The Jordan Rules by Sam Smith Read Free Book Online Page A

seven seasons, and now it was over. He sucked down champagne like a baby sucking on a bottle. He cried and he wouldn’t sleep. He was feeling pure, unrestrained joy.
    The morning after that final victory, Jordan clutched the championship trophy like a long-lost friend. He wouldn’t put it down, and everyone saw him walk off the plane with it. He slept with it all the way back to Chicago and he wouldn’t let it get farther than five feet away from him on the team bus. It was the symbol of the struggle and it had to stay close, just in case anyone still questioned him.
    Jackson saw all of this as they assembled before him this night. They had flown back to Chicago, where they were met at the airport by a few hundred fans, and the players went right up to the fence so they could touch one another, to form the kind of bond they enjoyed in the raucous Chicago Stadium. And they had gone to Grant Park in the city’s heart to give their hearts to the city. They had formed a short motorcade and the fans reached out just to touch them as if they were holy men, and Paxson waved and the hands were grabbing, clutching all over until his wife drew their two sons in close together because the hands were everywhere. And then they had gone up on stage and hundreds of thousands cheered and rained gratitude down on their every word.
    And they hadn’t come down yet, nor slept much, buoyed as they were by the affection and exuberance, until they were standing there before Jackson for the last time after this magic carpet ride of a basketball season. This would be the last team party, for the players and staff and management only, before they would head their separate ways for the summer. Jackson had asked his players to get together once more as a group, twelve men of various faiths and faculties. They had endured much this season. They had lived together since last October, sharing sweat and glory, sometimes as compatible as a roomful of alley cats, as distant as former lovers. But they had grown with one another, accepting each other’s faults and sharing in each other’s successes. None had ever come this far before, and from the lonesome kid, Scott Williams, to the proud loner, Cartwright, their eyes reflected their relief and glee. Jackson didn’t want it ever to end for them.
    â€œYou should know that many championship teams don’t come back,” Jackson started out, the buzz of excitement quieting down for a while. “This is a business. I’d like to have all of you back, but it doesn’t always happen. But this is something special you have shared and which you’ll never forget. This will be yours forever and it will always be a bond that will keep you together. I want to thank you all personally for this season. Now, get back to the party.”
    Who could have imagined, only one year earlier, that there’d be this party, this joy, this togetherness on this night?

Spring 1990
    M ICHAEL J ORDAN SURVEYED HIS CREW AND GOT THAT SINKING feeling.
    It was just before 11:00 A . M . on May 24, 1990, two days after the Bulls had fallen behind the Detroit Pistons two games to none in the Eastern Conference finals. The city of Chicago was awash in spring—all two hours of it, as the old-time residents like to say—but Jordan wasn’t feeling very sunny. He didn’t even feel like playing golf, which friends would say meant he was near death.
    The Bulls had gathered for practice at the Deerfield Multiplex, a tony health club about thirty-five miles north of Chicago, to try to get themselves back into the series. Jordan’s back hurt, as did his hip, shoulder, wrist, and thigh, thanks to a two-on-one body slam in Game 1 courtesy of Dennis Rodman and John Salley. But his back didn’t hurt nearly as much as his pride or his competitiveness, for the Bulls were being soundly whipped by the Pistons, and Jordan was growing desperately angry and frustrated.
    â€œI looked over