Hi all! In 2023, Matt Flesch released his brilliant documentary Last Comiskey about the 1990 White Sox.

Now he’s closing in on his next documentary about Chicago Stadium. And a 30-minute preview screening is coming next week.

Generation Madhouse celebrates Chicago Stadium from both the Bulls and Blackhawks side. Next week, Thursday, Aug. 27, Matt will be debuting a free, 30-minute preview at the Arlington Heights Library, 500 N. Dunton Ave.

To register for the event, click here.

Unfortunately I won’t be there, but I would if I could, because I’ve seen a lot of his material and even sat in on a few interviews, and I can tell you, this doc is going to be another nostalgic masterpiece just like the Sox documentary.

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Fair warning, considering this is a Bulls newsletter: the preview in Arlington Heights will be 90% from the Hawks side. Here is an early trailer:

Matt and I connected after he released Last Comiskey and started sharing resources across his doc and my book 6 Rings. I’m proud to be a small part of his movie, as both an Associate Producer and an interview subject as a Bulls fan and Chicago’s Sports Historian. His movie has a release date of 2027.

To date, around 80 people have been interviewed for Generation Madhouse, including Ed Belfour, Bill Cartwright, Cathy Core, Chris Chelios, Ray Clay, Nancy Faust, Pat Foley, Steve Larmer, Jocelyn Lemieux, Wayne Messmer, Dick Motta, Troy Murray, Will Perdue, Jeremy Roenick, Denis Savard, Steve Schanwald, Al Secord, Scott Williams, Danny Wirtz, relatives of Tom Boerwinkle, Bob Love and Jerry Sloan, and lots of fans, vendors, other stadium workers and media members.

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Here are some behind-the-scenes pictures from Matt:

Do you have home videos from Chicago Stadium that you would like to contribute?

If so, email Matt at LASTMADHOUSE@GMAIL.COM. Matt will digitize your copies and send them back to you.

Here are my pieces on the Old Barn, including the Cathy Core interview with Matt:

Lastly, just for fun, a throwback from 2013, the song “Welcome To the Madhouse” from my friends Rob “Young General” Watson and Marcus Rezak. See if you can catch my cameo. Enjoy!

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We’ll never forget seeing Michael Jordan in a Wizards jersey. The Last Dance reminded Bulls fans all about seeing B.J. in a Hornets jersey, and Bulls fans probably remember Steve Kerr and Will Perdue on the ‘99 Spurs. Obviously Horace made his mark in Orlando and on the Lakers, Harp won two titles with the Lakers, Scottie had memorable years in Portland, Dennis had fun cameos in L.A. and Dallas, Scott Williams became a vital starter on a great 2001 Bucks team. And on and on.

But do you remember Bill Cartwright finishing his career in Seattle?

Cartwright had a lot to say about the difficulty of that one season in his new memoir, Living Life at the Center, and shared insights into the difference between a Hall of Fame coach in George Karl and arguably the greatest coach ever in Phil Jackson.

After the 1994 season, Cartwright considered retirement until Karl and the SuperSonics sold him on the importance of veteran leadership on an explosively talented but disappointing club. In 1993, the young Sonics of Shawn Kemp and Gary Payton lost a hard-fought seven-game series to the Suns in the Western Conference Finals. They seemed on the verge of taking over the league. In 1994, they won a league best 63 games, and easily won the first two games of their first-round series against Denver…

…only to drop the final three, becoming the first #1 seed to lose to the #8 seed.

The Sonics wanted veterans who could help instill a winning culture. They added Cartwright and Lithuanian legend Šarūnas Marčiulionis1.

“My big thing is, Bill has won three championships,” Karl said after the Sonics signed the 37-year-old center. “We have no one on our team who has won a championship.”

Added Cartwright: “You have to sacrifice yourself, and a lot of times that’s hard. That’s a big part of winning a championship.”

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With Michael Jordan retired for a year and a half, the NBA title was there for the taking in ‘94 and ‘95 for a whole host of bridesmaids. Charles Barkley, Karl Malone and John Stockton, Patrick Ewing, Hakeem Olajuwon, David Robinson, Clyde Drexler: this was the time for the Dream Team generation to break through and bag a title. Right along with them were the Kemp-and-Payton SuperSonics. And while Barkley, Malone/Stockton, Ewing, Robinson and Drexler all ran into the buzzsaw that was Hakeem the Dream, the Reign Man and the Glove didn’t even reach that point.

They lost to the Nuggets in the first round in ‘94. Then in ‘95 they won 57 games, had home-court in the first round, and lost to the post-Magic / pre-Shaq Lakers in four games.

As for Cartwright and Marčiulionis, those veterans who Karl was going to lean on for their playoff experience? He didn’t play them a single minute.

“Even though we had a really good team, veteran players, and an established coaching staff, our team played the season well but did not improve over the year,” Cartwright wrote. “Coach Karl played a short rotation, including in the playoffs. … What was strength in Chicago was detrimental in Seattle. It was a real lack of trust from Coach Karl.”

Bill broke it down in his book, and showed one of the big differences between Karl and Phil Jackson: disciplining players who were late, specifically Shawn Kemp. As Cartwright noted, “Undisciplined players cost us the season.”

Here is Bill’s breakdown of what went wrong in Seattle in ‘95:

Another difference between Chicago and Seattle was the standard of conduct for the players. Gary Payton and Shawn Kemp were held to different standards than the rest of the team. These guys were constantly late, especially on our flights. This would not have been tolerated in Chicago. Ultimately, this came back to bite us in the playoffs. We were busing over to shoot around before the last playoff game. We were scheduled to leave at 10 a.m.; the entire team was on the bus except Shawn Kemp. At 11 a.m., we were still on the bus waiting for Shawn to appear.

Shawn was eventually found, and we went on to shoot around. That set the tone for the game and the season — we lost to the Los Angeles Lakers in the first round of the playoffs. Undisciplined players cost us the season. It was a lousy way to end my playing career.

Here is how George Karl remembered it in his book “This Game’s the Best!”:

For the 1994-’95 season, we again added a little experience and a lot of talent. We picked up Sarunas Marciulionis and Bill Cartwright and thought we had again answered needs to take us further.

(Karl went on to note that he had to take minutes from the two vets and give them to Kendall Gill)

Well, by abandoning old veterans like Marciulionis and Cartwright to give Kendall more minutes, I probably made the right decision. But I can only say probably, because obviously it did not work.

Cartwright remembered it differently, thinking that Karl actually left Kendall on the bench too. That’s probably because Kendall went from averaging 29 minutes a game in the regular season with 58 starts to playing just 18 minutes a game in the playoffs with zero starts.

This year, Gill described his time in Seattle as “bittersweet”:

“My time with George Karl was bad. We all know now from the stories about George Karl what type of dude he is. I’m not going to hold my tongue about him, I don’t like the guy even still to this day.”

Kendall Gill is not alone among Karl’s former players talking about how they disliked him. Karl seems to have created two results at nearly all of his coaching stops: a playoff run and disillusioned players. That was true in Seattle (Cartwright, Gill), Milwaukee (Ray Allen), Denver (Carmelo Anthony) and, without the playoff run, Sacramento (DeMarcus Cousins). Kobe even talked about his beef with Karl because the coach benched him in the fourth quarter, preventing Kobe from challenging Jordan (Karl’s fellow UNC Tar Heel) for the game’s MVP.

How Phil Jackson won over his players

What strikes me about all of this is that even when players disagreed with him, Phil Jackson maintained a pretty solid reputation among his former players. Scottie had his disagreements with Phil, yet was largely complimentary of him in his 2021 memoir. Pippen wrote:

I totally bought into what he was saying about a basketball team being a pack, not a collection of separate individuals. More than the X’s and O’s, that was Phil Jackson’s most valuable contribution to the Chicago Bulls. He got us to bond. To be one.

Scott Williams told me about many of his issues with Phil, yet still landed on a final note of praise:

“The great thing about Phil Jackson, which I probably didn’t appreciate at the time, because I think he screwed me in some other ways, was when you go around this league and you spend 30 years in the NBA at the highest level in college basketball, you understand how difficult it can be to mesh egos on a roster where only five guys can play at a time. That’s probably the most difficult thing. Whether it’s playing time or status or whatever the case might be, that’s one of the most difficult jobs. And Phil Jackson did a nice job of keeping the situation extremely competitive but with a goal in mind that all of us would work together.”

Despite Will Perdue’s frustrations with Phil, he also shared with me his high respect:

“Phil (was) constantly chipping away (at MJ), chipping away, chipping away. ‘Michael you’ve got to understand: this is what you need to do. This is the hour. It has to work. What is everybody talking about you right now? Best player in the league, but does he make anybody better? Has he won a championship?’ He was holding him accountable.”

Phil’s detractors like to say, “Anyone could coach Hall of Fame players.” Not only is that false, but the challenge is that you can’t only coach the Hall of Famers. You have to coach the role players too, and you have to help every player know their place on the team and feel connected whether they are a transcendent talent, a journeyman or anyone in between.

While I always liked George Karl from afar, Bill Cartwright’s insights into the 1994-95 season shows just how big a gap there is between a Hall of Fame coach in Karl and someone in the running for the greatest coach ever in American sports in Jackson.

“Phil was at his best” — how Phil Jackson steered the Bulls to the 1998 championship

I always think of 1994 as Phil’s best year as Bulls coach, just because of the incredible challenge of suddenly losing MJ one month before the season. I could also make a case for 1991, 1992 or 1993 as Phil’s best year. But yes, perhaps his best season was 1998, in which he made all the right moves to squeeze one final ring out of a team often running on fumes. For the same reason, this might be Michael Jordan’s best season, too.

Here’s what Cartwright wrote about Phil’s coaching job in 1998:

I think Phil was at his best. Acknowledging that this was his last year, he deemed that season “The Last Dance.” That was also the season I learned how to coach. I learned how to stay balanced during 82 games of wins and losses from Phil Jackson.

One big takeaway Cartwright took from Phil was managing challenging personalities, specifically Dennis Rodman. Writes Cartwright:

Dennis was known for not showing up at practice. Often, he was found at home eating cereal and watching cartoons. I thought Phil handled it well by addressing the team and telling the team, “We’ll just spank him later,” as if he were a little kid.

What Phil always knew was that treating players fairly didn’t mean treating them all the same. He was able to explain to his team his approach to handling Rodman, something Cartwright did not see George Karl do in handling Kemp.

Insightful stuff from the man they called “Teach.”

Congratulations to Bill Cartwright on your book!

Missed my latest story? Subscribe today and learn the backstory of the Jordan-Gretzky-Bo Jackson cartoon “ProStars” through my interview with Andy Heyward!

“Who could ever think growing up that you’d be doing a cartoon and kids would be watching you Saturdays? I used to watch them, and still watch them on Saturdays. I’m glad to have this opportunity.”

— Michael Jordan, September 1991, about his starring role on the new cartoon show “ProStars”

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Sad news in the NBA world, as Naismith Hall of Fame coach Don Nelson died today at the age of 86. Marc Stein broke the news with a statement from the Nelson family.

Though the phrase “changed the game” is overused, it applies to Nelson. Immediately following his 14-year playing career, in which he won five championships during his 11 seasons with the Celtics, Nelson went into coaching, with 31 seasons as head coach for four franchises, completely changing how offense is played with his trademark “Nellie Ball” while influencing the dynasty Bulls.

He started with the Bucks in 1977, the year after he retired as a player, where he built an Eastern Conference power that reached the playoffs nine times in 10 full seasons, twice reaching the conference finals while giving the basketball world a position that would re-invent the game: the point forward. Nelson put the 6’5 forward Paul Pressey into the point guard spot, paving the way for Scottie Pippen and eventually LeBron James.

We obviously think of the Pistons, Celtics and even the Knicks and Cavs as the teams in the East that the rising Bulls had to figure out, but Nelson’s Bucks were right there too. In Michael Jordan’s first playoff series his rookie year, the Bulls lost to Nelson’s Bucks in four games in the first round, as Terry Cummings became the only player ever to outscore MJ in a playoff series, topping him by one point, 118-117.

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Milwaukee’s stellar guard play over the decade — including Pressey, Sidney Moncrief, Marques Johnson, Ricky Pierce, future Bull Craig Hodges, Alvin Robertson and Jay Humphries — meant the Bulls always had to be on the hunt for impact guards. The Bulls got their revenge on Milwaukee in the 1990 first round, with a four-game series win of their own.

Nelson had moved to Golden State by then, where he continued to experiment with small ball lineups and the point forward position, moving Chris Mullin to point forward early in his tenure and then unleashing the Run-TMC Warriors of Mullin, Tim Hardaway and Mitch Richmond.

On the eve of the 1993-94 season, Phil Jackson talked about wanting a “unique” offense of MJ, Scottie, Horace, rookie Toni Kukoc and Scott Williams at center, something he would eventually do in 1996, and while I’ve never seen Phil say that Nelson led the way — and while Phil obviously earned his credit as an innovator too — Nelson absolutely was a pioneer in the “position-less” basketball that the second three-peat Bulls would perfect and that would go on to take root throughout the league, both on title teams like LeBron’s Heat and Steph’s Warriors, and spunkier teams… like Don Nelson’s “We Believe” 2007 Warriors.

But before Nelson got to those wild 2000s Warriors en route to becoming the winningest coach in NBA history1, he transformed the Mavericks into a Western power, starting with massive growing pains his first year in Dallas and a hilariously memorable game against the two-time reigning champion Bulls.

He did so with a plan for Dennis Rodman, creating a trivia question around a one-and-done NBA rookie: Bubba Wells.

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Don Nelson, Bubba Wells, Dennis Rodman and the fastest foul-out in NBA history

On Dec. 29, 1997, the 5-23 Dallas Mavericks came to Chicago to battle the 19-9 Chicago Bulls. I don’t need to spend much more time explaining the difference in fortunes between these clubs. Even without the injured Scottie Pippen, a “bad start” Bulls team was tied for the best record in the East.

The Mavs, meanwhile, had earned MJ’s ire by firing former Bulls assistant Jim Clemons as head coach after a 4-12 start in his second year running the club.2 The man who fired him was the man who replaced him: GM-turned-head coach Don Nelson.3

So Nelson was now in charge of a team going nowhere, with the second worst record in the NBA and an 11-game losing streak. The coach knew as well as anyone that the Bulls didn’t have many flaws they could exploit. He could only think of one: sending Dennis Rodman to the free throw line.

The morning of the game, the Tribune ran a huge feature on how Rodman had calmed himself down, cutting way down on his technical fouls from his league-leading 14 the year before, while still leading the league in rebounding and playing great defense. But he couldn’t shoot free throws. Never a great foul shooter, even Rodman’s rough career high of 65% was long in the past. As a Bull for two seasons, he had shot 55%, but was down to a dismal 39% entering the Mavericks game.

And so in the first quarter, Don Nelson went to the bench to find his Rodman stopper: rookie guard Bubba Wells.

What proceeded was one of the funniest games in NBA history, as Wells set an NBA record that stands today: the fastest foul out ever, accumulating six fouls in three minutes of play.4

And what did Rodman do?

He hit his free throws.

It went like this:

• 1:40 left in the 1st quarter: Wells checks in

• 1:23: Wells foul #1 on Rodman

• Rodman makes 1-2 FT

• 1:00: Wells foul #2 on Rodman

• Rodman makes 1-2 FT

• 0:23: Wells foul #3 on Rodman

• Rodman makes both free throws

Fast forward to the third quarter:

• 1:41 left in the 3rd: Wells checks in

• 1:23: Wells foul #4 on Rodman

• Rodman makes 1-2 FT

• 1:05: Wells foul #5 on Rodman

• Rodman makes both free throws

• 0:38: Wells fouls out, foul #6 on Rodman

• Rodman makes both free throws

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The Bulls won 111-105, with three stat lines standing out: Jordan scored 41 points, Rodman bagged 27 rebounds to go along with 11 points and eight assists, and Bubba Wells fouled out in two minutes and 43 seconds of play.5

“I kept saying to myself, ‘He’s fouling me. I got to burn them for it,’” Rodman said after the game.

Rodman’s nine made free throws tied for the most of his career, something he hadn’t done since the ‘89 season with the Pistons.

The Mavs would finish the season a respectable (for them) 20-62. They would draft Dirk Nowitzki that summer to build a big three with Michael Finley and Steve Nash, and they were a 53-win playoff team in 2001. Nellie always had a plan. Against Rodman and the Bulls, his plan backfired — and became one of my favorite, funny memories as a sports fan.

Rest in Peace to the great Don Nelson!

What else happened during that Bulls-Mavs game? Well, Joe Kleine made two free throws to get us over 110 points, winning free tacos for all fans in attendance! And “Taco Joe” was born. Kleine remembered it fondly two years ago in our interview:

“Hey, you know Rodman is signing at this thing?”

So said my brother Mike last week, informing me that our beloved Dennis Rodman, three-time NBA champion from YOUR World Champion Chicago Bulls, would be at the 46th National Sports Collectors Convention in Rosemont, signing autographs and taking photos starting at 3 p.m.

My book, 6 Rings, has been coming along slowly. The one hold up? Getting the players. The players I’ve interviewed have been amazing. But my success rate has been low.

So I decided to take a shot and do something different: in this case, hit up a public signing and make my case in person to the greatest rebounder the game has ever seen.

For the occasion, I fired up two t-shirts of the Chicago Reader cover from my cover story on Dennis last year, with the amazing artwork from Chicago’s Otis Richardson.

I wore one:

…and I brought the other to Dennis as a gift, along with a copy of the actual newspaper.

Mike and I hit the road at 11 a.m. to get there early, scout the location and make sure that we were first in line.

I’m going to spare you the big leadup and let-down, dear reader, which is to say no, I did not get my interview with Dennis. I don’t want you to read this whole piece expecting that I got it only to learn I did not. But the experience was fun and fascinating, and I still have a shot with Dennis in the future.

The convention was full sports fan sensory explosion. Collectors and dealers, sports fans and athletes, promoters and vendors, all mashed into the Donald E. Stephens Convention Center. The list of athletes there yesterday alone was mind-boggling. Dr. J, Barry Sanders, Devin Hester, Reggie Jackson, Bo Jackson, Pedro Martinez, Mariano Rivera, Calvin Johnson, LaDainian Tomlinson. I saw Sammy Sosa tossing baseballs to fans and giving a public interview about the 1998 Wild Card run. Cooperstown has three new entrants this year, and two of them were signing nearly next to each other: Andruw Jones and Jeff Kent.

Along with Hester, Bears fans could meet Otis Wilson and Mike Hartenstine. You would stand around and hear P.A. announcements like, “Ladies and gentlemen, we have confirmation: Johnny Manziel’s plane has landed. He is in the city and on his way.”

The merch was incredible. One seller had football jerseys from the first three decades of the NFL, the kind of items I’ve only seen in Canton. Game-worn jerseys from the 50s, 60s, 70s, along with newer ones. And tons of game programs and season guides, each affordable on their own, none particularly more special than the last, so you end up saying, “I can buy the program to the 1973 NBA All-Star Game at Chicago Stadium for just $40, and the Super Bowl XX program for just $35, and it’s worth it because if I throw in a 1973 Vikings-Browns program with a cover story on Minnesota legend Bronko Nagurski, then each will have only cost an average of $28!”

But I decided not to buy any of them, and instead keep my emotional and psychological focus on getting my interview with Rodman.

And I’ll tell you, dear Reader: Dennis Rodman was among the most popular athletes at the event.

He arrived a bit after 3 p.m. but signed until just after 5 p.m. Fans showed up wearing or holding all of his NBA jerseys: I saw white and red Bulls jerseys, a blue Pistons jersey, a Black Spurs jersey, a yellow Lakers jersey and a blue Mavericks jersey. My definitely-not-street-legal Chicago Reader t-shirt might have been the most exclusive, but it was far from the most flashy, colorful Rodman t-shirt. Fans brought basketballs, posters, cards, photos, t-shirts, jerseys and hats.

Hell, since I was there anyhow and needed something for him to sign while I made my pitch to him and his team, I brought my copy of Bad As I Wanna Be, now autographed:

Dennis was friendly to all, his usual quiet self. I told him what I was working on, told him that I had a great interview with Dwight Manley, and asked if I could do a walk-and-talk with him after the signing. His team was fine with it, and asked me for my number so that they could contact me after he finished.

So I waited, and watched as fans of all ages bubbled in joy to meet him. Fans were taking pictures from outside the wall where the line started; one older woman took a photo and then turned to me and my brother and exclaimed, “His hair is purple today!”

The fans in line behind me were from Texas, and included a former minority owner of both the Rangers and the Mavericks, who had brought a ball for Dennis to sign.

At a certain point, I walked back up to the front of the line and just stood waiting, looking like I was supposed to be there (or trying to, anyhow), and I heard fans say to him things like:

“My dad always told me in the 90s to play just how you play!”

“Thank you for all you did for the Bulls.”

“Thank you for how you are.”

One fan turned to his girlfriend Yella and other members of his team, shook their hands and say, “Thank you for supporting Dennis all these years.”

A boy who couldn’t be more than 10 years old shook his hand and walked off holding his hand up, telling his dad and kind of the world, “I’ll never wash this hand again!”

I thought that was something people only say in movies and TV shows, but when Dennis Rodman is around, art becomes life.

When the clock hit 5 p.m., the line was finally petering out. Mike had joined me down by the front, and just as they were wrapping up, a security guard approached us and said we couldn’t be there.

“We’re doing an interview with Dennis.”

“You have to move.”

Dennis and his team were a bit too far from us for me to be able to yell over to them and get their blessing. The armed security guard started waving at us to move just as Dennis and his team were walking the other way toward a secluded area. It was a Hail Mary that fell dead in the endzone, ‘95 Colts style. I was heartbroken.

But his team has my number, and so if they’re reading this, please call me!

Reader, more to come. Keep on pushing. Enjoy your Sunday!

Best,

Jack

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Reader, if you have contact to Bulls players, coaches, employees, stadium workers or if you have exclusive, cool stories about interactions with the 90s Bulls, I want to hear them! Please comment below and I’ll reach out.

Thank you to Dennis Rodman’s team, especially Yella, for their kindness. Thank you to TriStar Productions for the setup, especially Jill and Coy. Thank you to the Haddock family for the great conversation. Thank you to Mike for the idea :) Onward!

“One day you might look up and see me playing the game at 50. (nervous laughter in crowd) Oh don’t laugh. (relaxed laughter) Never say never. Because limits, like fears, are often just an illusion.” — Michael Jordan, September 2009, upon induction into the Hall of Fame

While Michael Jordan’s Wizards career wasn’t the outright failure many suggest, it also wasn’t the success that he or any of us wanted.

But what if instead of going to Washington in the fall of 2001, MJ sought out the best available landing spot? What if he signed with the Lakers? The Blazers? The Sixers? The…

Well?

In February 2013, for Michael Jordan’s 50th birthday, I explored this question for Jonathan Eig’s ChicagoSide sports site. My story — which Jon’s team wonderfully titled “The 40-Year-Old Version” — looked at the what-if around MJ’s Wizards comeback: What if Michael Jordan had chosen a different team than the Wizards? Which would have been best?

With LeBron James heading to Philly, much of the now exhausting GOAT discourse1 has turned to what we would think if MJ left the Bulls for other teams, especially after 1998. The smart ones among us are asking what I asked back in 2013: what would MJ’s Wizards years have looked like if he picked the best possible landing spot?

While ChicagoSide is no longer online, thanks to the wonders of the Internet Archive, AKA The Wayback Machine, and my own archives, I am republishing the story here, though with a much shorter introduction, which you can read at the link above. I’ve also added an eighth team option, as well as footnotes with new angles. Enjoy!

Best,

Jack

(QUICK NOTE: I appreciate what LeBron has done and how he’s run his career. It’s different than what any other player of his stature has ever done. I’m going to trust that talking about Jordan doesn’t require me to explain my entire view on someone as great and complex as LeBron James. Let’s let one thing be just that one thing. Deal?)

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The 40-Year-Old Version: Why Michael Jordan’s Wizards Years Were Wasted

Originally published on ChicagoSide, Feb. 15, 2013

When, at the age of 46, Michael Jordan said at his Hall of Fame induction that he might unretire a third time and play in the NBA as a 50-year-old, the notion seemed so absurd that the mere mention made people jittery. How could this man, already puffy at 46, possibly believe that he could be effective on the court at 50?

But then this month, his fellow North Carolina alum Antawn Jamison said that Jordan “still believes he can (play in the NBA)” and estimated that in the right situation, 50-year-old MJ could play 15 to 20 minutes a night and score “10 or 11 points.”

Kooky talk, right? Well here’s the thing: 50-year-old MJ playing effective pro ball doesn’t seem so kooky if we remember just how good 40-year-old MJ was. The problem is that most basketball fans, especially Bulls fans (myself included), reacted to MJ’s Wizards years as if recoiling from a deformity.

Yes, MJ in a Wizards jersey was an eyesore. But we made a mistake when we lumped him in with the Dead Man Walking stints of Olajuwon on the Raptors or Ewing on the Sonics/Magic. Bulls fans were disgusted, but Jordan’s time with Washington was actually quite brilliant.

Michael Jordan achievements while in Washington2:

• Oldest player to score 50 points in an NBA game (38)3

• Oldest player to score 40 points in an NBA game (40)4

• Only 40-year-old to average 20 points per game in a full season5

• Tied with Kareem Abdul-Jabbar as oldest player voted as All-Star starter (38)6

• Oldest All-Star starter (39, when Vince Carter gave him his starting spot in 2003)

What made MJ’s Wizards career so strange was that half the time he looked like a 40-year-old basketball player, and the other half he looked like Michael Jordan. When he was MJ, though, he was a sight to see: he hit game-winners at ease, dropped 20 points in his final All-Star game, and made one of the most brilliant defensive plays of his career with his two-handed shot-block/ball-snatch maneuver against Ron Mercer in the final minutes of Jordan’s first game against his old team.

For me, that play sums up the experience of watching Jordan on the Wizards. Yes, it was a personal affront to everyone who loves the Bulls, but how can you argue with more great Michael memories?

So it got me wondering: What if Michael Jordan had been an unrestricted free agent for his second comeback in 2001 instead of part owner of the Wizards? What would have been the best situation for him? What team would have given him the best chance to win a championship and further gild his image?

To find the answer, let’s take a stroll back to the summer of 2001 and rewrite the ending of MJ’s third act. Included are the records of Jordan’s prospective teams for the 2000-01 season to show what was influencing his decision, as well as records for the following year to show how the teams fared without him.

Here are my top eight could-have-been situations.7

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#8: New Jersey Nets

2000-2001: 26-56
2001-2002: 52-30, lost NBA Finals 4-0 vs. Lakers

Lineup with Jordan:

• PG Jason Kidd

• SG Michael Jordan

• SF Keith Van Horn

• PF Kenyon Martin

• C Todd MacCulloch

WHY IT WOULD’VE WORKED: Throughout Jordan’s career, the cities he played in were all east of the Mississippi: Chapel Hill, Chicago, New York, Washington D.C. So in the event that it turned out that winning with an Eastern Conference team was for some reason important to Jordan, the Nets would be a good candidate.

WHY IT WOULDN’T HAVE WORKED: First of all, he’d never select the Nets coming out of retirement, because nobody knew they’d be in the Finals, even with the Kidd-Marbury trade. Second, New Jersey + Jordan still can’t beat the Lakers, and so legacy-wise, seeing MJ in a Nets jersey is not that much better than seeing him in a Wizards jersey.

#7: Boston Celtics

2000-2001: 36-46
2001-2002: 49-33, lost Eastern Conference Finals

Lineup with Jordan:

• PG Kenny Anderson

• SG Michael Jordan

• SF Paul Pierce

• PF Antoine Walker

• C Tony Battie

WHY IT WOULD’VE WORKED: Same reasoning used for the Nets, but add to that the possibility of winning a title for a team with a rich tradition like the Celtics. Boston + Jordan beats New Jersey, I think, and then he gets to be the centerpiece of a Celtics-Lakers Finals, with a chance to beat his old coach and Kobe, his heir apparent.

WHY IT WOULDN’T HAVE WORKED: Can Jordan’s Celtics beat L.A.? I think they do better than Jordan’s Nets, but still might not do it. Also, he couldn’t wear #23 without permission from former Celtics guard Frank Ramsey8.

#6: Los Angeles Lakers

2000-2001: 56-26, won NBA Championship
2001-2002: 58-24, won NBA Championship

Lineup with Jordan:

• PG Derek Fisher

• SG Kobe Bryant

• SF Michael Jordan9

• PF Robert Horry

• C Shaquille O’Neal

WHY IT WOULD’VE WORKED: Swap Rick Fox for MJ and roll from there. Obviously, if this worked, it comes with the highest likelihood of bagging ring #7.

WHY IT WOULDN’T HAVE WORKED: Ye gods… where to start? First of all, what would be the effect of teaming 39-year-old Jordan with 23-year-old Kobe? Every practice would grind to a halt as MJ & Kobe play out the real life version of Jordan’s “39 vs. 23” commercial. How would the shot distribution work between Jordan, Shaq, and Kobe?

And even if everything clicked and they won the title, his legacy would suffer because he…

• once again won with Phil Jackson

• shared the stage with Kobe/Shaq

• was a front-runner by joining the back-to-back champs

What’s the point?

#5: Philadelphia 76ers

2000-2001: 56-26, lost Finals
2001-2002: 49-33, lost Eastern Conference Finals

Lineup with Jordan:

• PG Allen Iverson

• SG Michael Jordan

• SF Matt Harpring

• PF Derrick Coleman

• C Dikembe Mutombo

WHY IT WOULD’VE WORKED: Now this is interesting.

LeBron’s new club is the highest remaining Eastern Conference team on my list. I actually left the Sixers out of my original story, because the MJ-AI pairing didn’t seem like it would work. But the love that Jordan and Iverson have for each other is so strong, I’m calling an audible.10

Before the ‘84 draft, Jordan said he would love to go to the Sixers at #5; this would have been a chance to make good on that curiosity, with a shot at putting the 2001 Finals runner-up over the top against both Phil and Kobe. He could play with Iverson — they had a ton of fun together in the All-Star Game this year and the next. He could play for his fellow Tar Heel Larry Brown. He could help the Sixers win their first title since 1983, back when one of his idols, Dr. J, won it all. The upside of a title here is huge.

WHY IT WOULDN’T HAVE WORKED: I once described Iverson — one of my personal favorites — as having “the same mind, the same wiring” as Jordan, only “six inches shorter and without Pippen.” So it’s just hard for me to say how a Jordan-Iverson pairing would work. This is a worse spot basketball-wise than the Lakers, but I’m ranking it higher because a title would mean so much more, both for returning an old great to glory and for the tougher road to the top.

#4: San Antonio Spurs

2000-2001: 58-24, lost Western Conference Finals
2001-2002: 58-24, lost second round 4-1 vs. Lakers

Lineup with Jordan:

• PG Tony Parker

• SG Michael Jordan11

• SF Bruce Bowen

• PF Tim Duncan

• C David Robinson

WHY IT WOULD’VE WORKED: This is a great spot to get a ring. Spurs + Jordan nab home court against Lakers, and possibly play their way into home-court in the Finals.

WHY IT WOULDN’T HAVE WORKED: The ’02 Spurs were a team with one superstar and zero All-Stars, so while they could compete with the Lakers, victory is by no means guaranteed. Also, Jordan would be joining a team that won a championship without him three years prior, and would be playing second banana to Tim Duncan, possibly even in the fourth quarter.

#3: Portland Trail Blazers

2000-2001: 50-32, lost in first round 3-0 vs. Lakers
2001-2002: 49-33, lost in first round 3-0 vs. Lakers

Lineup with Jordan:

• PG Damon Stoudamire

• SG Michael Jordan

• SF Scottie Pippen

• PF Rasheed Wallace

• C Arvydas Sabonis

WHY IT WOULD’VE WORKED: Soooooo much good stuff here.

Imagine, if you will, Pippen and Jordan hanging out during the summer of 200112. They play HORSE. They play cards. They smoke cigars and have a drink. They talk about the old days. Maybe there’s some pent-up frustration with Phil Jackson over little things from the Bulls days they’ve never expressed, and now they just start cutting loose because it’s MJ & Scottie and why the hell not? Pip has been eliminated three straight years by Kobe, Shaq, and the Lakers, and two straight years by Phil, and now the Blazers have just traded Steve Smith to San Antonio, leaving the 2-guard spot in the hands of Bonzi Wells. Also, they’re getting Steve Kerr in the Spurs trade!

Scottie’s pitch is simple: “So Mike, want to help me beat the Lakers?”

Other perks: playing in Nike’s hometown… playing with the team that passed him up in the draft… finding another way to embarrass Clyde Drexler. Trail Blazers + Jordan can beat the Lakers. It would be tough, but it could be done.

WHY IT WOULDN’T HAVE WORKED: It’s not quite the best championship option. There’s a little bit too much potential for crazy when you’re talking about the soon-to-be Jail Blazers. Why risk it? Plus, if he had the opportunity to beat both Scottie AND Phil on his path to a title, I imagine he would prefer that.

#2: Utah Jazz

2000-2001: 53-29, lost in first round
2001-2002: 44-38, lost in first round

Lineup with Jordan:

• PG John Stockton

• SG Michael Jordan

• SF Bryon Russell

• PF Karl Malone

• C Donyell Marshall

WHY IT WOULD’VE WORKED: Jazz fell off some in 2002, but in 2001 they were a 53-win team that blew a 2-0 series lead on the Mavericks. MJ + ’01 Jazz = at least 53 wins, and before you say I’m crazy for suggesting MJ team with Malone/Stockton, ask yourself if it’s any more crazy than Garnett-Pierce-Allen, Olajuwon-Drexler-Barkley, or James-Wade-Bosh. That would be the question with this scenario: would Jordan’s Jazz be more ’08 Celtics or ’97 Rockets?

Regardless, this is a good look for MJ. There are no potential distractions like in Portland, no recent titles detracting from the achievement like in San Antonio, and while some Bulls fans might take offense to MJ playing in Utah, I think Jordan would get off on it for the same reason that Beyonce seemed to enjoy performing with Destiny’s Child during the Super Bowl13. It’s a subtle way of asserting himself again over Malone, Stockton, Sloan, Russell, and Utah while simultaneously looking like their savior.

WHY IT WOULDN’T HAVE: This was a 44-win team in 2002, so even with Jordan in the mix, do they have the firepower to beat Sacramento, let alone the Lakers? Not sure.

#1: Sacramento Kings

2000-2001: 55-27, swept in second round
2001-2002: 61-21, lost Western Conference Finals

Lineup with Jordan:

• PG Mike Bibby

• SG Michael Jordan

• SF Peja Stojakovic

• PF Chris Webber

• C Vlade Divac

WHY IT WOULD’VE WORKED: The Kings have it all. This was a team on the ascent, and Jordan could take them to the mountaintop. He would empathize with them, since their trajectory from 1999 to 2002 was similar to the one taken by Jordan’s Bulls between 1988 and 1991, complete with their own Detroit Pistons (the Lakers).

They had already improved their starting lineup by trading Jason Williams for Mike Bibby. And even without Jordan, the 2002 Kings captured the league’s best record and came within one fixed game (Game 6) and one overtime game (Game 7) of the Finals, where they would have met an underwhelming Nets team.

Jordan perfectly fills Sacramento’s holes. He replaces Doug Christie in the starting lineup to give them a 10-point scoring boost, and he reverses the root cause of their losses in Game 6 (not getting to the foul line enough due to fixed officiating due to the League wanting the Lakers in the Finals, a desire that goes out the window with MJ on the other side… not to mention that, even if Stern still wanted L.A. in the Finals, MJ would find a way to get to the line, even in a rigged game, because he’s Michael Friggin’ Jordan and that’s what he does) and Game 7 (not having a clutch 4th quarter performer to win the game for the Kings in regulation, and needing a career night from Bibby to even end up in overtime).

With C-Webb at his peak and Stojakovic/Bibby each having marvelous seasons, Jordan would not have to carry the scoring load all season, yet would still be needed to close out tight games.

WHY IT WOULDN’T HAVE WORKED: The “Isn’t it weird to see MJ in a Wizards jersey?” problem would still exist. But that’s it, and goodness, if we could get used to him on a terrible Wizards team, we could accept him on a championship Kings team.

MJ in Sacramento means Jordan finally gets to hold up seven fingers, and probably wins another Finals MVP award. His career scoring average would dip to second place, but he would add to his postseason legacy and become the first non-Boston Celtic to win more than six titles, with the possibility for more in 2003 & 2004.

If only someone would have told him: Go West, old man.

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Thank you Jonathan Eig!

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We loved hearing Stacey King’s voice.

Turns out, he loved hearing ours.

Following the shocking, tragic news of Stacey’s death on Sunday, Bulls fans have been taking to social media to share not simply their tributes and condolences but their photos with the man himself. Stacey King made time for every Bulls fan possible. The outpouring of pictures over the years, especially at Bulls games, demonstrates the love we had for him and the love he had for us.

I’m grabbing as many of these tributes as possible from as many social media sites as possible. Feel free to send me yours at readjack6@gmail.com, or tag me, and I’ll add those here too. Our deepest condolences to Stacey’s family, friends and teammates.

Jack

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More tributes to Stacey King:

• Full CHSN tribute from Camron Smith, Kendall Gill, K.C. Johnson, Marc Brady, Adam Amin, Ruthie Polinsky, Horace Grant, Neil Funk, Mark Schanowski, Will Perdue, Matas Buzelis, Ayo Dosunmu

• Sam Smith

• Kelly Dwyer

• Jeff Agrest

• Chicago Tribune editorial board

• CHGO tributes, from CHGO Bulls (Matt Peck, Dave Watson, Will Gottlieb), and CHGO Bulls with guests Mark Carman and Luke Stuckmeyer

• Carman and Jurko with Kendall Gill

• Dan Bernstein and Matt Abbatacola

• Kap & J. Hood

• Mully and Haugh — with Neil Funk and K.C. Johnson

• Spiegel and Holmes with Will Perdue

• Tina Nguyen with David Haugh and Matt Spiegel

• Waddle and Silvy with Adam Amin

This sucks.

There are many other ways to start this story: a tribute to how he delivered the Derrick Rose experience, a heart-pulsating re-telling of his bring-the-house-down jumper in the comeback against the Blazers to seal ring number two, or the way he forever changed what we say when we use hot sauce.

But considering the way this news crushed Chicago, clever feels wrong. Stacey King died Sunday at age 59, and it absolutely sucks. We weren’t ready. We’ll never be the same. Because Ronald Stacey King gave us one of the greatest gifts of sports:

The voice of the fan.

There are two templates for elite color commentators: the analyst and the fan. Each can blend into the other but the best always end up getting known for one more than the other. Obviously Stacey could and did analyze the game, but what made his death hurt so badly was the fan side: he was us in the booth, the spiritual successor to his fellow Bulls lifers Red Kerr and Norm Van Lier.

Stacey became the standard bearer in Bulls broadcasts nearly immediately upon joining the booth in 2006 as a third man with Kerr and Tom Dore. Two years later, the team’s booths reshuffled, bringing radio man Neil Funk to TV to pair with King.

This is where Stacey’s legacy lives. With Funk and then with Adam Amin, Stacey became to the Bulls what Ron Santo was to the Cubs, what Doug Buffone and Ed O’Bradovich were for the Bears in the studio. In a perfect stroke of fate, two weeks after Stacey became the team’s #1 color man, the Bulls won the 2008 NBA draft lottery, leading to the selection of the player whose magnificent play would become King’s calling card: Derrick Rose.

As D-Rose became the most exciting player in a Bulls uniform since Michael Jordan, Stacey King became the voice of our excitement. Most famously was January 22, 2010, when Derrick unleashed his iconic dunk on Goran Dragic and the words flowed out of King in revelation.

Sixteen years later, I find his voice from that night in my head word for word.

“Stop it! Stop it! … What are you doing, Dragic? Did you not get the memo? Derrick Rose can go upstairs!”

“All my stuff is instinctive,” Stacey told ESPN’s Jon Greenberg the next season. “I don’t write it down and say, ‘Let me say that.’ It’s fun and the fans get a kick out of it, but I take my job seriously as an analyst. That’s what I do before anything.”

Stacey’s voice is the backdrop for every chapter of Derrick’s rise, from hometown kid to Rookie of the Year to NBA MVP to tragic figure to comeback tail. In 2017, Bulls superfan Adam Howes produced a Twitter thread of King’s greatest D-Rose calls. The collection of clips underscored just how special the bond was between Rose and King, and between King and us, with Bulls Nation using it as the launch point for a celebration of not just Derrick but our man Stacey.

“It was awesome and brought back a lot of great memories for me and Chicago Bulls fans,” Stacey tweeted as the thread made the rounds. It was the first time I remember Bulls fans taking specific notice of the connection between King and his muse Rose, an acknowledgement that the greatest era of Bulls basketball since the dynasty was made all the more memorable by this man and his microphone.

It was through Derrick Rose’s heroics that we heard Stacey exclaim “Step back and kiss myself!” And certainly no mention of the player and the voice is complete without recalling Stacey’s succinct description of the man wearing #1: “Too big, too strong, too fast, too good!”

With Stacey, the G stood for Gets, the hot sauce was heavenly and we all knew what to do after a Bulls win, because Stacey told us: “Drive home safely, Chicago!”

What’s fun about that last one is that so often, he didn’t — at least not until he’d celebrated with fans. My guy Stephen Noh pulled up so many tweets from Stacey where he tells fans that he’s happy to meet them after the game. All throughout Sunday as news spread, Bulls fans posted their pictures that they took with Stacey at Bulls games. He was a favorite on Cameo, recording messages for fans on their birthdays or other celebrations. I attended Derrick Rose Day in January of 2025, and trailing only Derrick that night and maybe Joakim Noah for fan reception was Stacey. He was our voice, and we never felt as if a Bulls moment was complete until Stacey was part of it.

For much of his playing career, that was not the case. I think about that a lot: how Stacey’s broadcast career completely transformed his relationship with Bulls fans. Drafted sixth overall in 1989, King’s Bulls career was rocky, especially the first two seasons. His attempts to overtake Horace Grant as starting power forward never materialized. The team’s vets, especially MJ, lit King up in 1991, as documented in painful detail in The Jordan Rules.

At the 1991 Grant Park rally, when Red Kerr announced Stacey to the crowd, Bulls fans booed.

Entering his third season, King wanted to shake the funk of his first championship season. He changed his number from 34 to 21.

“I just wanted to get rid of last year,” King explained. “I had a bad year, and I know I can play better than that.”

Stacey didn’t become a starter, but there’s a saying in basketball: it doesn’t matter who starts, it matters who finishes. In the final game of the 1992 season, with the Bulls trailing the Trail Blazers by 15 points to open the fourth quarter, Phil Jackson rolled out an atypical lineup, Scottie Pippen joined by four men off the bench: B.J. Armstrong and Bobby Hansen in the backcourt, Stacey King and Scott Williams down low.

Toward the end of the comeback, Stacey’s huge jumper brought the team within three, prompting fist bumps and shouts on the bench from MJ and Horace.

“It was gut-check time, and Phil put our quick lineup out there,” King said after the game. “It was our job to hustle — to claw our way back.”

Recalled Scottie: “We needed him now, and he delivered.”

That comeback drove the Bulls to title #2. When Red Kerr introduced Stacey to the fans at Grant Park that time, they gave him a hero’s call.

“Last year they booed him,” ABC’s broadcasters said. “This year he’s a hero. As well he should be, after that performance in the final four minutes.”

A few minutes later, Kerr called King up to speak to the crowd. Once again, they showered him with the adoration of a favorite Bull.

In February of 1994, the team traded King straight up for Luc Longley, meaning during the second three-peat, Stacey became a symbol of how Jerry Krause transformed one three-peat into another. And that’s where his Bulls story would have ended if he hadn’t returned to the booth in the 2000s, one of the multitude of Bulls alumni to whom Jerry Reinsdorf showed loyalty.

He returned the favor. Boy did he ever.

“We enjoy what we do,” Stacey said recently. “Every night I go to work, win, lose or draw, I’m having fun.”

Stacey King built himself into one of the great voices of Chicago sports. He is a fixture in the annual sports media power rankings from Sun-Times sports media reporter Jeff Agrest, who placed King 12th last year and has ranked him in all six years of the feature. Stacey’s goal on the broadcast is simple: make sure Bulls fans are happy.

“We want you to come to Bulls games, but if you can’t come, you’re going to be entertained at home,” he explained. As the team staggered through the post-Rose years, Stacey’s fellowship was our lone reprieve. When there was nothing to celebrate, Stacey kept us hopeful. When DeMar DeRozan was drilling winners, Stacey gave us vocal high-fives. When a blatant Bulls bungle left us shaking our heads, we would hear Stacey shaking too, sometimes just saying, “No, no, no.”

And when we were kissed with the magic of sports, like Josh Giddey’s halfcourt winner against LeBron’s Lakers, Stacey’s words brought immortality.

“That’s a shot for the ages!” he said. “That will be replayed when we’re all gone.”

No one expected Sunday to be that day for Stacey. It doesn’t seem fair to wake up to a world where Stacey King is with us and go to sleep to one where he’s not. The next season of Chicago Bulls basketball will rightly be played in his honor. His legend will grow in the years to come, until one day a young Bulls fan yells “Gimme the hot sauce!” and has no idea why.

I bet that would be just fine with Stacey. A Bulls fan had fun. And he helped.

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Rest in peace to our man Stacey. Condolences to his family, his teammates and the entire Bulls organization. Drive home safely, Stacey. We’ll miss you.

Another sad occurrence: last week, NBA lifer and Naismith Hall of Famer Rick Adelman died at age 79. Adelman played a season and a half with the Bulls in the 1970s under Dick Motta, and his legendary coaching career included a magnificent run in Portland, where he coached the Trail Blazers to the NBA Finals in 1990 against the Pistons and 1992 against the Bulls. Rest in peace.

Roger Ebert: “How good of an actor do you think you are?”

Michael Jordan: “I’m a learning actor. I can’t say I’m good because I haven’t been in this business that long.”

Ebert: “Do you think that you could make a movie a year and look at this as part of your career?”

Jordan: “No. I think I need to take a step back and evaluate a lot of other things in my life before I can make this a whole other career. I’d like to make this a hobby and learn more about it, and pick and choose the parts I feel comfortable with. Maybe I’m not ready for a starring role.”

— Roger Ebert and Michael Jordan at the Space Jam premiere, Nov. 6, 1996

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Michael Jordan might soon be an Oscar-winner.

Michael B. Jordan, that is.

The 90s Bulls were part of every aspect of popular culture, including TV cameos, McDonald’s promotions, books, music, wrestling and of course merchandise. With the Academy Awards upon us — and with Michael B. Jordan possibly taking home a statue for Sinners — let’s take a look at how the 90s Bulls pervaded Hollywood.1

Spike Lee kicks things off

I could be missing something, but the first glimpse we had of the 90s Bulls on the silver screen came in 1986 with Spike Lee’s film debut She’s Gotta Have It. Spike famously played Mars Blackmon, a young New Yorker and big Jordan fan, with an MJ cutout appearing in the trailer. Spike repped MJ again three years later in Do The Right Thing, as his Mookie is introduced in a scene wearing a generic Jordan jersey.

More famously, Buggin’ Out (Giancarlo Esposito) feuds with a white man in a Larry Bird jersey (John Savage) for stepping on his new, clean, white Air Jordans. (Cost: “One hundred and eight with tax!”)

In 1990, a lifesize MJ cutout played a crucial role in Home Alone, and in 1992, Jordan made perhaps his first cameo appearance in a post-credit sequence of Malcolm X, as MJ and Magic Johnson were among the celebrities who wrote checks to Spike when the film went over-budget2. He and Magic donned the instantly iconic X hats, which Jordan also wore to Bulls practice.

What we didn’t know was that four years earlier, a team of filmmakers captured Jordan’s performance in the 1988 NBA All-Star Game in Chicago by filming a Chicago teenager watching the game on TV — all for a movie that wouldn’t come out until 1994.

Hoop Dreams

• Oct. 14, 1994

• Bulls on screen: Michael Jordan (many references), Dr. John Hefferon

To my knowledge, no movies came out during the first three-peat that featured members of the Bulls — but one was being made. In October of 1994, while Michael Jordan was retired and playing baseball, Hoop Dreams was released and would become a groundbreaking success. The film about two young Chicagoans building their basketball careers opened with one of the two, William Gates, watching the 1988 NBA All-Star Game on TV from his home in Cabrini-Green, about three miles away from the game itself at Chicago Stadium.

MJ does not appear in the film. He merely hovers over and all around it, no surprise for a basketball movie filmed from 1986 to 1991, and in Chicago no less. Isiah Thomas is a more tangible figure, the Chicagoan appearing in the movie when he speaks at his alma mater St. Joseph’s, where both Gates and fellow doc subject Arthur Agee attended. Agee even gets to play against Isiah at St. Joseph’s, with Zeke sporting a Pistons warmup jersey.

Jordan and the Bulls are always floating around the story. Gates and his family watch a Bulls-Pistons playoff game at one point (Gates’s brother Curtis: “Jordan might shoot 15 out of 40”), and when Gates injures his knee, his brother-in-law takes him to see Dr. John Hefferon, the Bulls’ team doctor.

Eddie

• May 31, 1996

• Bulls on screen: technically none, as the movie was shot largely in the summer of 1995, but by the time of the release, Dennis Rodman (Spurs cameo) and John Salley (supporting performance) were Bulls, as were Randy Brown and Jack Haley

As the NBA rose in stature within American pop culture, we saw more and more movies set in or around the league. No Bulls appear in Blue Chips3 (1994), Forget Paris (1995), or Celtic Pride (1996), and technically, no Bulls appear in the Whoopi Goldberg vehicle Eddie. But by the time that movie came out in May of ‘96, it did have — count ‘em — four members of the 72-10 Chicago Bulls.

Dennis Rodman filmed scenes while a member of the Spurs, and John Salley starred as one of the fake members of the New York Knicks, Nate Wilson #6. They each have lines in the trailer. Rodman’s then-Spurs teammate Jack Haley is credited, as is then-Kings guard Randy Brown, who is visible in the trailer during the conversation about black holes.

Two future champion Bulls are in the movie too, from their time with the Hornets: Scott Burrell and Joe Kleine. That’s six future-champion Bulls in a movie about the Knicks. It’s all the way live!

Solo

• Aug. 23, 1996

• Bulls on screen: Michael Jordan (reference)

You didn’t know this one was coming, did you?

Solo is a 1990s action film starring Mario Van Peebles that was largely forgettable except for one key point: Van Peebles plays a government-built Terminator-esque killing machine that gets to choose its own face — and selects Michael Jordan.4

“Like… Mike,” the cyborg grunts, pointing to the TV. The young scientist, played by Adrien Brody in one of his earliest big roles, responds: “You’ve got good taste.”

My friends and I rented Solo not long after it came out on VHS simply for the Jordan connection. It was pretty dull and I never watched it again, neither good enough nor bad enough to be memorable. Case in point: Siskel and Ebert didn’t even name it in their “Worst of 1996” special.

The trailer is really all you need:

Space Jam

• Nov. 15, 1996

• Bulls on screen: Michael Jordan, starring role as self, and several Bulls in uncredited roles

I won’t spend a lot of time telling you about Space Jam, other than to make a few points. First, a bit of background: the earliest reporting I’ve found is from the spring of 1995, with blurbs noting that on March 24, 1995, when MJ made his return to Chicago against the Magic, Warner Bros. sent four cameras to the game to shoot footage for a “Roger Rabbit-style” movie with MJ and Bugs Bunny. The film’s working title: “Hare Jordan.”

Second, a Roger Ebert interview revealed that there was some truth to MJ’s minor league baseball scenes in the movie:

Third, Friend of the Program The Notorious Lex shared an incredible story with me a few years ago, in which her father took her to meet Michael Jordan at a summer barbecue at Juanita Jordan’s mother’s house, and a young R. Kelly showed up and told Jordan he would one day write a song about him.

Lastly, this article from February of 2020 by Steven Perlberg is a fascinating look into how Space Jam weaved pro-labor politics into its plot.

B.A.P.S.

• Mar. 28, 1997

• Bulls on screen: Dennis Rodman, cameo

On March 24, 1997, Dennis Rodman appeared at the Oscars with date Vivica A. Fox5 in part of his promotional work for his first starring feature, Double Team, dropping the following month.

But moviegoers got a look at the Bulls’ star four days after the Oscars in his closing credits cameo in B.A.P.S. with Halle Berry. This was a very quick appearance, showing Rodman’s budding pop cultural stardom.

Double Team

• Apr. 4, 1997

• Bulls on screen: Dennis Rodman, starring role as character

With Double Team, Dennis Rodman joined Shaq as the only NBA star in the media-fueled David Stern era to star in a feature film in which he was playing a character. Yes, Rodman’s weapons merchant Yaz has a lot in common with Rodman himself, but this is not Michael Jordan as “Michael Jordan” nor is it a supporting role like Kareem Abdul-Jabbar in Airplane! Rodman was the #2 star after Jean-Claude Van Damme, used on the poster and heavily in the trailer.

The studio sold Double Team to audiences not as a Van Damme movie but as a Van Damme-Rodman movie, giving Rodman a ton to do and even giving him the movie’s last line. It wasn’t a hit, but it turned a profit, and when I rewatched it last year, I was surprised by how much fun I had watching Rodman as a lively action star.

He Got Game

• May 1, 1998

• Bulls on screen: Scottie Pippen and Michael Jordan, cameos as themselves — and Jordan in a newspaper about Jake Shuttlesworth’s escape

Michael Jordan’s first film appearance was with Spike Lee, and his final film appearance as a Bull was with Spike Lee, too. Not counting his uncredited appearance in Space Jam, He Got Game is the only feature film of Scottie Pippen’s career. He is part of the montage of NBA stars and college basketball coaches who shout “Jesus!” at the camera for the SportsCenter segment on Jesus Shuttlesworth.

Spike pays MJ the ultimate compliment by letting him end the montage with the movie’s title:

As with She’s Gotta Have It and Do The Right Thing, He Got Game features a character rocking Air Jordans, as Denzel’s Jake Shuttlesworth uses his fleeting freedom to buy the 13s. (Cost: “One fiddy with tax.”)

Things weren’t all sunshine and montage kickers for Spike Lee, who could not resist a mild burn on his good friend.

In a closing scene, characters are reading the New York Post reporting on Jake Shuttlesworth being “caught” by authorities. The camera pans and shows the sports page with the headline “KNICKS GORE BULLS” and “Jordan Held to Ten Points.”

MJ’s actual career low vs. the Knicks: 15.

Simon Sez

• Sep. 24, 1999

• Bulls on screen: technically none, as the movie was released after Rodman had already been with the Lakers (and before he signed with the Mavericks). But in terms of pop culture, he still felt like a Bull.

Dennis Rodman closed out the Bulls decade with his follow up to Double Team, a starring role in Simon Sez, reportedly a byproduct of Rodman’s free time in the summer of 1998 during the lockout. I never saw this one and don’t know anyone else who did. The box office reflects that, and it does not in any way appear to have the even minor cult status of Double Team.

Fittingly, those who once graced the screen are now the subject of it. First came Air in 2023, about Michael Jordan signing with Nike. Next up, Hollywood will turn its gaze on Yaz, as Lakeith Stanfield plays Rodman in the forthcoming “48 Hours in Vegas” movie.

The flick looks poised to put the “based” in “based on a true story,” in more ways than one:

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Did I miss anyone? Let me know!

This article is about movies, but the 90s Bulls made a lot of TV appearances, none more memorable than “ProStars”:

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The Oscars has an incredible database of every acceptance speech that you can search by keyword, and of course I went hunting for Bulls references. The only one? You guessed it: Spike Lee, when he received an honorary Oscar in 2015. He wore “Oscar edition Air Jordans, given to me by the great Michael Jordan for this occasion.” Go ahead, Spike!

Tex Winter is often mistaken as the creator of the Triangle Offense. He didn’t invent it. But he did write the book on it.

That would be The Triple-Post Offense, which Tex published in 1962 when he was at his height as head basketball coach of Kansas State, his ninth year runni…

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When Carlos Medina left his house in Cicero with his father and friend in the early hours of June 16, 1998, he didn’t know he was going to make Bulls history. But that’s Michael Jordan for you.

He always stands out.

Medina, then 17, attended the final Bulls championship rally with his friend Alfonso and his father Carlos Medina Sr., a painter who in 1996…

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“Dear Santa,

I would want a Michael Jordan Pro basketball, (a) Bulls sweatshirt and pants and I want a Bulls coat and I would like a bulls towel … and I would like Chicago bulls pillow … and I would like a chicago bulls hat and I would like a short sleve chicago bull shirt…”

— A young Bulls fan from …

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“One, Michael never flew there to get him…”

— Outtake from my interview with Dennis Rodman’s Bulls agent and longtime friend and business manager Dwight Manley, on problems with how The Last Dance portrayed Rodman’s famed 1998 Vegas trip

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“My love of the game (clause) within my contract … if I was driving with you down the street and I see a basketball game on the side of the road, I can go play in that basketball game. And if I get hurt, my contract is still guaranteed.”

— Michael Jordan, 2025, NBC

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In 1996, Dennis Rodman was tied for the 101st highest paid player in the NBA.

But he was 9th on the Forbes list of highest earning athletes in all sports.

That’s a testament to Rodman. It’s a testament to the dynasty Bulls, where even Bill Wennington had a signature McDonald’s sandwich1.

And it’s a testament to Rodman’s business manger-turned-agent Dwight M…

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“Michael’s upset about the fact that he lost a twenty-year relationship with this guy. He was hurt. Whoever was advising Scottie, to me, that’s the issue.”

— Phil Jackson in the new book Masters of The Game, written by Phil and Sam Smith

When I boil the 90s Bulls down to one concept, it’s not greatness. It’s joy. Those are linked, of course. We wouldn’t have the joy without the greatness. But the enduring emotion is the joy that this organization brought us, both as a team and the individuals on the team.

And it all starts with two people who apparently are not on speaking terms: Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen.

What’s up dude? I’m getting word that you’re upset with me. Love to talk about it if you have time.

That’s what MJ texted Scottie on May 19, 2020, two days after the conclusion of The Last Dance. Scottie used that text as the opening of Unguarded, his 2021 memoir.

“Michael was right. I was upset with him,” Scottie wrote. “It was because of The Last Dance, the ten-part ESPN documentary about the Chicago Bulls’ final championship season.”

Scottie says that they spoke two days later, with Pip calling out Michael over his portrayal in the groundbreaking, instantly iconic documentary series. According to Pippen, the two haven’t spoken since. His social media seems to confirm that: he doesn’t appear to have tweeted or posted on IG specifically about Jordan since tweeting this picture of them together for Jordan’s birthday in 2018.

Breaking down a feud between two other people is hard enough even if you know both people. Few of us know Scottie or MJ. And publicly, Michael has been silent on the subject.

So while I have my views on how this happened and who was most in the wrong, like the question of greatness vs. joy, I’m left with one emotional reaction more than any other: sadness.

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My overall reaction to The Last Dance was twofold: it was a lot of fun, and it was unfair to two people in particular: Scottie Pippen and Jerry Krause.

I disagreed with how the documentary treated Krause, but I understood it. Because while I think the doc would have been more interesting, and more fair, with a fuller perspective on Krause, if someone who was not around in 1998 watched The Last Dance, they would at least understand how Jordan, Pippen and Jackson felt about Krause, and why they perceived him as breaking up the team.

What that viewer would not accurately understand is Pippen’s importance to the dynasty and the “last dance” season of 1998. We all knew the film would be skewed toward Jordan. MJ had rights to the footage and his inner circle co-produced it. What we didn’t know were the ways in which it would be skewed against Pippen.

“I don’t know what you are selling,” Scottie recalls telling Jordan when they spoke in May 2020, two days after Jordan’s text. “Was I great or was I a villain?”

I had the same critique: was this a documentary about Jordan, or about the Bulls? If it was about the Bulls, then where was one of the greatest moments in dynasty history, the Pippen-led comeback in Game 6 of the ‘92 Finals?

If it was about Jordan, then why make a huge deal about Scottie’s infamous 1.8 seconds? If the filmmakers wanted to use that as a plot point about how Scottie came to better appreciate MJ in the second three-peat, and how their dynamic changed as a result of each of their experiences apart, then fine.

Instead, the 1.8 seconds was given the same run as The Shot, The Walkoff and any other extended Bulls backstory. The occurrence simply did not fit with the documentary’s biggest angles: the story of 1998, the backstories that contextualized 1998, a broader Bulls dynasty history and a broader MJ history.

“I asked (Jordan) why he had allowed the 1.8-seconds game to make the final cut,” Pippen wrote. “He didn’t say much other than to apologize and acknowledge that if it were him, he, too, would be upset.”

That was about as much as we heard on the subject from MJ.

Until two other masters of their games published a book this month.

One person who wasn’t caught completely off guard by the fallout from The Last Dance was Phil Jackson.

This month, Jackson and Sam Smith published Masters of The Game, in which they discuss every player from the NBA’s 75th anniversary team. In the Pippen section, they address the Jordan-Pippen falling out, and Phil shares that he anticipated the potential for bad blood:

I had a couple of conversations with Michael about The Last Dance when they wanted to interview me. I called him up and said, “I don’t want to do this Last Dance. It’s going to make a lot of money for somebody, and I think people should get paid.” He said, “I’m not getting anything for it.” He just said, “If you don’t want to do it, tell them.” He said whatever he gets goes to his foundation and nothing to him personally.

I called Scottie, left a message on his cell phone that I wasn’t making any money either on it. I said, “I know how you feel, and I can’t stand ESPN. They’re going to make a lot of money on this.”

MJ not taking a payout is news that did not reach Scottie, who wrote that Jordan made $10 million on the project “while my teammates didn’t earn a dime.” That appears to be wrong; the reporting I’ve seen, including from Forbes, supports what MJ told Phil, that Jordan’s fee — much lower, at $3-$4 million — went to charity.

Scottie’s broader point stands: that on The Last Dance, Michael was driving the bus. Perhaps MJ came to realize that the documentary was not totally fair to his teammates; he said as much in 2021 when he participated in the Australian public television two-part documentary on Luc Longley, who was largely left out of the movie. Jordan’s explanation:

“You look back and say, ‘We should have included Luc.’ ‘We should have included other players who were significant to the team’ — and it’s hard. I had no control over that. It’s unfortunate. And I can understand why Australia would say, ‘Why wouldn’t we include Luc?’ And we probably should have.”

That’s the only instance I’ve seen of Jordan publicly acknowledging the flaws in The Last Dance’s portrayal of other Bulls players. He doesn’t have a personal social media account and gives few interviews.

So the conversation in Masters of The Game between Sam and Phil says a lot:

SAM: The confusing part was Michael always was crediting Scottie, like in his Hall of Fame speech, being his most important teammate, couldn’t have done it without him.

PHIL: One of the things about the relationship is that Michael, whatever their differences, trusted Scottie in the clutch, like in the flu game that was not a flu game, Michael was dehydrated and Scottie was supporting him the whole way though the game. “You score, I’ll do all the other work. I’ve got you.”

Michael’s upset about the fact that he lost a twenty-year relationship with this guy. He was hurt. Whoever was advising Scottie, to me, that’s the issue. Who’s he talking to behind the scenes? I’m not mad at Scottie.

Pippen, meanwhile, does nothing but talk. And his explanations are often contradictory and confusing. In an interview earlier this year, he described the May 2020 conversation with Jordan as “good and final.” Why would their discussion be “final” if it was also “good”?

Pippen’s biggest piece of news around Unguarded was calling Phil Jackson racist in June of 2021 during his own book tour, only to completely reverse course in the book itself, published in November, claiming that on the subject of Phil as a racist, “Nothing could be further from the truth.”

I’ve just never seen someone have to correct their own statement on a book tour by revising the book they were promoting. “Only when I saw my words in print,” Scottie wrote, “did it dawn on me how wrong I was.”

As a historian, I’ve learned to be careful when sourcing Scottie1. As a fan, I’m more forgiving. Scottie’s had a rough five years, to say the least. His son Antron died in April 2021. When Pip gave an interview a few months later for Luc’s documentary, he looked dazed and worn down.

His divorce with Larsa Pippen finalized in December of 2021. In January 2023, after months of rumors, Larsa was official with her new boyfriend: Michael Jordan’s son Marcus.

Add it all up and I understand Scottie’s frustration with MJ. And if Jordan is mad at Scottie, I understand that too. Pip bashed him relentlessly during his book tour and was still at it a few years ago. Even now, Scottie still gives interviews where he needles Jordan; asked in September about their relationship, Pip said “it’s never been on the top shelf.” Sure, the doc did Pip no favors, yet even Pip concedes that nothing about him in The Last Dance was actually false; the problem was the framing and context. Maybe like Scottie seeing his words about Phil in print, MJ didn’t really understand the impact until he saw the movie himself.

The irony is that in his book, outside of his Last Dance critiques, Scottie is largely complimentary of Jordan. Phil too. If someone’s only knowledge of Scottie’s book came from, you know, reading Scottie’s book, he would see a portrait of a player who still supports and even celebrates both his longtime teammate and coach.

My question is what it will take for them to get back to who they were in those days of joy.

Last year, I asked Bill Cartwright about the notion that our beloved Bulls suffer from “discord,” as I called it. Cartwright disagreed.

“I think that only happens with two guys. The rest of us are fine,” he said. “There’s discord? There’s not. There’s two guys who get a lot of press.”

That made me happy. Most everyone is on good terms. But the duo at the heart of the dynasty has splintered. And while they have their reasons, and it’s not my business or that of any other Bulls fan, the dissolution of the relationship between Scottie Pippen and Michael Jordan has dampened one of the most joyous runs in sports.

“We don’t have that much time, so I would say to MJ and Pip, I pray and hope that you guys can settle this silliness,” Horace Grant said recently.

Phil sees it too.

“It’s unfortunate,” he told Sam in Masters of The Game. “Bill Bradley sets up a Zoom with all his teammates. I don’t see that happening with the Bulls, thirtieth anniversary, fiftieth anniversary.”

Fourteen years ago, these concerns did not exist. In 2011, the Bulls celebrated the 20th anniversary of the first championship, inviting the entire 1991 team back to the United Center for a ceremony. Nearly everyone was there, and the few who weren’t simply could not make it.

“When we get together, it’s like we never separated,” Craig Hodges told me last year about the reunion. “Everybody laughing and joking and we’re here to do what we do.”

Among the attendees was Johnny Bach, the brilliant and beloved assistant coach of the first three-peat who passed away in 2016. I wrote about Bach earlier this week. The quotes alone made writing it super fun. I loved how more than 20 years after playing just one year under Bach, Kendall Gill was still quoting him, drawing on Bach’s words about how to solve a challenge:

“I don’t care how rough the seas are, bring the ship in.”

Everyone loved Bach, especially Michael and Scottie. And as I wrote that piece, I wondered what their relationship would look like if Bach was alive. This could be me reaching, a nostalgic and grateful Bulls fan. Perhaps nothing would be different. But it made me wonder.

Because while Michael and Scottie may have never been best friends, they were more than colleagues. People forget that the Crying Jordan meme came when MJ began talking about Scottie, and the special partnership they had. It makes me sad to think of a world in which Jordan and Pippen grow old with no contact. I want them to find their way back to a connection. I want them to remember what they accomplished together. I want them to know what their partnership means to so many. I don’t care how rough the seas are, bring the ship in.

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I hope everyone has a wonderful Thanksgiving! If you want to read some of the stories I mentioned here, such as my interviews with Cartwright, Hodges, Will Perdue, Scott Williams or Joe Kleine, make sure to bump up from your free subscription to a paid one for the low low price of Paxson a month or Pippen a year.

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Subscribers yesterday got to read a truly wild interview with Dennis Rodman’s longtime agent Dwight Manley. Part 2 of my interview with Dwight around how Rodman became a global star — with stories about the movie “Double Team,” Rodman’s MTV show, his Chicago nightclub “Illusions,” and Tom Cruise turning into a Rodman fanboy at the Oscars — is coming next week, also for subscribers.

Lastly, heading over to the Chicago History Museum? Pick up a copy of WHY WE ROOT, on sale there now!

Amazon best-seller WHY WE ROOT

After two intense seasons as Dennis Rodman’s agent, Dwight Manley laid down on Jerry Krause’s office couch and began to cry.

The situation seemed untenable; as the Bulls prepared for their 1997-98 season, the free age…

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“That was a complete job of butchering. My players handled the ball like there was a rattlesnake on it. To cover Larry Bird you need two Dobermans.”

— Johnny Bach, Golden State Warriors head coach, 1984

They were the white-haired senseis on either side of the Zen Master. You watched the Bulls bench and you were never just looking at Phil Jackson. You were looking at the Obi-Wans on either side of him. Today their fame is tiered. Tex Winter is widely known among basketball fans, often by name, definitely by the triangle, the offense he perfected.

Yet during the first three-peat, Tex had a mirror image. Nearly the same age. Nearly the same height. Nearly the same head. Two lifers in the game. One offense. One defense. One introverted. One a charmer. From 1990 to 1994, you never heard the name Tex Winter without hearing another right beside it.

Johnny Bach.

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“Bach was a master of Eastern-style basketball, the aggressive, in-your-face version of the game played East of the Mississippi,” Phil wrote in Eleven Rings. He was handsome, gregarious, worldly, combative yet tender — a man’s man who left an impression on everyone, no matter their short time together. Kendall Gill played for Bach for just one season, in 1996 with the Hornets. More than 20 years later, Gill would fondly recall Bach telling the team: “I don’t care how rough the seas are, bring the ship in.”

Bach’s military service helped define his coaching, in his words and his manner. “You can manicure your nails on the crease in John Bach’s tie,” Doug Collins once said about him. By the end of World War II, 12.1 million Americans were service members1, with approximately ⅓ of the male population aged 15 or older joining the armed forces2. Obviously not all of them returned home with a permanent dedication to the discipline, culture and symbols of war, but John William Bach, a U.S. Navy veteran whose identical twin brother Neil died in combat in 1944, who a year later was in a fleet heading for Tokyo when the U.S. dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, never missed a chance with the Bulls to draw the ace of spades on the board, symbolizing an opponent they needed to destroy3.

Perhaps it is no surprise, then, that while Fred “Tex” Winter built and taught the Bulls’ offense, Johnny Bach commanded the defense, preaching endless waves of ferocious energy.

“He calls us hungry dogs going after meat,” Scottie Pippen said during the 1991 Finals. “It’s something out there, and we’re not going to stop going after it until we get it.”

This was Bach’s famed “Doberman Defense.” A player once asked Bach why he always used that dog specifically. His response was simple as it was brilliant.

“The players understood that a Doberman was a tough-ass dog: big, mean and ugly,” he said.

“I love it,” Horace Grant said during the ‘91 Finals. “I get the most satisfaction being out there hustling and turning the ball over. You don’t get a lot of glorification out of it, but I love it.”

Because the Doberman Defense was discussed more as a philosophy and attitude compared to the intricate triangle offense, Bach never received the broad, almost pop-culture acclaim that came to Tex. But Bach was similarly dedicated to being both a student and a teacher of the game.

“Unlike Tex, Johnny didn’t subscribe to any particular system of play,” Phil wrote. “He was a walking encyclopedia of basketball strategy who relied on his quick wits and photographic memory to devise creative ways to win games. When I was in the office, Johnny would often show up at my desk with dog-eared books by coaching geniuses I’d never heard of and videotapes of current NBA teams using moves invented years ago.”

Phil recalled one such day when he was watching tape of the Bucks, trying to determine what type of offense they were using. When Phil was a fellow Bulls assistant coach, he and Bach coached defense together. Now Jackson was leading the pack, always drawing from the nearly 90 years of combined coaching experience from Bach and Tex.

He called Bach into his office to look at the Bucks tape.

“Oh, that’s Garland Pinholster’s pinwheel offense,” Bach responded after one quick look.

“Then he proceeded to explain that Pinholster was one of the nation’s most innovative coaches in the fifties and sixties,” Phil wrote, Bach sharing how Pinholster dominated at little Oglethorpe College in Georgia using “the continuous-motion offense he’d invented” before losing his desire to coach and going into politics and the grocery business.

That wasn’t going to be Bach. After the war, he finished his college career at Fordham University, played one season with the Boston Celtics and was hired as Fordham’s head basketball coach in 1950. He coached Fordham and then Penn State for a combined 28 years, was an assistant on the doomed 1972 Olympic team, and came to the NBA in 1979 as an assistant with the Warriors. He took the reins as their head coach in 1983, spending three years in the top spot, including the day in November of 1984 when Bird and the Celtics picked the Warriors apart like a boy with a daddy long legs, a 135-91 ass-kicking that led Bach to declare his need for “two Dobermans.”

He found them in Chicago. In 1986, the Bulls hired Bach’s old Olympics guard Doug Collins as head coach. Never shy about strong-headed, emotional coaching himself, Collins quickly added his old coach to his debut staff.

“He screamed at me a lot on defense,” Collins said about his time with Bach in the Olympics. “He said I couldn’t guard an ice cream cone.”

Bach and new assistant Phil Jackson coached the defense together under Collins, and when Jerry Krause fired Doug and promoted Phil, Bach settled in alongside Tex and Jim Cleamons to form one of the greatest coaching staffs in NBA history. Atop the mind-bending athleticism of Jordan, Pippen and Grant, Bach welded layers of insight and information that the Bulls used in their on-court communication, which he gathered from close observations of the opposing sideline combined with his own unique mind. He picked up on everything, like the Hornets using a hand signal of a pistol to call an isolation play for their shooters, or the color schemes Knicks players used to trigger certain sets.4

To knock off the Pistons in 1991, Bach and Cleamons devised an arsenal of disguised traps that they used to disrupt the start of many of Detroit’s preferred actions.

“They were better prepared than we were,” Isiah Thomas conceded after the series.

Even though the Bulls had the best offensive weapon in the game, and Scottie was a masterful offensive talent too, I always thought of us as a defensive team first5. How fitting that both three-peats ended with a defensive play: Horace’s block on KJ, Ron Harper’s tipped block on John Stockton. Michael and Scottie fit well together on offense, but their true devastation as a tandem was on defense. That’s where I picture them first: swarming and attacking, Pippen at the top of the key on the point guard “cutting the head off the snake,” Jordan dashing in passing lanes. Horace was active all over the court, John Paxson seemed to relish taking every charge, and Bill Cartwright was the rare center who could make Patrick Ewing pay for every point.

“Johnny Bach used to say our defense is on a string, meaning each man is connected to the other four,” Pippen wrote in Unguarded. “If, for example, the rotating man on the back end of defending a screen-and-roll doesn’t move correctly, the whole defense will break down and the other team will likely score. If it happens once or twice in a game, you can live with it. More often than that, you won’t trust the man anymore, and that’s a problem.”

Team defense was also at the heart of the second three-peat. Harp and Dennis gave the team unrivaled defensive versatility. And still there were Jordan and Pippen, playing like the hungry dogs Johnny Bach loved. This was Bach’s gift: his belief in his players engendered a fox hole-level loyalty. Pippen loved him. Will Perdue6, Bill Cartwright, Stacey King and Bill Wennington have all lauded him the past few years. Horace developed a deep kinship with Bach, one enhanced by a perfect piece of personal connection: Grant’s dog was a Doberman.

“You know what the Doberman Defense was built on? Trust,” Grant said in 2016 after Bach passed away. “Who created that trust? Johnny.”

Jordan and Bach were made for each other, too. MJ famously said during his Hall of Fame speech in 2009 that when Tex Winter told Jordan to stay in the offense because “There’s no I in ‘team,’” Jordan would lovingly reply that there was an I in “win.” Eventually, Jordan became a top advocate for the triangle. But at the outset, when he was struggling to adjust, he turned to just one man for consolation and encouragement.

“When I’m having trouble, I go to Coach Bach and ask him if he has any suggestions,” Jordan said7. When he did finally give that Hall of Fame speech, he made sure Bach was there, flying him to the ceremony.

“He encouraged me, worked with me and really helped me to mold my game,” Jordan said after Bach’s death. “Without him, I don’t know that we would’ve won our first three championships.”

Perhaps Bach’s greatest season in Chicago was his final one, 1993-94. When the Bulls lost MJ, the principles that Phil and his staff had espoused were put to their greatest test. The team responded by winning 55 games to 1993’s 57, Scottie having his greatest season, B.J. and Horace becoming All-Stars and the team finishing 3rd in fewest points allowed to counter their offense finishing 23rd.

The Bulls declined to renew Bach’s contract at the end of the season, a controversial move at the time that remains muddled in its explanation. Bach was stunned and hurt. Grant, an unrestricted free agent, was incensed.

“I’ll put it like this: if I was trying to sign a free agent, and I knew the relationship Johnny Bach had with that free agent, no way would I have fired him,” Grant told the Tribune that week. “They talk about loyalty, family and trust. It’s a tragedy to let a guy go like that, and I will never forget it.”

Bach wasn’t out of the game long. His legion of supporters made sure of it. Grant said that if he did indeed leave the Bulls, and “if I have anything to do with it,” he would see to it that his next team hired Bach. That didn’t happen — Bach actually suffered a heart attack, recovered and went to the Hornets before Grant’s eventual contract with the Magic was completed8.

Doug Collins was next up, becoming head coach of the Pistons and hiring Bach away from the Hornets. Collins was let go in 1998, and Bach was out of the league for three years. He focused on his art: he was a watercolor painter who would later show his pieces at a gallery in Skokie.

But then MJ came out of retirement with the Wizards, hired Collins as coach and recruited Bach to return.

“I was in Maine, sketching, when (Jordan) called and said, ‘Johnny, get down to Washington. I’ve got a bunch of young kids that need teaching,’” Bach explained. “I’m a better coach today than I was in ‘54. Age tempers all bad traits, like rage and frustration and the inability to deal with losses. You don’t coach with the same frenzy.”

Jordan retired with Washington after two seasons, the same month that his old backcourtmate succeeded Krause as Bulls GM. And who did John Paxson hire immediately as an assistant? The 77-year-old Navy veteran with 51 years of coaching experience and the Ace of Spades at the ready.

“I’m ecstatic,” Bach said. He had a new set of young Dobermans ready to heed his call.

“I love Coach,” 21-year-old center Tyson Chandler said. “He always has a saying when he comes in, like ‘Fellas, today’s a great day to die!’ You gotta love him for it. He can yell, pass the ball, dribble and shoot, and show us what to do. I just hope I can do half the stuff he can do when I’m that age.”

Time hasn’t healed all dynasty wounds. Some have even deepened. But one man who seems beloved by everyone was Bach. While with the Pistons, he reconciled with Krause over his 1994 departure. In 2010, with the Lakers in town to play the Bulls, K.C. Johnson shared a lovely scene, tweeting that Phil and Bach were hugging in the U.C. hallway. Bach was on hand in 2011 for the celebration of the 1991 Bulls championship. And I love this picture that Pippen tweeted of Johnny, Scottie and Stacey King on court during a 2013 Bulls-Nets playoff game.

Tonight, Johnny Bach enters the Bulls Ring of Honor. The celebration should be sweet, a beautiful evening for all involved, especially his three co-inductee former players: Paxson, Cartwright and Horace.

“I have at least 400 pictures of Dobermans,” Bach once said. “People send them from all over the world. It’s amazing. I’m an assistant coach and I named my defense ‘Doberman.’ I said, ‘Put it on, tear into them, take ‘em to pieces!’ Michael loved — he loved to be a Doberman.”

Coach, with you at the helm, we would have all been so lucky.

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Rest in peace to the great Johnny Bach! Thank you for all you brought to Chicago.

Want another story on a legendary OG basketball coach? My interview with Bulls legend Dick Motta, now 94 years old, is available for subscribers — at the low cost of Pippen a year or Paxson a month!

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Amazon best-seller WHY WE ROOT

Dick Motta stared at a wastebasket and held the future of professional Chicago basketball in his hands.

The head basketball coach at Weber State University in Ogden, Utah, Motta had crossed paths with Chicago Bulls founder and GM Dick “D.O.” Klein in late 1967, still the ear…

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“Before I got there, Phil had made a bit of a name for himself in NBA circles by handing out books for everyone to read on the west coast trips. … He figured if he gave us each a book, we might actually read it, improve ourselves, and make better use of our downtime on the road. If a book actually kept us out of trouble, even for a night, all the better.”

— Bill Wennington, Tales From the Hardwood, Chapter 9, “Reading Material”

On Nov. 14, 1989, Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus came to Chicago Stadium for a two-week stay, sending the 4-2 Bulls to the west coast for seven straight road games.

And for the trip, new head coach Phil Jackson did something for his players.

He gave out books.

“It’s a long trip and it’s something I thought they would enjoy,” he said.

Thus began a tradition that would come to define Jackson’s tenure at the highest ranks of the NBA. Every November, the Bulls hit the road when the circus came to town. And every November, Jackson gave each player a book that he thought would speak to him.

“B.J. is from Detroit,” Jackson said about giving Elmore Leonard’s City Primeval to rookie B.J. Armstrong, “and that’s where the book is set, so I thought he’d like it.” That was Jackson’s angle: to find a book that connected with the player in a personal way, sometimes related to basketball, more often related to his life.

“Phil and I bonded right away,” Craig Hodges wrote in his memoir Long Shot. “He gave me a book called Way of the Peaceful Warrior by Dan Millman. It’s a New-Agey book about staying present and following your bliss. Phil wasn’t afraid of looking soft or strange, and I respected him for that.”

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Amazon best-seller WHY WE ROOT

The basketball impact of pivoting from Doug Collins to Phil Jackson came most significantly in the full-time implementation of the triangle offense; Jerry Krause had tried to convey its importance to Collins, but the former 20-point guard believed in keeping the ball in the hands of a dynamic scorer. And why not? He had the best one in the league.

Where Collins resisted, Phil embraced. As a Red Holzman acolyte, Jackson was right at home with Tex Winter’s triangle. The challenge was selling that to Jordan.

“Phil had his ideas, but he wouldn’t push them on you,” Hodges wrote. “If he wanted to say something deep to a player, he’d give him a book, usually before a long road trip. He gave Michael Jordan Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon, which opens with a character, an insurance agent, trying to fly off a roof but instead plummeting to his death.”

Hodges notes that the book ends with a line “so perfect for Jordan”: “If you surrender to the wind, you can ride it.”

“Phil provided each of us with something we could incorporate into our lives,” Jordan wrote in For The Love of the Game. “He didn’t force-feed us, he just provided options. He presented the thoughts intelligently. … He would appear to direct a thought or idea to the entire team, but usually the message was for an individual player. If you were that player, you got the message even though it was delivered to the entire group. That was one of Phil’s gifts, his ability to talk to us individually within the collective.”

Phil’s boldest book choice to Jordan was a copy of Alex Kotlowitz’s award-winning There Are No Children Here, which follows the lives of two boys who live in the Henry Horner Homes, across from Chicago Stadium. As far as I have found, this was the only case of Phil giving a player a book that the player was also in. Kotlowitz writes about the boys loving Jordan, and their frustration that Chicago Stadium ticket takers sometimes would not let them into Bulls games even when they had tickets.

Jackson gave Jordan the book for the 1992 Circus Trip, just two years after Rick Telander’s Sports Illustrated cover story “Your Sneakers or Your Life” about kids killing each other for Air Jordan’s and other NBA merch.

“I thought it might be a source of information,” Jackson explained, “because a lot of people were clamoring about his inattentiveness to the people in Chicago, and I thought it was a good book for him to keep and to have.”

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One of Jackson’s approaches to his relationship with Jordan was never asking him for autographs. That kept the pathways open with MJ, and perhaps gave Jackson enough slack in 1995 to give Jordan a Shoeless Joe Jackson biography. He gave Dennis Rodman a book on motorcycles the year after Rodman bought Jackson a motorcycle. After Luc Longley separated his shoulder while body surfing, Jackson gave him Perfect Storm by Sebastian Junger, a book described as “a true story of man and the sea.”

“You think he’s trying to make a point?” Longley joked afterward1.

“He does provide a sense of camaraderie,” Armstrong said about Phil in 19962. Playing for the Warriors, B.J. could not remember the books he received from his old coach. “I remember getting them, then thinking, ‘Let’s get back to the real world,’” he said. “I liked what he did … He always gave you something to ponder. But as for affecting me personally, it had no bearing.”

“The books weren’t always enlightening, academic, philosophical books,” Wennington wrote. “I remember when Toni first came to the United States, he spoke broken English and didn’t read English well, so Phil gave him a comic book. It was something he could read. Whether Toni read it, or anyone read their books, I don’t know. I know I read mine, and Steve Kerr read his.”

For Phil, his players actually reading the books was a bonus. He wanted them to, and he later considered stopping the custom if the cost didn’t meet the outcome3. But simply giving players books was an avenue to coaching them. B.J. didn’t read Phil’s books, for instance, but he took meditation seriously. Whatever Phil could do to connect, he did.

“I didn’t go along with some of the Zen stuff he introduced to the team … nor did I read the books he handed out every year as presents,” Scottie Pippen wrote in his memoir. “On the other hand, I totally bought into what he was saying about a basketball team being a pack, not a collection of separate individuals. More than the X’s and O’s, that was Phil Jackson’s most valuable contribution to the Chicago Bulls. He got us to bond. To be one.”

“I realized early on that some of the practices Phil spoke about I had been doing innately my entire life,” Jordan wrote. His best example was the sports psychologist Phil brought to the team to talk about mindfulness. “I had been there before so I understood the concept,” he wrote. “I just couldn’t comprehend how to get myself in the zone consistently. He provided methods and practices designed to get us all into the zone all the time.”

While Jordan acknowledged that being in the zone for all 48 minutes was unlikely, the techniques that Jackson offered gave Jordan greater control of his mind, focus and emotions in key situations, namely the fourth quarter. Jordan:

“When we first started meditating during stretching before practice, I thought it was crazy. I’m closing one eye and keeping the other eye open to see what other fool is doing this besides me. Eventually I became more accepting because I could see everyone making an effort. I opened my mind to meditation and Phil’s teachings.”

In Jordan’s final game as a Bull, in the most important moment of his career, he tapped into Phil’s mindfulness training. “Crowd gets quiet. The moment starts to become The Moment for me,” Jordan wrote. “That’s part of that Zen Buddhism stuff.”

There is something fitting about so many of Jackson’s Bulls writing memoirs. Jordan has multiple ones, as does Rodman, including an iconic best seller. Longley wrote one that is out of print. Wennington published in 2004, Hodges in 2016, Pippen in 2021, Scott Williams in 2023 and Cartwright this year. I’m not saying these are the result of Jackson’s Circus Trip gifts. But maybe in some ways, the old coach’s influence is still sneaking through.

“Some players read every book I gave them; others dumped them in the trash,” Phil wrote in Eleven Rings. “But I never expected everyone’s 100 percent engagement. The message I wanted to convey was that I cared enough about them as individuals to spend time searching for a book that might have special meaning for them. Or at least make them laugh.”

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Thanks for reading, everyone! Congratulations to Phil Jackson and Sam Smith on their umpteenth respective book but their first collaboration, “Masters of the Game.”

And if you missed it, I published the most comprehensive list available of Jackson’s book gifts for Bulls players.

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