘Oh no!’ ”

The Lakers had gathered in Magic Johnson’s mansion in Bel Air to watch the game on TV. They were hooting and hollering every basket.

Byron Scott said Atlanta would win; Wilkins was just too hot. “No, no,” said Magic. “Don’t underestimate my boy Larry!”

Bird won the game and the series on the last shot: a 3-pointer taken a foot away from Atlanta’s bench.

Excerpt from When the Game Was War: The NBA’s Greatest Season by Rich Cohen, Random House (September 5, 2023). You can buy the book HERE

There’s a new LeBron James biography. We have an excerpt

Excerpt from LeBron by Jeff Benedict, Avid Reader Press / Simon & Schuster (April 11, 2023).

Excerpt from LeBron by Jeff Benedict, Avid Reader Press / Simon & Schuster (April 11, 2023). You can buy the book HERE

From the start of the 2015–2016 season, LeBron kept a close eye on the Warriors, recording their games and watching them in the middle of the night. He got accustomed to hearing the play-by-play announcer say the same three words: “Curry. Three. Good.” With Curry knocking down three-point shots at a record clip, the Warriors looked like a team that might never lose. The NBA record for consecutive wins to open a season was fifteen. It had stood since 1949. But the Warriors shattered the mark. By mid-December, Golden State was 24-0. “They have by far the best player in basketball right now in Steph Curry,” NBA analyst David Aldridge told NPR. “And I say that knowing that LeBron James is incredibly talented and gifted and is a great player, but what Curry’s doing is remarkable.”

The Cavaliers, meanwhile, struggled to play up to LeBron’s standards. They were the top team in the Eastern Conference. Nonetheless, midway through the season, the team fired head coach David Blatt and replaced him with Tyronn Lue, who was more popular among the players. In the second half of the season, the team lost more games under Lue than it had under Blatt. LeBron was at wit’s end.

Although he was living in Los Angeles and had his hands full running SpringHill, Maverick Carter kept close tabs on the situation in Cleveland. He recognized what was happening. Some of the Cavs players weren’t as committed as LeBron felt they should be. But Maverick also knew that LeBron was a perfectionist. Toward the end of the regular season, Maverick called him. “You get paid a lot of money to do something you’re better at than anybody else in the world,” Maverick told him. “So just do that. Don’t worry about this guy or that guy, or what anybody else is. Just play.”

The Cavs finished the regular season with the best record in the Eastern Conference at 57-25. The Warriors, meanwhile, finished with the best record in NBA history at 73-9. Curry led the league in scoring, set the NBA record for three-pointers made in a season, and was voted MVP for the second straight year. The Warriors were the only team with three players – Curry, Thompson, and Green – named to the All-Star team in 2016. And Steve Kerr was named Coach of the Year. The Warriors were so dominant and so popular that some writers started referring to them as America’s team.

LeBron had heard enough about how great the Warriors were. And it irked him when Curry was characterized as the best player in the world. Curry was a newly minted star who was known for freakishly accurate long-range shooting, handling the ball as if it were a yo-yo, and steals. He was a master showman who’d had two phenomenally entertaining seasons, and he was deserving of the MVP honors. But LeBron had been the most talented basketball player on the planet for thirteen years. For most of that time, he had to carry his team. His ability to play all five positions made him difficult to categorize. And his overall body of work from the NBA to the Olympics was on a different plane from Curry’s. In LeBron’s view, the words most valuable were open to interpretation, and there was a difference between being the most valuable player and being the best player in a particular season.

Colin Cowherd of Fox Sports agreed. He suggested that Curry wasn’t as important to his team’s success as LeBron had been in Miami or Cleveland. “I’m not sure this league has ever had a single player as valuable as LeBron James,” Cowherd said. He added: “Steph Curry should win ‘Best Player of the Year,’ while LeBron is the real MVP.”

The Cavs gelled at the right time and breezed through the playoffs, sweeping two teams and never being challenged. The Warriors, on the other hand, were nearly knocked off by Kevin Durant and the Oklahoma City Thunder in the Western Conference Finals. After being down, 3-1, the Warriors came back and won the series.

Ronald Martinez/Getty Images

A rematch between the Cavaliers and the Warriors was a gold mine for the NBA and its network partners. The 2016 NBA Finals pitted one of the best teams in NBA history against one of the best players in NBA history. The Warriors were trying to repeat as champions. LeBron was on a quest to win a championship for Cleveland. And the debate over who was the superior player – Curry or LeBron – would be settled on the floor. From a rating standpoint, ABC had the best drama on television.

The Warriors trounced the Cavs in Games 1 and 2 in Oakland, winning both games by a combined forty-eight points. In Game 3 in Cleveland, the Cavs responded, pounding the Warriors by thirty. But in the pivotal Game 4 on June 10, Curry erupted, nailing seven three-pointers and scoring thirty-eight points. Thompson added twenty-five, silencing the crowd and giving the Warriors a commanding 3-1 series lead. The Splash Brothers were all smiles when they left the Q.

The Cavs looked doomed. No team had ever come back from a 3-1 deficit to win the NBA Finals. And the Warriors hadn’t lost three games in a row all season. But an altercation between LeBron and Draymond Green near the end of Game 4 proved to be a turning point in the series. Green had been verbally and physically harassing LeBron throughout the game. With less than three minutes to play and the Warriors up by ten, LeBron had had enough. When Green set a screen, LeBron pushed his way through it. Green went down, and LeBron stepped over him in his pursuit of the play. Attempting to stand up while LeBron was straddling him, Green swiped at LeBron’s groin. LeBron took exception. They went chest-to-chest, exchanged words, and started shoving. Both players were whistled for fouls that had no impact on the game’s outcome.

The altercation between LeBron and Green escalated in the postgame press conferences. When asked about LeBron’s reaction to Draymond Green, Klay Thompson mocked LeBron by saying that the NBA was “a man’s league,” and that trash talk was part of the game. “I don’t know how the man feels,” Thompson said. “But obviously, people have feelings. People’s feelings get hurt. I guess his feelings just got hurt.”

While Thompson was talking to the press, LeBron was in the locker room, assuring his teammates that they had the Warriors right where they wanted them. He told his teammates that they were not going to lose another game. Then, when LeBron entered the media room, a reporter referenced Thompson’s words and asked him if he cared to comment. “What did you say Klay said?” LeBron asked. “Klay said, ‘I guess he just got his feelings hurt,’ ” the reporter repeated. Holding a microphone, LeBron dropped his chin to his chest and laughed. The press chuckled. “My goodness,” he said, grinning. “I’m not gonna comment on what Klay said.” He paused and laughed again. Then he looked the reporters in the eye. “It’s so hard to take the high road,” LeBron said with a smile. “I’ve been doing it for thirteen years. It’s so hard to continue to do it. And I’m gonna do it again.”

LeBron didn’t need additional motivation. But Thompson had manufactured some. Later that night, LeBron wound down with Savannah. Around two thirty in the morning, they watched Eddie Murphy Raw. After laughing hysterically for about ninety minutes, he sent a predawn group text to his teammates. They were due to board a plane for Oakland later that day. But LeBron had a message for them first. “I know we’re down 3-1,” he said. “But if you don’t think we can win this series, then don’t get on the fucking plane.”

LeBron was playing a game within the game. He’d been to the NBA Finals seven times, and he knew how hard it was to win back-to-back titles. He also understood that a seven-game series is a battle of attrition, and mental discipline plays a big part in who prevails. The Warriors were acting like a team that was entitled to the trophy. LeBron thought that was a big mistake.

After the Cavaliers arrived in Oakland, the NBA announced that Draymond Green was suspended for Game 5. He’d been retroactively assessed a flagrant foul for a “retaliatory swipe of his hand to the groin” of LeBron. As a stand-alone incident, Green’s flagrant foul didn’t warrant a suspension. But Green was a provocateur, and earlier in the postseason he’d twice been assessed flagrant fouls, once for throwing a Houston Rockets player to the floor, and once for kicking an Oklahoma City player between the legs. Under the NBA’s rules, Green’s third flagrant foul during the playoffs automatically triggered a one-game suspension.

David Richard-USA TODAY Sports

LeBron knew the rules when he had stepped over Green. Longtime New York Times sports columnist Harvey Araton suggested that LeBron was essentially saying to Green: “Care to check out my groin?” By goading Green, LeBron had beaten him at his own game. Basketball writers dubbed Green the “Nutcracker.” But Green’s disqualification was no laughing matter to the Warriors. A tenacious rebounder and shot blocker, Green was the anchor of the defense. He was also the team’s emotional leader who set the tone by doing the dirty work that enabled Curry and Thompson to flourish.

Prior to Game 5, LeBron got himself in the right frame of mind by watching The Godfather Part II. One scene—when crime boss Michael Corleone, bent on revenge, pays a surprise visit to Frankie Pentangeli – captured the way he felt toward Green and the Warriors.

Frankie: I wish you woulda let me know you were coming. I coulda prepared something for you.

Corleone: I didn’t want you to know I was coming.

In Green’s absence, the Cavs manhandled the Warriors. The big men controlled the paint, and LeBron and Kyrie each scored forty-one points. It was the first time in league history that teammates scored forty-plus points in a Finals game. The Cavs won by fifteen. As the final buzzer sounded, Curry attempted a meaningless layup. Even though the game was over, LeBron blocked Curry’s shot, sending a not-so-subtle message to the league’s MVP. Afterward, the New York Times declared that LeBron “remains the best hoop-playing specimen on the planet.”

The Warriors were still up, 3-2. But now they had to go back to Cleveland, where Warriors coach Steve Kerr was worried that LeBron would take control of the series. As a player, Kerr had won five NBA championships, including three straight with the Chicago Bulls in the Michael Jordan era. Kerr knew the amount of mental toughness that was required to win back-to-back titles. “It just doesn’t happen,” he told his players after Game 5. “It’s harder than that.”

For the Cavaliers, Game 6 was the biggest game in franchise history. Feeding off the crowd’s energy, they stormed to a 31–9 lead. Draymond Green was back in the lineup, but he played tentatively. The Cavs were much more physical, and the Warriors never matched their energy level. During one stretch in the second half, LeBron scored eighteen straight points. He wasn’t just dominating the Warriors. He was bullying them. In the fourth quarter, when LeBron should have needed a breather, he told Coach Lue, “I’m not coming out.” Then, with four minutes remaining and his team up by thirteen, Curry drove to the basket and head-faked, hoping to get LeBron up in the air. But LeBron didn’t bite. Instead, he waited for Curry to attempt a layup and swatted his shot out-of-bounds. He glared at Curry and barked a message: Get that weak shit out of my house! The Q erupted. It had never felt so good to be a Cavs fan.

Moments later, on the other end of the court, Curry tried to poke the ball out of LeBron’s hands and got whistled for his sixth foul. Angry over the call, Curry lit into the referee and flung his mouthpiece, hitting a fan who was seated courtside. The referee assessed Curry a technical foul and ejected him. It was the first time in Curry’s career that he’d been thrown out of a game. He got jeered leaving the court.

In contrast, LeBron played forty-three minutes and scored forty-one points for the second consecutive game. The Cavs won by fourteen and evened the series at 3-3. Afterward, Steve Kerr unloaded on the officials for the way they had treated Curry. “He’s the MVP of the league,” Kerr said. “He gets six fouls called on him. Three of them were absolutely ridiculous. LeBron flops on the last one. Jason Phillips falls for that flop. This is the MVP of the league, and we’re talking about these touch fouls in the NBA Finals.” Meanwhile, Curry’s wife tweeted that the game was rigged. “I won’t be silent,” she said.

The NBA fined Kerr for singling out a referee by name. Curry was fined for hurling his mouthpiece and hitting a fan. And his wife took down her tweet.

The Warriors were unraveling.

In the Cavs’ locker room, LeBron smiled. “They fucked up, mentally and physically,” he told his team. “I’m telling you. They. Fucked. Up.”

Game 7, back in Oakland, was the closest contest of the series. There were twenty lead changes and eighteen ties. And with under two minutes remaining, the score was knotted at eighty-nine when Kyrie Irving drove the lane and tossed up a floater. The play that would define LeBron’s legacy and reverse Cleveland’s sports history had begun.

Irving missed his floater. Warriors forward Andre Iguodala grabbed the rebound and took off downcourt, passing the ball ahead to Curry. With a defender in front of him and Iguodala streaking to the basket, Curry bounce-passed the ball back to him. Iguodala was fourteen feet from the hoop when he caught Curry’s pass in stride, took two steps, and elevated for a layup.

Trailing the play, LeBron was on the opposite side of the court and twenty-one feet from the basket when Iguodala caught Curry’s pass. I can get it, he told himself. With a head of steam and a three-foot vertical leap, LeBron took flight. In the air, he had to navigate three obstacles – to stay clear of the rim, avoid fouling Iguodala, and reach the ball before it reached the glass. His chest was level with Iguodala’s head when LeBron pinned the ball against the backboard, next to the square above the rim. The ball then ricocheted into J. R. Smith’s hands. Golden State’s go-ahead layup had been diverted midflight.

BECK DIEFENBACH/AFP via Getty Images

The play happened so fast – an analysis would later reveal that LeBron had raced sixty feet in 2.67 seconds, topping out at an estimated twenty miles per hour – that the announcers didn’t grasp the significance of the feat until they watched it on slow-motion replay. “Oh . . . my . . . goodness,” ABC’s Jeff Van Gundy said. “Great pass by Curry. Running hard by Iguodala. And superhuman defensive recovery by LeBron James.”

On the other end, with the shot clock winding down and Curry guarding him out beyond the three-point line, Kyrie stepped back and launched, burying a clutch shot and putting his team up, 92–89. Then Curry, unable to shake Kevin Love, forced up a three that caromed off the back of the rim and into the hands of LeBron, who was fouled. LeBron made a free throw to put Cleveland up by four with ten seconds to play, sealing the victory. Moments later the Warriors missed a desperation heave as the buzzer sounded.

“It’s over! It’s over!” shouted ABC’s Mike Breen as Kevin Love hoisted LeBron off his feet. “Cleveland is a city of champions once again. The Cavaliers are NBA champions.”

The Cavs mobbed LeBron. In the chaos, Maverick Carter raced onto the court and hugged his friend.

Overcome, LeBron crumpled to his knees.

When he’d played on the Heat and finally won his first championship, he had not lost his composure. Nor had he cried after winning the second title in Miami. But this was different, more epic than he had dreamed. Digging out of a 3-1 hole to beat a team that had seemed invincible, against the odds he had delivered for the people of northeast Ohio. Cleveland’s fifty-two-year championship drought was over. This was what he’d come home for.

LeBron put his face to the floor and wept.

Excerpt from LeBron by Jeff Benedict, Avid Reader Press / Simon & Schuster (April 11, 2023). You can buy the book HERE

‘You’re just not coming back from that’: How Charles Barkley’s playing career came to an end

Barkley: A Biography by Timothy Bella. Hanover Square Press; Original edition (November 1, 2022). The end sounded like a sharp crack. On a bitter cold night in 1999, Charles was introduced to the crowd in Philadelphia for the final time as a player. …

Barkley: A Biography by Timothy Bella. Hanover Square Press; Original edition (November 1, 2022).

The end sounded like a sharp crack.

On a bitter cold night in 1999, Charles was introduced to the crowd in Philadelphia for the final time as a player. A full-circle moment that seemed to lack glory.

“When he came back, it was almost like a Charles we didn’t recognize,” said friend Mike Missanelli, the Philadelphia sports radio personality.

Eighteen games into the season, the thirty-six-year-old was firmly looking ahead to life after basketball. He was beginning to temper his expectations and channel gratitude.

“I don’t think a championship would do that much for me,” said a reflective Charles. “It won’t make me feel like, well, now my life is complete. Trust me, my life is pretty damn complete. And I always tell people, I don’t think that anybody could have had a better life than me. I really don’t.”

Stepping onto the floor on December 8, 1999, the Philadelphia fans who adored him then spurned him were now greeting Charles with an extended standing ovation. The harsh feelings that came with his unceremonious exit seven years earlier had subsided. The Sixers flew in Charcey and Johnnie Mae for what was to be a celebration of the franchise’s finest player of recent times.

That changed seven minutes and fifty-one seconds into the first quarter.

(TOM MIHALEK/AFP via Getty Images)

With both teams struggling to break 20 for the quarter, Charles grabbed an offensive rebound and thought he could post up Todd MacCulloch, the Sixers’ seven-foot rookie. Though he was still getting 10 rebounds a game, Charles’s offense had taken a sharp turn due to his health. “I was pump-faking so much I had to go see the chiropractor like three days a week,” Charles said years later about that period in his career.

As the Sixers sprinted down the floor in transition, Tyrone Hill, a journeyman power forward, drove the baseline. Never known as a shot blocker, Charles went up to redirect Hill’s shot. Then, he lost his balance.

When the admittedly out-of-shape Charles landed awkwardly, he felt that something was seriously wrong. Unable to move, he immediately grabbed his left knee.

“I thought he was gonna get right back up,” Hill said. “When he was down for a long period of time, I was hoping it was nothing really serious.”

By the time Rockets’ trainer Keith Jones came over, Charles’s knee was bloody and grossly distorted. The celebratory mood inside the old Spectrum, then called the First Union Center, had turned to gloom.

“We could see that quad muscle roll up on his leg in a horrible and frightening way,” said Rockets’ radio announcer Jim Foley. “It was like seeing someone break a leg.”

Rupturing his quadriceps tendon brought a new kind of pain –  worse than any he’d experienced in the past.

“I knew it was over as soon as I saw it,” Barkley said. “I saw the way the kneecap was bulging through my leg and I said, ‘Well, it’s been fun .’” Barkley was grimacing, but silent. He lay immobile on the floor, talking quietly to Jones, his teammates, and coaches, with 19,109 people staring on in horror. “You didn’t hear a shriek of pain, but you saw the end of a career,” recalled Phil Jasner of the Philadelphia Daily News. “You knew, without question, that it was over.”

Barkley was helped off to the locker room, limping, with his head down and towel around his neck. He needed some time to compose himself before returning to a spot behind the Rockets’ bench on crutches, wearing a knee brace. Looking down the bench, Rudy Tomjanovich held out hope that Charles hadn’t played his last game, but said he was crushed knowing he likely would not call Barkley’s number again.

“You’re just not coming back from that,” the coach said.

Charles would sign about one hundred autographs and joked with teammates and coaches, trying to lighten the mood. When the final buzzer sounded on a forgettable 83–73 win for the Sixers, Charles received another thunderous ovation as he used crutches to leave the court one final time.

On a training table, his knee was wrapped in ice when he called Maureen. Tears rolled down his cheeks as he relayed the news he was just beginning to come to terms with.

“It’s over,” he said to his wife.

(GERARD BURKHART/AFP via Getty Images)

He limped and waddled to the podium for the postgame press conference. Wearing an all-black suit, as if he were attending his own funeral, Barkley had Johnnie Mae sitting to his right. The room was packed with local and national media, many of whom had covered Barkley throughout his sixteen-year career.

In true Charles fashion, he had a slight grin and a one-liner ready.

“I’m just what America needs – another unemployed Black man,” he said.

He limped back to his Philadelphia hotel room after going out with his teammates to Bridget Foy’s. He told Sixers star Allen Iverson, whom he had taken to task for treating the game like a birthright, that it was his league now and to cherish his time on top.

Sitting on the hotel bed, Barkley was no longer invincible. Yet fittingly, almost poetically, his career had all but ended in the city where it all began. He cried.

A red light flashed on the room phone. Barkley picked up the receiver and began to listen to the dozens of messages left for him. The first voice mail? It was Michael Jordan.

“I’m here if you need me,” his friend said.

(VINCENT LAFORET/AFP via Getty Images)

He had scripted a much grander end. In fact, the end had begun before the season, when he had announced his sixteenth season would be his last. He had done it in grand fashion, returning to his native Alabama for a preseason game in October 1999.

That night, down a back hallway of the Birmingham-Jefferson Civic Center, Charcey had reserved a meeting hall for family and friends who made the short twenty-one-minute drive from Leeds to celebrate their hero over ribs, chicken wings, pasta salad, and cornbread. The mayors from Leeds and Birmingham stood by the entrance with the Barkley brothers and Michael Glenn, a cousin, and Charcey, eagerly awaiting the guest of honor.

“It’s always special to see him play,” Charcey told friends lingering by the door after the October exhibition. “Just like the first time.”

Standing at half-court with his mom and grandmother, Barkley formally announced his retirement.

“It’s time for me to do something else,” Barkley said. “It’s time for me to have some fun now. I don’t think my life could get any better. But it’s time to do something else.”

In doing so, he also told the crowd of ten thousand that he had donated three $1 million gifts to each of his alma maters, Leeds High School and Auburn University, and to Cornerstone Schools of Alabama. In total, the donations accounted for a third of his salary that year.

Sonny Smith, his coach at Auburn, lauded his former player’s “generosity and love for the area.” The two had come a long way since Barkley nearly transferred out of the school.

Everyone wanted a piece of Barkley that night. He didn’t have time to eat or drink. He took photos and signed balls. He never said no; it wasn’t in his nature. Hugging his grandmother on the way out, he was happier than he had been in a long time.

“It’s a great night for me,” Barkley said to his guests. “I feel great relief and am at peace with myself.”

(PAUL BUCK/AFP via Getty Images)

The four months following Barkley’s injury had him balancing a future in which he wanted to “learn to play the piano, finish college, and get really, really, really fat.” But he was also rehabbing as much as he could to achieve one last goal on the court: to play a few minutes and leave the sport with dignity.

“My objective is to play in the last game of the year,” he said. “I want to be able to walk off the court.”

With his left leg still in an immobilizer, trainer Tim Grover forbade him from taking to the court until he had the cast removed. Grover, who had trained the likes of Jordan, Scottie Pippen, and Kobe Bryant, had continued working with Charles in Houston because, as he noted in his 2013 book Relentless, Charles was “probably the most athletically gifted individual I’ve ever seen.” Though he trusted his trainer, Charles rejected his suggestion.

“He looked at me with that death stare and demanded a ball,” Grover said. “Then he stood under the basket and dunked ten times off the healthy foot. Dunked. Ten times. One foot.” He added, “The boot never touched the ground.”

For the last game of the season, fans came ready with their Barkley bald caps and No. 4 jerseys for the Rockets’ match-up against the Vancouver Grizzlies.

For one night, Barkley was back.

“He’s done a lot for this organization and if he wants to walk off the court instead of being carried off, then I’m all for that,” Tomjanovich said. “It also gives the people a chance to pay one last tribute to him.”

His knee was maybe 70 percent. But nothing was going to stop him from playing in his last game on April 19, 2000.

Not everyone was going to make it easy on him. Lionel Hollins, his assistant in Phoenix who was the interim head coach for Vancouver, wanted to do whatever he could to prevent him from scoring on his team.

“I told the players, ‘I don’t care if it’s his last moment, we’re not going to let him have anything,’” Hollins recounted. “As much as I love Charles, we were not going to give him anything. He really shouldn’t have been in the game.”

Charles, for his part, was feeling nostalgic.

“This is a sad day for me,” Barkley said. “I’ve been playing basketball since I was nine years old and now, I’m not going to be playing anymore. That’s the only thing that makes me sad. I won’t miss the limelight.”

While the circumstances of his last game were not what he envisioned, Barkley was getting to enjoy himself. But first, he had to be good, at least for one more moment.

“It’s important for me from a mental standpoint to get out there,” he said before the game. “It’s a mindset thing. It’s been a grueling ordeal to get to this point. I just want to walk off under my own power.” He added: “It’s just something I have to do. I don’t have anything else to prove.”

(AFP via Getty Images)

Starting off on the bench, Charles was all smiles. His youthful vigor had returned. Almost four minutes into the second quarter, Tomjanovich got to call Charles’s number for the last time. He rose from the end of the bench, snapping off his warmup pants and red shirt. At the next substitution, the crowd jumped to its feet. He was nowhere close to a hundred percent, looking nervous as he checked in. He might have been only months removed from playing, but Charles was mostly stationary and looked almost out of place on the floor.

The contest between two sub- .500 teams took a back seat to the bigger question of the night: Could Charles produce one more glimpse of greatness?

Almost immediately, the power forward tried to do just that. Off a pick and roll with Cuttino Mobley at the 3-point line, Charles rolled toward the baseline, waiting for the pass. Mobley flung the ball to an open Charles. You could hear the crowd begging Barkley to shoot. He paused for one second before launching a baseline jumper. The ball bounced off the front iron and the crowd sighed.

In the second quarter, shortly after another shot clanged off the rim, Barkley’s body began to break down. A couple of possessions later, backup guard Moochie Norris got a screen from Matt Bullard at the left wing of the 3-point line. Norris slipped through two defenders and made a run at the hoop. In two dribbles, Norris got to the lane and floated a one-handed teardrop over the outstretched arm of Obinna Ekezie. Down low stood Barkley, boxing out Felipe Lopez, a guard with the same height but not nearly the same size. Charles hadn’t really tested out his capacity to rebound.

Luckily, he didn’t have to jump too much. The ball careened almost directly to him. With whatever spring he had left in his knees, he snared the ball from a jumping Lopez and pulled it to his hips. He wasn’t going to pass it. Not now.

“Charles! Charles!” yelled Rockets’ color man Calvin Murphy from the sidelines.

Barkley threw a wild pump-fake before laying it off the glass, drawing contact from Ekezie. Count the bucket. And the foul. The crowd hadn’t been that loud all season.

“Charles Barkley,” rumbled play-by-play man Bill Worrell, “gets a bucket in his final game!”

He was stone-faced in the seconds that followed, taking high-fives from an excited Bullard and rookie Steve Francis. When he walked toward Mobley, he offered the slightest nod, before finally letting out a smile.

“About time,” he told Mobley, hugging him at the free throw line. Barkley shrugged and smiled. What more could he have asked for?

Soon after he missed the free throw, Tomjanovich called Kenny Thomas’ number, telling the twenty-two-year-old rookie to check in for Barkley. He had played six minutes and seven seconds, scoring 2 points and grabbing a rebound. He laughed coming off the floor to a standing ovation, with Tomjanovich wrapping his arm around his neck and Rogers giving him a bear hug.

At halftime, Dawson presented Charles with the backboard that he just grabbed his last rebound from only minutes earlier. “You really own this one,” Dawson told him.

Charles then walked over to the baseline to give an interview to Craig Sager, the TNT sideline reporter known for his warm demeanor and outlandish suits. Sager asked Charles if coming back for one night had been worth it.

“It was worth it. It was definitely worth it,” he said to Sager. “I put a lot of time and effort into my rehab. Hey, my last memory was scoring a basket, not being carried off the court. That was a bonus. I really just wanted to get a rebound, and it took me a long time to get a rebound. The doctor was nervous the whole time because my knee is only about 70 percent. And that rebound came to me, so I got lucky. I couldn’t have jumped to get it.”

Sager reminded him that he was about to finish his career in the top-15 all-time in points and rebounds.

“Well, the big fella up there gave me some stuff that a lot of people didn’t have,” Charles replied. “I can’t take credit for it. I want to, but I can’t. God just gave me a tremendous amount of ability. I can’t take credit for it though, Craig.”

The Rockets lost, but no one cared. It was Barkley’s night. He offered a few words to the team, saying it had a bright future with Francis and Mobley. “It’s unfortunate I didn’t come to Houston until I was on the downside,” he told the fans. “I wish I could have played my entire career here.”

His voice quavering, he gripped the microphone and pushed aside his regrets to convey his gratitude.

“Basketball doesn’t owe me anything, I owe everything in my life to basketball – everything,” he said. “I’m thirty-seven years old. I’m rich beyond my wildest dreams. I have great material things. I’ve been all over the world and it’s all because of basketball.”

(ROBERT SULLIVAN/AFP via Getty Images)

He retreated from the standing ovation to the locker room, where his teammates were waiting for him with beer and champagne, hoots and hollers. He never won an NBA title, but this champagne was a celebration of everything Charles had accomplished.

Soaked in sweat and alcohol, Barkley talked to reporters in the locker room one last time. The regularly loud Barkley grew quieter than usual, taking on the kind of reflective, humble tone he had shown to Sager earlier in the night. All he ever wanted, he said, was to make $1 million and play in the league for ten years. His only goal was to take care of his mother and grandmother.

As cocky and insufferable as he was at times, he never expected to be talking about his own Hall of Fame career, he said. The individual numbers speak for themselves. Career averages of 22 .1 points, 11 .7 rebounds, and 3 .9 assists in 1,073 games. He’s one of the most prolific offensive rebounders in the game’s history and the shortest player to ever lead the league in total rebounding. He made eleven All-Star teams and twelve All-NBA squads in sixteen seasons. Charles finished top-ten in MVP voting in nine years, including his first-place finish in 1993. As of publication, he is one of seven players in league history to record 20,000 points, 10,000 rebounds, and 4,000 assists – and by far the shortest to do so.

So, how did it happen? Even with his mistakes, and there were too many to count, his exhaustive charisma pulled him toward success and worldwide adoration.

“The difficult thing is that nothing I’ll do in my life from now on will come close to what I’ve accomplished in basketball in the last sixteen years,” he noted.

But he sure as hell had to try.

Barkley: A Biography by Timothy Bella. Hanover Square Press; Original edition (November 1, 2022).

Steve Kerr: A Life

‘Steve Kerr: A Life’ adapted from Steve Kerr by Scott Howard-Cooper. Copyright 2021 by Scott Howard-Cooper. Reprinted by permission of William Morrow, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers. ” J O R D AN A W A IT ED L I KE A K I NG ,” bl a r ed the …

‘Steve Kerr: A Life’ adapted from Steve Kerr by Scott Howard-Cooper. Copyright 2021 by Scott Howard-Cooper. Reprinted by permission of William Morrow, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.

JORDAN AWAITED LIKE A KING,blared the headline in the country’s major sports daily, L’Equipe. “Michael Jordan is in Paris,” the paper France-Soir fawned. “That’s better than the Pope. It’s God in person.” “The young Parisians lucky enough to get into [the arena] must have dreamed beautiful dreams, for their hero had been everything they could have hoped for,” another writer passed along. That Jordan was seen wearing a beret meant “We shall be able to call him Michel.”

The thirteen-year-old North Korean known as Pak Un, said to be the son of an official at the embassy in Bern, Switzerland, was driven 375 miles from the Swiss capital to see his beloved Bulls. In time, friends he made in the West would talk of seeing photos of the shy student posing with Kukoc and Kobe Bryant, on separate occasions and in unknown locations, and a room filled with basketball memorabilia in his apartment at 10 Kirchstrasse in the town of Liebefeld. Pak had a collection of Nikes and drew pencil sketches of Jordan. Although it was unclear whether he watched the October 17 win over French club Paris PSG Racing or Chicago beating Greek squad Olympiacos the next day for the championship as Kerr scored ten points or both, his presence inside Palais Omnisports de Paris- Bercy would be noted decades later, once it became known that the teenager studying in Switzerland was future North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Un.

Returning to the United States and coming together again once Rodman re-signed in time for the start of the regular season brought the realization that 1997–1998 would be the last season together for the original core with five titles (Jordan, Pippen, and Jackson) and the second wave that had been part of two titles (Kerr, Harper, Rodman, Wennington, and Buechler). “The finality of it gave the season a certain resonance that bonded the team closely together,” Jackson wrote. “It felt as if we were on a sacred mission, driven by a force that went beyond fame, glory, and all the other spoils of victory. We were doing this one for the pure joy of playing together one more time. It felt magical.”

(JEFF HAYNES/AFP via Getty Images)

It was the most difficult of the three full seasons on the court since Jordan returned anyway, with an inability to win close games and an early 8-6 mark for the strange sight of the Bulls in eighth place. Additionally, Pippen got drunk on the flight from Sacramento to Seattle and launched into a tirade against Krause during the bus ride to the hotel. As Christmas approached and Jackson pondered his tradition of giving books, he considered Any Idiot Can Manage for Krause. “But in the end,” Jackson said, “I didn’t buy him anything because I couldn’t find it in myself to give him something of value.” Kerr’s contribution to the gloom was a cracked femur that cost him ten games in November and December. He was back about a month when Derrick Coleman of the 76ers landed on Kerr after a block attempt, resulting in a broken left clavicle and twenty-nine games lost. Worse, Kerr had the added frustration of believing Coleman could have avoided the hard contact. After playing eighty-two regular-season contests the previous four seasons, he would make it into only fifty in 1997–1998, the fewest since 1991–1992 as a Cavalier, joined by the disappointment of dropping to 45.4 percent overall and 43.8 percent on threes.

He could at least be encouraged that he was returning with enough time—the final quarter of the schedule—to reclaim rhythm and conditioning before the playoffs. Starting the comeback on March 8 against the Knicks at Madison Square Garden, with a Manhattan energy that made it one of Kerr’s favorite stops, was a bonus. He shot the first time he touched the ball, after entering late in the first quarter, such a change from his usual approach of gently sliding into the flow of a game that reporters brought it up after the easy Bulls win. Kerr said he felt like Wennington, referencing his fellow Moth who was typically so eager to launch that Jordan had tagged him “trampoline hands.” Kerr made the inaugural attempt and three in all in five tries while Jackson ran him back into shape with twenty-six minutes in the first game action he’d seen in seven weeks.

“That’s one of the things about injuries, you have a lot of time to think,” Kerr said. “I really thought about my situation here and my future, and I realized that early in the season I was probably pressing a little bit because of the uncertainty over next year, me being a free agent and nobody knowing what was happening with the team. I realized that I was gonna have probably 20 games left and then the playoffs. And then, who knows? That might be it. So I better enjoy it and be aggressive and try to have as much fun as I can when I do come back.”

His coach had a similar mindset. Wanting to appreciate what little time the group appeared to have left, Jackson scheduled a meeting before the playoffs and asked players and staff members in advance to write a paragraph on the impact of the season and the team on their lives, anything from their own words to lyrics from a song to a spiritual verse. Choosing to gather in the video room in the training facility signaled a special level of importance as the spot Jackson had informally renamed the “tribal room,” in tribute to the Native American beliefs he admired. He even added the decorating touches of a bear-claw necklace, an owl feather, and photos of a newborn white buffalo, among other items, and he would bang a drum to alert players to gather.

Half the participants followed the instructions and arrived with written sentiments, including Jordan in the form of, in Jacksons words, a “very moving” poem that praised the team’s dedication and expressed hope that the bond would last forever. Kerr was shocked at the gentle words from a velociraptor. His contribution— unwritten—was to share the thrill of becoming a father to Madeleine while with the Bulls and bringing four-year-old basketball fan Nick to meet Jordan, Pippen, and Rodman in the locker room. The pieces of paper were crumpled and dropped in a coffee can after each reading, the lights were flicked off and Jackson ultimately lit the wads on fire. Kerr was one of many brought to tears. “I’ll never forget that moment,” Jackson later wrote. “The quiet aura in the room. The fire burning in the darkness. The intense intimacy we felt sitting silently together and watching the flames die down. I don’t think the bond among us had ever been stronger.”

(ROBERT SULLIVAN/AFP via Getty Images)

The vibes carried over to the court as the Bulls opened the playoffs by eliminating the Nets 3–0 and the Hornets 4–1 before beating the Pacers in the first two games of the East finals. When Indiana pushed back by evening the series, Chicago responded to its first postseason test by winning two of the last three to advance to a rematch with the Jazz in the championship series, this time with Utah on ten days’ rest and with home-court advantage. The noise in the return to the Delta Center, Jackson said, was “astonishing” and “beyond the realm of tolerance. Last year, I’d go back to my room and my ears would ring for hours. They toned down the motorcycle sounds some, but the introduction is the worst—the bombs, the flares, the balloons bursting in sequence.” Worried about permanent ear damage, he wore earplugs.

Invisible in the 1997 Finals until the last ticks, Kerr was everywhere a year later. In Game 1, Jackson left him in to defend Stockton and paid for the gamble when Stockton got Kerr in the lane and made a nine-footer with nine seconds remaining for the winning points, a portion of Stockton’s seven points in overtime that turned into a Gonzaga recruiting visit. Two days later, down a point with forty-eight seconds remaining, Kerr missed a twenty-five-footer in front of the Jazz bench, only to move in to collect the long rebound between six-nine Malone and six-seven Russell. “That’s true desire,” Jordan said. Kerr then quickly spotted Jordan open under the basket and delivered the pass that gave the Bulls an 87–86 edge and a key moment in the 93–88 Chicago victory that evened the series.

Just like the year before, Kerr was on the court for the final Bulls possession, except this time Jordan finished off the Jazz by himself with an iconic seventeen-footer over Russell with five seconds remaining. Kerr didn’t have to bail him out again.

“My story is not quite as exciting this year, but I’ll share it with you anyway,” Kerr said at the latest Grant Park party, looking out over the sea of people. “When we called timeout, we were down three with forty-five seconds left. I kinda thought to myself, this would be a great chance at a three-pointer to tie the game. And I mentioned that to Phil. And Phil looked at me with this disgusted look and he said, ‘Steve, let’s face it. Last year was a fluke. Get the ball to Michael and get the hell out of his way.’ So that’s what I did. You know what happened. You know the rest. And for what it’s worth, I thought I did a fantastic job of getting out of his way.” With that, Kerr turned and went back to his seat on the stage.

The improbable last contribution, an offensive rebound-turned-assist, was a fitting ending after an unlikely five seasons in Chicago that almost didn’t happen and then turned into three titles. Joining the Bulls changed the history of the unwanted reserve trying to claw out one more contract, from the long-term implications of connecting with Jackson to hitting the shot to clinch the ’97 title that Kerr was certain put his life on a new course. As the search for the next opportunity began amid the looming breakup of a championship roster, it was hard to avoid the strange reality that for all the eventual Hall of Famers in the organization, it was possible that no one gained more from the second Jordan run than Steve Kerr.