Michael Jordan by Roland Lazenby

Author:Roland Lazenby
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
Published: 2014-05-05T16:00:00+00:00

The Point Guard

January found the Bulls struggling to stay above .500 and slipping into yet more conflict. Collins chafed at the assistants that Krause had hired for him. “I was upset because Doug basically wasn’t listening to Tex,” Krause explained, “and he wasn’t listening to Phil Jackson. Doug did a great job for us for a couple of years. He took the heat off me from a public relations standpoint. Doug was great with the media. But he learned to coach on the fly, and he didn’t listen to his assistants as much as he should have. Doug had a thing with Phil, too. As time went on, he was like Stan in that he got away from what we wanted to do.”

Three weeks into the season, Juanita Vanoy had given birth to a boy, Jeffrey Michael, but Jordan’s parents still opposed their son marrying the mother of his child. The birth of the baby was kept hush-hush throughout the season. Some writers knew about it but kept it out of their reports. Vanoy supposedly contemplated a paternity suit for about six months but ultimately decided to hold off. The tension was as thick in his personal life as it was in the locker room.

Finally, in late January, the team began a turnaround thanks to the improvement of Pippen and Grant, as Jordan began stepping up the pressure on them.

“I think Michael saw what kind of players Scottie and Horace could be,” explained Will Perdue, a rookie backup center that season, “and he was very difficult on them at that time. He did it in a positive way, but at the same time he was challenging them to see if they would answer the challenge.”

Complicating the chemistry was Jordan’s continued exasperation with Cartwright, who was one of the few who stood up to the bullying and intimidation, Jim Stack remembered. Some would later describe the center’s intense dislike of Jordan’s tactics as something that approached hatred. “Bill felt that Michael chastised him unnecessarily at times,” Stack said in a 2012 interview. “Bill was a guy with a lot of pride. He had built a lot of respect in the league.” Stack didn’t think the dislike reached the level of hatred on Cartright’s part, but Perdue seemed certain that Jordan hated Cartwright. Perdue was pretty sure Jordan disliked him as well.

As for the enmity sent his way, Cartwright seemed to take it in stride. He had been the kind of player in New York who could average 20 points and 10 rebounds, Stack pointed out, adding that Jordan didn’t seem to recognize the sacrifice Cartwright was obviously willing to make in becoming a role player in Chicago.

“Bill appreciated totally Michael’s talent,” Stack recalled. “But at the same time Bill wasn’t just gonna accept his crap. Michael would test everybody. In practice, if Michael came to the hole, Bill was there to meet him. So many of the players before Bill Cartwright would totally acquiesce and defer to Michael. But Bill would

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