Dream Team (31 page)

Bird goes right by Laettner and takes an awkward left-handed shot in the lane that misses. It’s obvious that his back is hurting and he would be sitting out had Stockton or Drexler been available. Laettner has a layup opportunity at the other end off a quick feed by Magic, but Ewing blocks it, a small moment that presages Laettner’s NBA career. He wasn’t springy enough to dunk, nor physical enough to draw a foul.

“Dunk that shit, Chris,” Jordan says. “Dunk that shit.”

(Years later Jordan told me, coldly and matter-of-factly, “Anybody who had Laettner on the team lost. He was the weak link and everybody went at him.”)

Bird misses an open jumper and Magic clearly goes over Pippen’s back and knocks it out of bounds; nevertheless, Magic still
flashes a look of disbelief when the ball is awarded to White. Ewing swishes a jumper.

Magic drives, a foul is called on Ewing, and Malone, no fan of this Magic-dominated show, is starting to get irritated.

“Sheet!”
he yells at the gentleman from Italy. “Everything ain’t a foul!”

His mood is no better seconds later when he gets caught in a Barkley screen and Mullin is able to backdoor Pippen, get a perfect feed from Magic, and score a layup.

“Whoo!” Magic yells as he heads back upcourt. Things are going well for him.

(Years later Pippen goes on a nice little riff about Mullin’s ability to read the game. “Mullie just killed me on backdoors,” Pippen said, watching the tape with me. “He wasn’t that fast, but he knew just when to make his cut.”)

Jordan is now looking to score. He forces a switch off a Ewing screen, takes Robinson outside, and launches a three-pointer that bounces off the backboard and into the basket. A lucky shot. Magic calls for it immediately—you know what he’s thinking, tit for tat—and Jordan retreats, fearing a Johnson drive. But Magic stops, launches a jump shot from just outside the three-point line, and yells, “Right back at you!” even before it reaches the basket. It goes in.

In the winter of 1989, a televised one-on-one game between Magic and Jordan, to take place in the off-season, was on the table. It sounded like a no-brainer, particularly if you had no brain. It would only reinforce the strongest stereotype about the NBA—that even its best players are selfish one-on-one carnival acts. Still, Magic was intrigued and even talked of having “developed strategies” to defeat Jordan.

His Airness was far more reticent, grasping that he had nothing to gain except pocket change. If he won, all it would do was cement his rep as the best one-on-one player in history; if he lost, it would’ve been to a guy who is recognized for being unselfish and team-oriented. Plus Jordan would’ve had to endure Magic’s crowing until global warming melted the planet. The NBA was against the idea and then the Players Association jumped in and said it was not in the “best interests” of the game. The president of the group at that time happened to be Isiah Thomas, and for a moment Jordan’s interest was piqued, simply as a way to get back at Thomas. But it never came to pass.

There is little doubt that Jordan would’ve drilled Magic, who simply had no way to defend him. Magic is bigger but not stronger, he can’t jump as high, he’s nowhere near as quick, and Jordan’s predaceous instincts were unmatched in one-on-one challenges.

But this morning, in a near-deserted gym in Monte Carlo, was Magic’s one-on-one game against Jordan. He hadn’t been able to do it in an exhibition, and he hadn’t been able to do it in the ’91 Finals, when both Pippen and Jordan limited his effectiveness. Going one-on-one against Jordan, however, not only was flawed strategy but also went against Magic’s basketball nature. Johnson was a conciliator.
I’ll bring everybody together
was his mantra, just as it had been back at Everett High School in Lansing, where the principal used to call upon him to settle racial disputes among his fellow students. Jordan was the classic lead dog who did not speak with an ambassador’s tongue.
You have to play at my level. You have to elevate your game to play with me
. “You understand the respect I have for Michael,” Krzyzewski says many years later, “but one thing about him—he cannot be kind.”

When Magic got out of his comfort zone and tried to
be
Jordan, as he did on this morning, he was doomed to failure.

Jordan, with the surety of an IRS accountant, is starting to get into it. He initiates the play from the point, goes through the lane and out to the left corner, gets a pass from Ewing, and hits a jumper as Magic arrives too late to stop him. At the other end, Magic waits
until Barkley sets up on the left low block and gives him a pass. Barkley turns around and hits a jumper.

“Take him, Charles, all day,” says Magic.

Jordan dribbles slowly downcourt and motions Malone to the right block. Jordan makes the entry pass and Malone turns and quick-shoots over Barkley. Good. Tit for tat.

Bird air-balls a wide-open jumper. He looks a hundred years old. White gets the ball back and Jordan signals that the left side should be cleared for Malone to go against Barkley. The entry pass comes in and Malone clears space by slapping away Barkley’s hand. He turns toward the baseline and, legs splayed, releases a jumper. Good.

“Right back at you,” Jordan yells, echoing Magic from a couple of minutes earlier.

After a couple of futile exchanges, Magic races downcourt and throws a pass ahead to David Robinson. “Keep going, David,” he hollers, and Robinson obligingly drives to the basket, drawing a foul on Ewing.

“All day long,” Magic hollers. “All day long.” Then he gets personal: “The Jordanaires are down,” he yells. That’s what Jordan’s “supporting cast” used to be called in Chicago before the Bulls started winning championships, a nickname that came about because the original Jordanaires were also Elvis Presley’s backup band.

Jordan is not amused. And it is at that moment, about halfway through the Greatest Game That Nobody Ever Saw, that Magic may have sealed his own fate.

“Hold the clock!” Jordan hollers, now clearly irritated, making sure there is enough time to strike back. Robinson makes one of two.

A minute later Barkley spins away from Malone on the right
block and Malone is called for a foul. “Called this same shit last night,” Malone says to the gentleman from Italy, referring to the game against France. “This is
bullshit
!” To add to Malone’s frustration, Daly hollers that the White team is over the foul limit.

“One and one,” says Daly.

“Yeah!”
Magic yells. “I love it. I
love
it! We ain’t in Chicago Stadium anymore,” he adds, and punctuates the insult with loud clapping. It is a predictable jab but carries weight. Throughout his career Jordan heard the complaints that the referees favored him. During a Michael/Magic/Larry photo session in Portland, Magic had quipped, “Can’t get too close to Michael. It’ll be a foul.” Jordan was tired of hearing about it, particularly from Magic. Barkley makes one of two.

Now amped up, Jordan goes through four defenders for a flying layup, and then Pippen steals Mullin’s inbounds pass. Jordan misses a jumper, but Pippen rebounds, draws a foul on Mullin, and gets an enthusiastic palm slap from Jordan. As Barkley towels himself off from head to toe—all that alcohol coming out—Pippen makes both. Perhaps they
are
in Chicago Stadium.

Bird grabs the rebound off a missed Robinson shot and Jordan cans a jumper to bring White within one. Magic, determined to make this a one-on-one contest, spins into the lane and misses badly. Barkley is starting to get irritated at Magic’s one-on-one play and will later complain to Jordan and Pippen about it. Jordan races downcourt with Pippen to the left and Ewing to the right. You know where this is headed. Pippen catches and throws down a ferocious left-handed dunk. (Dunking left-handed was something Pippen did better than Jordan, as even Jordan acknowledged.)

First lead for White.

Mullin drives and draws a reach-in foul on Pippen. “Wasn’t
that all ball?” says Jordan. Mullin makes one free throw, misses the next.

Jordan drives the lane and Magic, now visibly tired, gets picked off. Robinson, the help defender, is whistled for a foul. After Jordan misses the first, Magic knocks the ball high in the air—a technical in the NBA, but who cares?—and keeps jawing.

“Let’s concentrate,” hollers Daly, trying to keep everyone’s mind on the business at hand.

Jordan makes the second.

Malone comes down hard on his right ankle after making a layup off an assist from Jordan. His bad mood has grown worse. Malone walks it off—a normal man would’ve gone for ice—as Pippen and Bird come over to slap palms and Jordan yells, “Way to go, Karl.”

In March 1992, a few months before the Dream Team got together, I asked coaches and general managers around the league this question:
If you were starting a team and could take either Malone or Barkley, which one would you select?
It was a hot topic at the time, probably
the
topic, since there was no longer a question that Jordan was the best player in the world. It had the ingredients for a Magic-or-Larry?-type debate. Mr. Conservative vs. Mr. Volatile. The Muscleman vs. the Leaper. Mr. Olympia vs. the Round Mound of Rebound. Mr. Reliable vs. Mr. We Hope He Shows Up and Isn’t in a Bar Sending a Drunk Through a Window.

Malone won the poll 15–7, and there were common threads in the voting. Malone’s supporters invariably mentioned his loyal-soldier qualities and contrasted them with Barkley’s penchant for controversy; Barkley’s backers felt there was no substitute for talent and that Charles achieved more with less, having no John Stockton
to deliver him the ball. This was from one typical Malone voter: “It’s gotten so bad this year with the off-court distractions and his unhappiness with being on the Sixers that it finally has had an effect on Barkley’s play. With the Mailman, you know he’s going to play hard every night, and you don’t have the worries of what might happen after the game.” And this summarized the Barkley advocates: “I like Charles’s heart, the way he overcomes the size disadvantage, the way he takes over a game all by himself.”

Malone won, I suspect, because the question was which you would choose to
start a team
, not which was the better player. Malone played nineteen seasons and in almost every one of them played in every game. Nobody
—nobody
—ever prepared himself better than the gym-ripped Stairmaster addict from Louisiana. Barkley, by contrast, played in eighty-two games in only his rookie year. He went like a madman during games but didn’t take care of himself and something always broke down.

Years later, upon considering the full flush of their careers, it’s still a difficult call by the numbers. Malone, the second-leading scorer in NBA history behind Abdul-Jabbar, averaged 25 points per game, compared to Barkley’s 22.1. Barkley outrebounded Malone by 11.7 to 10.1. Both have been accused of folding under pressure—“The Mailman doesn’t deliver on Sunday,” Pippen famously said to Malone, who then missed two crucial free throws during Game 1 (held on a Sunday) of the 1997 Finals—but that’s more the result of both retiring titleless. The big picture reveals that both were outstanding postseason players with numbers almost identical to their regular-season metrics. Bill Simmons, in his encyclopedic
The Book of Basketball
, has Malone (18th) and Barkley (19th) together in his pantheon, which seems fitting.

For the first two years of Malone’s career he appeared headed on a Wilt Chamberlain–like course, a player who could be fouled late in the game because he would miss from the line. But as much as any player in NBA history, the Mailman made himself into a free-throw shooter by pure will and repetition, turning that early .548 percentage into a .742 lifetime mark. That is a monumental
achievement that made his career, since he is still the all-time leader in made free throws. When the defense has a guy it can’t stop and can’t foul, it has a major problem.

But there is always the root question in sports: who was
better
? You have that moment when you can give only one person the bat, the club, or the ball, and who would you choose? It’s not a media thing; it’s a player thing. You can talk about how Jack Nicklaus dominated golf for two full decades and won a Masters at age forty-six and never tore up his knees with an overtorqued swing or his private life with an overtorqued libido. But if you had that moment when something had to get done, some miracle shot had to be pulled off, wouldn’t most players say,
Tiger, you take the club
? Wouldn’t they hand the ball to Jim Brown? Wouldn’t they send Ted Williams up to hit?

In basketball, I’m sure that if players spoke honestly, Jordan would always get the ball over anyone. Magic or Bird? I have no basis on which to conclude this, but my guess is that the majority would say Bird, even though Magic had the greater career. The modern-day equivalent is Kobe Bryant or LeBron James, and I’m certain that most would say Bryant … unless they said Dwyane Wade, or now Dirk Nowitzki.

And I’m equally certain that this Barkley-or-Malone nod would go to Barkley. Charles had that ineffable something that Malone didn’t have. He was just
better
. He wasn’t more important to a franchise, he wasn’t as dependable, and he wasn’t as good over the long haul. He was just … 
better
.