Michael Jordan Now Has a Title to Go With His World of Talent

There are always the whispers.

For great players who haven’t been champions, the whispers grow into a chorus of criticism. They may not believe it, but they can’t ignore it:

“If he’s so great, then how come he’s never won a title?”

Oscar Robertson heard it. Certainly, Wilt Chamberlain did. In baseball, the sound of Ernie Banks’ bat as he cracked out another of his 512 homers couldn’t drown it out.

And Michael Jordan heard it, too.

“You guys make it a (black) mark,” he said. “I make it as a goal.”

After six years of soaring to the top of the NBA but failing to take his team with him, Jordan silenced the skeptics who said he couldn’t harness his exceptional talents for the greater good.

On Wednesday night, the Chicago Bulls became champions, completing one of the most dominant drives in NBA playoff history.

They won 15 of their 17 games. Each loss was by just two points. They finished off the Lakers in five games by capping a three-game sweep in Los Angeles with a 108-101 victory.

Jordan, struggling to sense the meaning of the moment, heard a warmer whisper as he sat on a locker room bench while embracing the championship trophy.

Dolores Jordan leaned toward her son, surrounded by his wife, his father and dozens of reporters and cameramen. He leaned toward her until their foreheads almost touched.

Moments earlier, Jordan had said, “If I never got here, I wouldn’t have been disappointed.”

But now, Dolores Jordan whispered, “It’s what we worked for so long.”

Her son cried.

“Now that the burden is gone, I think he’s going to be a totally different basketball player,” James Jordan said of his son. “He’ll be more relaxed. Now isn’t that scary?”

Robertson is the fourth leading scorer in NBA history. Until Magic Johnson passed him this year, he was the all-time assist leader. But he didn’t become a champion until the 11th year of his 14-year career.

He heard the whispers.

“Individually, you go out and do the best you can,” Robertson said. “But people talk. You listen, too.

“It’s not that the athlete himself would feel that his career had been tarnished” without a title, he added. “You get so much from the press, from people who don’t understand what it takes to win a championship.

“I didn’t really feel emptiness because I’ve always felt ... that in order to win a championship, you have to have astute management and make a key trade,” he said. “When I played at Cincinnati, they didn’t make those trades. They were pinching the pennies. You don’t make progress.”

He spent 10 years with the Royals, then became a champion with Milwaukee in 1970-71, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s second season with them.

Robertson said the happiness wasn’t greater because he waited so long.

“I had been in the league 10 years,” he said. “It’s like going to work. Sometimes you have successes at work.”

Only Abdul-Jabbar has scored more points than Chamberlain. Only Jordan’s scoring average of 32.6 points is higher than Chamberlain’s 30.1. His accomplishments often were compared with those of Bill Russell, the center he played against so often.

Russell averaged 15.1 points per game and had 2,304 fewer rebounds than Chamberlain, the career leader. But many considered Russell the better player, in part because he helped the Boston Celtics win 11 titles in his 13 seasons with them.

Chamberlain won the scoring championship in his first seven seasons, but none of those teams were champions. The next year, he wasn’t the leading scorer, but his Philadelphia 76ers won the title. He won only one more championship in his 14 NBA seasons

Baseball Hall of Famer Banks spent all 19 of his major league seasons with the Chicago Cubs but never made it to the World Series.

“It takes about two to three years, sometimes longer, to get through that emptiness,” Banks said. “The general sports public feels that you really don’t know your true pressure points until you have gotten in a championship event.

“I think about that, too. Would I have been a better player or worse in a championship event? I don’t know.”

He nearly made it in 1969 when the Cubs led the National League East for much of the season. But the New York Mets overtook them in September and won the World Series. He played just two more seasons.

“For a while, I was a little ashamed that I hadn’t contributed enough in 1969 to grab hold of a World Series for Chicago fans,” Banks said.

Now Jordan has given a championship to Chicago fans, winning it in Banks’ adopted home town.

“This kid wants to win at everything,” said Banks, who has played golf with Jordan. “He’s playing every shot to win.”

Jordan won his fifth consecutive scoring title and second MVP award this season. He had 57 assists against the Lakers. Johnson had 62, and both broke Bob Cousy’s record of 53 in a five-game Finals.

Jordan has become wealthy with endorsements. His face is on a Wheaties box and his name is on T-shirts and expensive sneakers. He is immensely popular with youngsters.

But, he said the day before the Bulls won the title, “it’s hard to celebrate individual accolades with the team and with people, with fans. It’s a lot better when you do it as a team, when you win things as a team, when you become champions as a team. Then everyone can feel some of the excitement that you feel.

“I’ve been very blessed to be in situations that I’ve been in in the last seven years,” he added. “How could I say that because I’ve never won a world championship all that is tarnished?”

But Johnson, a rookie when he played on the first of his five championship teams, said Jordan felt a void.

“Oh, yes,” Johnson said, “because that’s all he wants to do, and then taking that abuse for not winning a championship.”

How would Johnson feel if he had never been a champion?

“Oh,” he cringed, “let’s not talk about it.”

When Jordan finally had his title, he was asked if he had expected to react so emotionally.

“I don’t know,” he said between tears, “I’m so happy.”