practice, and he told me to jump into his car so he could dodge the autograph hounds. As we cruised through the parking lot of a shopping center in his Porsche 911 Turbo, two cars just about cut him off, forcing Jordan to brake. A man jumped from one car holding a sweatsuit to which he had affixed an Air Jordan logo, while two autograph seekers leaped from the other. Jordan dutifully signed his name and took the sweatsuit guy’s card, all of that theater supplying invaluable material for a journalist.
As for the fork, well, it became a collectible after Jordan stuck a metaphorical one in the Cavaliers. That was the day he made an impossible double-clutch jump shot (his 43rd and 44th points of the game), with 6′7″ Cavaliers defender Craig Ehlo hanging all over him, to give the Bulls an absurdly dramatic 101–100 victory and the series. My favorite part of the clip, which you’ve seen about athousand times, is Ehlo wistfully throwing up his hands, as if to say,
This just isn’t fair
. Which it wasn’t.
Before the Bulls broke from the huddle, Jordan had whispered to his teammate Craig Hodges, “I’m going to make it.” The Bulls frequently ran what Bach called “the Archangel Offense,” defined by the assistant as “getting the ball to Jordan and saying, ‘Save us, Michael.’ ” After this game, Doug Collins, who looked more exhausted than Jordan, said this about the play, “That was the give-the-ball-to-Michael-and-everybody-else-get-the-fuck-out-of-the-way play.” Jordan cracked up but looked embarrassed that Collins had used the F-word. Indeed, at that time, in casual conversation Jordan would say things like “Eff you” and “that MF-er.” There was an innocence about him, and I always thought that it might never have been better for him than it was on that day in Cleveland, his star rising, his future bright and unclouded, his breakfast utensils sacred tokens.
CHAPTER 10
THE OLD GUARD
Here Today … Gone Real Soon
In April 1989, about a month before Jordan made his oft-replayed shot over Ehlo, the Inspector of Meat got his wish. Boris Stankovic had never wavered in his crusade to get open competition into the Olympics, not even after his first attempt at passing the resolution, at the FIBA Congress in Madrid in 1986, failed. Getting the NBA into FIBA had by this time taken on a pragmatic aspect for Stankovic, too: After the 1980 Moscow Games, the Olympics boycotted by the United States, FIBA had been hemorrhaging money and was heading for bankruptcy. It needed both the sizzle and the steak that would come with the addition of NBA players.
So at a specially convened FIBA Congress in Munich, which had been preceded by much behind-the-scenes arm-twisting, a resolution passed that allowed NBA players to participate in the Olympics. The vote was 56–13, the United States and the Soviet Union being among the nay votes.
“We knew it was going to pass,” said Commissioner David Stern, “but we were absolutely not enthusiastic about it. It was sort of like, ‘Okay, what do we do now?’ ”
That’s a slight exaggeration, but it’s absolutely true that no full-scale mobilization was under way at the NBA offices in mid-town Manhattan. In fact, the vote got relatively scant attention in the United States because many observers believed there was no practical application. Nobody would ever get NBA players to go to the Olympics. Among the most skeptical was college hoops commentator Billy Packer, who said that NBA owners would not let their players play, and anyway, selfish NBA players would not want to give up their vacation. The late Al McGuire, a commentator of whom you couldn’t make any sense but whom you liked to hear talk anyway, said the same thing. Besides, this was spring, the opening of Major League Baseball, and, more than ever, there was Michael Jordan. Who could think of something that might or might not happen at the Olympics three years in the future?
In one corner of the
As for the fork, well, it became a collectible after Jordan stuck a metaphorical one in the Cavaliers. That was the day he made an impossible double-clutch jump shot (his 43rd and 44th points of the game), with 6′7″ Cavaliers defender Craig Ehlo hanging all over him, to give the Bulls an absurdly dramatic 101–100 victory and the series. My favorite part of the clip, which you’ve seen about athousand times, is Ehlo wistfully throwing up his hands, as if to say,
This just isn’t fair
. Which it wasn’t.
Before the Bulls broke from the huddle, Jordan had whispered to his teammate Craig Hodges, “I’m going to make it.” The Bulls frequently ran what Bach called “the Archangel Offense,” defined by the assistant as “getting the ball to Jordan and saying, ‘Save us, Michael.’ ” After this game, Doug Collins, who looked more exhausted than Jordan, said this about the play, “That was the give-the-ball-to-Michael-and-everybody-else-get-the-fuck-out-of-the-way play.” Jordan cracked up but looked embarrassed that Collins had used the F-word. Indeed, at that time, in casual conversation Jordan would say things like “Eff you” and “that MF-er.” There was an innocence about him, and I always thought that it might never have been better for him than it was on that day in Cleveland, his star rising, his future bright and unclouded, his breakfast utensils sacred tokens.
CHAPTER 10
THE OLD GUARD
Here Today … Gone Real Soon
In April 1989, about a month before Jordan made his oft-replayed shot over Ehlo, the Inspector of Meat got his wish. Boris Stankovic had never wavered in his crusade to get open competition into the Olympics, not even after his first attempt at passing the resolution, at the FIBA Congress in Madrid in 1986, failed. Getting the NBA into FIBA had by this time taken on a pragmatic aspect for Stankovic, too: After the 1980 Moscow Games, the Olympics boycotted by the United States, FIBA had been hemorrhaging money and was heading for bankruptcy. It needed both the sizzle and the steak that would come with the addition of NBA players.
So at a specially convened FIBA Congress in Munich, which had been preceded by much behind-the-scenes arm-twisting, a resolution passed that allowed NBA players to participate in the Olympics. The vote was 56–13, the United States and the Soviet Union being among the nay votes.
“We knew it was going to pass,” said Commissioner David Stern, “but we were absolutely not enthusiastic about it. It was sort of like, ‘Okay, what do we do now?’ ”
That’s a slight exaggeration, but it’s absolutely true that no full-scale mobilization was under way at the NBA offices in mid-town Manhattan. In fact, the vote got relatively scant attention in the United States because many observers believed there was no practical application. Nobody would ever get NBA players to go to the Olympics. Among the most skeptical was college hoops commentator Billy Packer, who said that NBA owners would not let their players play, and anyway, selfish NBA players would not want to give up their vacation. The late Al McGuire, a commentator of whom you couldn’t make any sense but whom you liked to hear talk anyway, said the same thing. Besides, this was spring, the opening of Major League Baseball, and, more than ever, there was Michael Jordan. Who could think of something that might or might not happen at the Olympics three years in the future?
In one corner of the
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