The Chicago Bulls dynasty ended 27 years ago, but like any good dynasty the stories live on for generations.
And several tales from those glory days are retold in the recent book “Masters of the Game: A Conversational History of the NBA in 75 Legendary Players,” co-written by NBA.com writer Sam Smith and former Bulls coach Phil Jackson.
The book is divided into individual chapters on each of the 75 players, featuring a brief synopsis from Smith followed by a transcription of a conversation about that player between Smith and Jackson.
It’s not a Bulls book, but if you’re an NBA fan at all, you’ll enjoy their takes on the players, the history and some amusing anecdotes along the way.
Like any barroom or barbershop discussion of sports, Smith and Jackson, a couple of old friends and Basketball Hall of Famers, sometimes meander from the player they’re discussing and enter down a rabbit hole. That’s what everyday conversation is like.
The chapter on Milwaukee Bucks star Giannis Antetokounmpo, for instance, includes Jackson’s revelation that the Euro step originally derived from European handball and that former Bulls general manager Jerry Krause “had the offices swept for bugs” to find out who was leaking information to Smith.
“Professional spy team,” Jackson says to Smith. “He assumed someone had to tell you.”
Those who knew Krause and Smith, a former Chicago Tribune colleague and friend, will find that particularly amusing. Tales of Krause’s paranoia are a well-chronicled part of Bulls history, so it’s no shock to hear that a guy nicknamed “The Sleuth” would go to such lengths to try to discover the leaker.
But this was the first time I’ve heard Jackson confirm it, and Smith reveals it really began when he wrote that the Bulls were scouting 7-foot-7 center Gheorghe Mureșan, whom Krause thought would fall to them in the second round of the draft. But Washington picked Mureșan with the 30th pick before the Bulls picked Anthony Reed at No. 41.
Krause became livid that Smith wrote of his interest, and according to Smith he incorrectly deduced that assistant coach Johnny Bach was Smith’s “Deep Throat.”
“Masters of the Game” is full of interesting tidbits like that. There’s Smith getting lost trying to drive Larry Bird to the O’Hare Marriott, and Jackson saying he doesn’t rank players, but if he did, “I have to say, LeBron (James) is not the greatest, maybe not the top-five players?”
There’s also some prescient commentary, as when Jackson says Chris Paul, recently released by the Los Angeles Clippers, “had to be the center of attention, a little bit of the Isiah Thomas thing.”
The Bulls celebrate their sixth NBA title during a rally in Grant Park on June 16, 1998. Seated from left; Toni Kukoč, Ron Harper, Dennis Rodman, Scottie Pippen, Michael Jordan, Mayor Richard M. Daley, coach Phil Jackson and Gov. Jim Edgar. (Chuck Berman/Chicago Tribune)
There’s nothing earthshaking, though Jackson reveals that Bulls Chairman Jerry Reinsdorf asked him three times to come back and coach after he left following the 1997-98 championship season that was chronicled in “The Last Dance” documentary.
“He said, ‘Don’t worry about Jerry (Krause), I can deal with that,’” Jackson says.
Jackson, of course, went on to coach the Los Angeles Lakers, and he says Scottie Pippen, then with the Houston Rockets, asked Jackson to trade for him.
“He said, ‘Come and get me and get me out of here,’” Jackson says. “But the Lakers couldn’t.”
Bull stars Scottie Pippen, from left, Michael Jordan and Dennis Rodman head out to the court for the second half during a game against the Bucks on April 16, 1996, at the Bradley Center in Milwaukee. (Jim Prisching/Chicago Tribune)
After reading it, I came away wishing the two had spent more time talking about Michael Jordan, Pippen and Dennis Rodman, the three Bulls stars who led the second part of the dynasty that Jackson coached and Smith covered for the Tribune.
But maybe if you’re a Lakers fan you’d want more Kobe and Shaq. All the NBA legends are treated equally, with the notable exception of some stars who get thrown into the same chapter, such as one featuring Damian Lillard, Kawhi Leonard, Russell Westbrook and Anthony Davis.
Jordan gets five pages — and an apology from Smith for quoting him saying, “Republicans buy sneakers too,” as a rationale for not publicly giving his political views. Jordan addressed the remark in “The Last Dance,” saying: “I do commend Muhammad Ali for standing up for what he believed in. But I never thought of myself as an activist. I thought of myself as a basketball player.”
Smith writes that he was sorry to have included the comment in his book on Jordan, noting, “It was a quip, a joke, to get me off his back when I was trying to make a conversation about politics.” The quote soon became “red meat for the progressive extremists,” Smith recalls.
The conversation on Rodman is also brief, with Jackson telling Smith he spoke with the team before the Bulls’ trade with the San Antonio Spurs to tell them they were getting a “loose cannon” who had carried a gun around in his car in Detroit.
“I said, ‘Rodman is misunderstood,’” Jackson says he told Bulls players. “We really had to take care of him. We had a therapist meet with him.”
Rodman turned out to be a loose cannon who helped the Bulls win three more titles and was arguably the second-most popular player in Bulls history behind Jordan.
Bulls forward Scottie Pippen assists Michael Jordan off the court for a timeout during Game 5 of the NBA Finals against the Jazz on June 11, 1997, in Salt Lake City. (Nuccio DiNuzzo/Chicago Tribune)
Pippen gets six pages, but anyone looking for Jackson to answer back at his former player for calling him a racist will be disappointed to see the Zen Master taking the high road.
A few years ago, Pippen, a popular player and former team ambassador, used that description to paint Jackson in a negative light for the famous incident in which Pippen refused to enter a playoff game against the New York Knicks with 1.8 seconds left because the last-second shot was designed to go to Toni Kukoč instead of him. Pippen trashed both Jackson and Jordan in interviews and in his book, which I called his “revenge tour.”
Jackson tells Smith he likes Pippen and had a “good relationship” with him. No grudges here.
“I had no qualms,” he says of publicly ignoring Pippen’s remarks. “My kids were more upset by his book. They know what that means. Once you use that word there’s no way you take it back, because you can’t retract it; it’s going to be on the back page of something.”
Jackson seems more upset that Pippen also bashed Jordan, basically ending their relationship, and blames Pippen’s adviser for his accusations. “I’m not mad at Scottie,” he says.
Jackson talks about his former Knicks teammate Bill Bradley setting up Zoom calls with teammates on the anniversaries of the Knicks championship teams from the 1970s. Pippen’s outbursts make a similar 1990s Bulls championship reunion unlikely.
“I don’t see that happening with the Bulls, 30th anniversary, 50th anniversary … ” Jackson says.
That’s a sad postscript to the Bulls dynasty, which brought so much joy to Chicago during that decade.
But the stories will live on, even without the reunions. My one wish after reading “Masters of the Game” is that Smith and Jackson write a sequel with a more “Bulls-centric” narrative.