side of the green. He charged across, stopped a few inches from the kid’s face, and said, “Are you quitting on me?” He repeated it, over and over. “Are you quitting on me? Are you quitting on me?”
In the 1989 Chicago-Detroit play-offs, I saw a play that I think was the defining moment of Michael’s career. He drove down the middle and Rick Mahorn and Bill Laimbeer hammered him to the ground. Hard. He got up limping. The next game, he was still banged up. That was Michael tasting the NBA at its most bitter. After that, he realized he had to take over.
—Mike Abdenour
TRAINER, DETROIT PISTONS
“Michael,” Marty Dim said, “just would not let him give up.”
Which leads us back to Game Five of those 1997 NBA Finals, Jordan fighting a vengeful flu virus and taking intravenous fluids, his pallor so gray that one sportswriter said he literally “shook with fear” for him. And when Mike Wise of the New York Times surveyed Jordan’s gaunt figure late in the game, he leaned over press row and muttered to Michael Wilbon of the Washington Post, “It’s over.” Wise did what many print reporters fighting deadline had done. He wrote his story as if Utah had won the game. And while he was writing, Jordan—as if once again summoned by adversity—began to alter the course of Wise’s story single-handedly, to scrape through the debilitation and win this game virtually by himself. And to demonstrate, Wise said, “what perseverance really is.”
But this perseverance was not merely a lone act of will. It was a build-up, the summation of years of training, of Jordan sharpening his own resolution. And eventually developing an impenetrable wall of discipline.
Once you learn to quit it becomes a habit.
—Vince Lombardi
“His body wouldn’t let him down at the moment of truth because of the way he had trained it,” said Chicago Tribune columnist Bernie Lincicome. “It didn’t know how to quit.”
T he price of greatness is responsibility.
—Winston Churchill
I am what some would call an old-fashioned father. To my children, this means I’m mired in a black-and-white pre– Leave It to I Beaver utopia, in a mentality that is so removed from their own consciousness, they have trouble believing the human race existed back then. Mostly, my children think that I belong in the 1940s. Sometimes, if they are feeling generous, they will inform me that I have advanced to the 1950s, but still they consider me marooned in an Eisenhower-era dream world.
I also know that most of the time, my children are correct. Take the trend of body piercing and permanent tattoos, something that I encounter every day as an NBA executive. Regarding tattoos, this is my rule with my children:As long as they are living under my roof, eating meals and wearing clothes that are paid for with my salary, they will get no tattoos, and they will not pierce anything that could not be exposed in church.
Strict, perhaps. But I am not an ogre. I offer one exception to the rule. Each child is allowed one tattoo. The caveat is that I choose the location and the design of the tattoo. The location I would choose is the forehead. The design I would choose is a bold proclamation: “I AM IN CHARGE OF ME!” Not only will I pay for this procedure, but I will provide a substantial signing bonus. And yet, astoundingly, none of my children has taken me up on this.
The offer still stands.
Michael Jordan was looked at as a savior to lead 35 million African Americans out of the wilderness. That’s a huge responsibility. MJ takes a lot of abuse for what he hasn’t done socially, but don’t forget, he’s an athlete, not an activist. He’s done so much for people that we’ll never hear about. He takes a lot of flack, but he’s always there.
—Spike Lee
FILMMAKER
This goes back to Game Six again, to Jordan’s magnum opus, his last shot against Utah in 1998. But it also goes back to every shot he took in the final minutes, every one of those times he
In the 1989 Chicago-Detroit play-offs, I saw a play that I think was the defining moment of Michael’s career. He drove down the middle and Rick Mahorn and Bill Laimbeer hammered him to the ground. Hard. He got up limping. The next game, he was still banged up. That was Michael tasting the NBA at its most bitter. After that, he realized he had to take over.
—Mike Abdenour
TRAINER, DETROIT PISTONS
“Michael,” Marty Dim said, “just would not let him give up.”
Which leads us back to Game Five of those 1997 NBA Finals, Jordan fighting a vengeful flu virus and taking intravenous fluids, his pallor so gray that one sportswriter said he literally “shook with fear” for him. And when Mike Wise of the New York Times surveyed Jordan’s gaunt figure late in the game, he leaned over press row and muttered to Michael Wilbon of the Washington Post, “It’s over.” Wise did what many print reporters fighting deadline had done. He wrote his story as if Utah had won the game. And while he was writing, Jordan—as if once again summoned by adversity—began to alter the course of Wise’s story single-handedly, to scrape through the debilitation and win this game virtually by himself. And to demonstrate, Wise said, “what perseverance really is.”
But this perseverance was not merely a lone act of will. It was a build-up, the summation of years of training, of Jordan sharpening his own resolution. And eventually developing an impenetrable wall of discipline.
Once you learn to quit it becomes a habit.
—Vince Lombardi
“His body wouldn’t let him down at the moment of truth because of the way he had trained it,” said Chicago Tribune columnist Bernie Lincicome. “It didn’t know how to quit.”
T he price of greatness is responsibility.
—Winston Churchill
I am what some would call an old-fashioned father. To my children, this means I’m mired in a black-and-white pre– Leave It to I Beaver utopia, in a mentality that is so removed from their own consciousness, they have trouble believing the human race existed back then. Mostly, my children think that I belong in the 1940s. Sometimes, if they are feeling generous, they will inform me that I have advanced to the 1950s, but still they consider me marooned in an Eisenhower-era dream world.
I also know that most of the time, my children are correct. Take the trend of body piercing and permanent tattoos, something that I encounter every day as an NBA executive. Regarding tattoos, this is my rule with my children:As long as they are living under my roof, eating meals and wearing clothes that are paid for with my salary, they will get no tattoos, and they will not pierce anything that could not be exposed in church.
Strict, perhaps. But I am not an ogre. I offer one exception to the rule. Each child is allowed one tattoo. The caveat is that I choose the location and the design of the tattoo. The location I would choose is the forehead. The design I would choose is a bold proclamation: “I AM IN CHARGE OF ME!” Not only will I pay for this procedure, but I will provide a substantial signing bonus. And yet, astoundingly, none of my children has taken me up on this.
The offer still stands.
Michael Jordan was looked at as a savior to lead 35 million African Americans out of the wilderness. That’s a huge responsibility. MJ takes a lot of abuse for what he hasn’t done socially, but don’t forget, he’s an athlete, not an activist. He’s done so much for people that we’ll never hear about. He takes a lot of flack, but he’s always there.
—Spike Lee
FILMMAKER
This goes back to Game Six again, to Jordan’s magnum opus, his last shot against Utah in 1998. But it also goes back to every shot he took in the final minutes, every one of those times he
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