The Jordan Rules
Smith, Sam
THE JORDAN RULES: THE INSIDE STORY OF A TURBULENT SEASON WITH MICHAEL JORDAN AND THE CHICAGO BULLS Sam Smith Simon and Schuster/333 pages/$22 reviewed by FRED BARNES Phil Jackson, the coach of...
...Jordan drove to the basket to dunk the ball with his right hand, saw a Laker leap out to block the shot, switched the ball to his left hand, and gently laid it off the backboard and into the basket—all while hanging in air for roughly three seconds...
...In your face...
...I spent four years in Washington, D.C., covering Congress and the White House," writes Smith, "and never met anyone as interesting...
...Jackson is the closest thing to Jordan's co-star in the book...
...Michael Jordan, the most exciting and arguably the best basketball player ever, is the central character in The Jordan Rules...
...Contrary to conventional wisdom, winning teams, like winning campaigns, "Was the Gulf War a just war...
...A backup player, Craig Hodges, a Muslim, was strongly opposed...
...He needed theteam to win a game that Jordan didn't dominate...
...Only accredited media in the locker room, and that includes you, Jesse Jackson," the coach yelled...
...60 The American Spectator March 1992 it's fair to compare The Jordan Rules with the campaign books that appear after every presidential race...
...After a playoff game in New York, he spotted Jesse Jackson wandering into the Bulls' locker room...
...Jackson wound up lecturing his players, insisting the war would leave a residue of anti-Americanism with Iraqis...
...And in The Jordan Rules, they do, which is why the book is a bestseller and deserves to be...
...Two experts on the just war tradition, James Turner Johnson and George Weigel, discuss the political and military decision-making regarding the U.S...
...Coach Jackson wasn't afraid...
...There's a name for books of this genre, a name my wife says is too vulgar to repeat...
...None, really...
...Coach Jackson's task wasn't easy: to weave Jordan into "a coordinated, egalitarian team game and still win...
...The reverend had the habit of calling Bulls players in their hotel rooms, and he tried to get close to Jordan...
...He sat near the Lakers' bench during one game, making fun of the Bulls and waving a Lakers jacket...
...In any case, this one rises above the genre...
...Jordan, naturally, provides the tension in the Bulls' drama...
...ISBN 0-89633-166-0 The American Spectator March 1992 61 aren't necessarily harmonious...
...That's what you want in a good sports book: the behind-the-scenes stuff, a peek at the private side of the players, their hobbies and politics and religion, the way they get along or don't...
...Both cover a season of competition that culminates with a single winner...
...Pippen wanted to renegotiate his contract...
...I mention this anecdote because it was exactly the kind of tidbit I was looking for in The Jordan Rules, a riveting account of a professional basketball team's championship season...
...When he arrived from the University of North Carolina in 1984, he instantly catapulted the Bulls to the upper reaches of the NBA...
...My 16-year-old daughter Sarah, no great basketball fan, happened by the television just as Jordan made this spectacular play...
...She was so captivated she watched the rest of the Bulls-Lakers series...
...One involves talk-show host Arsenio Hall, an ardent Lakers fan...
...Who was the "competent authority" to authorize the use of armed force...
...The Bulls bickered all season...
...First, it refers to the rules of defense followed by the Detroit Pistons to stymie Jordan and defeat the Bulls—until 1991...
...He was intolerant of his teammates, particularly the two budding young stars, Pippen and Grant...
...In the end, Jordan preserved his dazzling individual skills and also played often enough within the team concept...
...His eyes drilled holes in the whistler and his nostrils flared...
...The Sears Tower in downtown Chicago might be blown up, killing thousands...
...He was too fat and lazy...
...71...
...In games Jordan hogged the ball and his teammates seethed...
...he asked...
...Assistant Coach John Bach, a patriotic supporter of the Gulf War, grew just as mad when a game was preceded by a man whistling the National Anthem...
...CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER Syndicated Columnist Available at bookstores or from University Press of America, 1-800-462-6420...
...Their strategy was to lure him into the teeth of their defense, where even he couldn't score regularly...
...That you gotta like...
...Did the 1990-91 war in the Persian Gulf meet the criteria for a "just war...
...Except that it helps to flesh out the personality of a team that captured the nation's attention in 1991 by whipping Magic Johnson and the Los Angeles Lakers four games to one for the NBA title...
...THE JORDAN RULES: THE INSIDE STORY OF A TURBULENT SEASON WITH MICHAEL JORDAN AND THE CHICAGO BULLS Sam Smith Simon and Schuster/333 pages/$22 reviewed by FRED BARNES Phil Jackson, the coach of the Chicago Bulls, is a sixties person...
...Jordan was wary but afraid of offending Jackson because of his clout in the black community...
...When teammate John Paxson tried that, saying he'd been vomiting all night, he was required to come to practice and be checked by the team trainer...
...WILLIAM V. O'BRIEN Georgetown University "George Weigel's work is simply the best writing there is on just war and the Gulf...
...I think Fred Barnes is a senior editor of the New Republic...
...So he raised the issue at a practice one afternoon as American ground troops raced through Kuwait and on to Iraq...
...Just War and the Gulf War is published by the Ethics and Public Policy Center...
...Of course, all these trivialities have to contribute to the larger theme, namely how the team won...
...The trouble was, the Bulls won...
...Who wants the troops to go into Baghdad and go after Hussein...
...If he wanted to skip practice bycomplaining he had the flu, he merely had to call and say so...
...Most of the players were all for it, especially the stars of the team, Michael Jordan, Scottie Pippen, and Horace Grant...
...Smith has loaded his book with great anecdotes...
...King's girlfriend taunted Grant's wife that King was "going to take your husband's job...
...169 pages/$16.95 cloth "James Turner Johnson is in the front ranks of modern just war scholars...
...Desert Storm got to him...
...King didn't...
...They had the talent, Jordan felt, but not the seriousness and will to play at his level...
...He decided his team—ten blacks, two whites—was the only forum left to him...
...The crucial baskets were made by Paxson after Jordan attracted multiple defenders and flipped the ball to Paxson, wide open...
...And he was as engaging to be with at the end of the season as he was at the beginning...
...Jackson knows trouble when he sees it...
...role and the part religious leaders played in the moral debate...
...Jordan brooded for long stretches...
...He sought to instill the team values he'd learned as a player with the champion New York Knicks of the late 1960s and early 1970s...
...The second meaning was the special treatment the Bulls management gave their superstar, Jordan...
...The Pistons relied on Jordan to try to carry his team single-handedly and ignore his teammates...
...Was Desert Storm a "last resort...
...Although he stood at attention, it was clear he was growing angrier and angrier at the disrespect being shown...
...When the game ended, Bulls reserve Cliff Levingston stuck a finger at Hall and shouted, "In your face...
...Now, I know what you're thinking...
...The most likable player, Grant, feared the Bulls were grooming King to replace him...
...But not to the very top...
...Stacy King wanted to be traded...
...He desperately wanted to vent his feelings against the war, but not in public...
...He was calm and smart and funny, and often with a distinctly left-handed view of things...
...He's "the player who was too good for his team's good," writes Sam Smith, who covers the Bulls for the Chicago Tribune...
...In the second game against the Lakers, he made what has become known in basketball lore as The Layup...
...The difference is not only that The Jordan Rules explains more persuasively than most of the campaign chronicles (and I've read them all) how the winner was decided—it's that it does so more interestingly and with more understanding of the human heart...
...What difference does it make how a bunch of basketball players and their coach felt about the Persian Gulf war...
...The last game featured a different Jordan, just the one Jackson had yearned for...
...Afterwards he sputtered, "I suppose they'll have five guys come out and fart it the next time...
...He played so hard in practices they "became disorganized because no one could stop or guard him...
...It was the best single shot I've ever seen...
...He's liberal, an admirer of Native American culture, antiwar...
...It might spur terrorism, he said...
...The title has a double meaning...
Vol. 25 • March 1992 • No. 3
