Basketball Court Becomes Refuge for Michael Jordan

On the court, there is no problem. There is only the basketball and Michael Jordan, and he has always possessed the upper hand in that battle.

But when he goes home, the defenses break down, and Jordan can’t stop the thoughts.

The White House. ...

The Book. ...

Magic. ...

“I’ve thought about it a lot today,” he said this week. “When I’m on the court, I don’t think about it. This is the time, when I step away from the court, when those thoughts start to come back. But I have a solution for it. Just live on. Be positive and live on.”

The Chicago Bulls knew there would be some distractions as they tried to defend their NBA championship this season. What Pat Riley calls “The Disease of More.” As in, more playing time, more shots, more money.

The latest snag in Jordan’s carpet will come Friday, with the publication of a book, “Jordan Rules,” by Chicago Tribune writer Sam Smith, who covered the Bulls for several seasons, but whose book covers only last season. The galleys were leaked, ironically, to the Chicago Sun-Times, which claims the book says, among other things:

-- Jordan threatened teammates who passed the ball to center Bill Cartwright in the final four minutes of a game, saying if they did, “you’ll never get the ball back from me.”

-- Jordan didn’t want to pass to guard John Paxson, even as Paxson was shooting the lights out and clinching the championship in Game 5 of the Finals last season.

-- Jordan was ridiculed by teammates when he went for 40-point games, and that he is not well-liked by most of the players. There are also depictions of a fight between Jordan and center Will Perdue during a practice.

“As far as the book situation goes, that’s an opportunity (for Smith) to make a living, make money,” Jordan said. “Create the most dirt against, probably, the guy who hasn’t had as much dirt written about him. He feels he can sell more books.

“It’s a monetary situation. I realize it, and I expected that at some point in my career that shots would be thrown at me as a person. As a player, you just have to take the shots and keep on moving. If things are true, things are true. If things are false, then you step up and you state your mind.”

Jordan and Perdue acknowledge there was a scuffle, with Jordan hitting Perdue on the head. Both say they apologized immediately afterward; Perdue joked that “no permanent damage was done,” but allowed that “I had to realize who I was, and who he was.”

Bulls Coach Phil Jackson says he indeed asked, “M.J., who’s open?” in reference to Paxson in a huddle during the decisive fifth game, but says there was no anger or heat directed at Jordan when he said it, and that the context might not be correct.

Horace Grant, who created a firestorm when he said there was a double standard on the Bulls with Jordan after Jordan missed the team’s White House trip in October, called the excerpts “ridiculous” and said none of it was true.

“Those things don’t concern us,” added Paxson. “They don’t bother us. If people think they’re getting into our heads, they really don’t. ... The core of this team has been together. We know each other. We understand what we’re all about.”

Jordan says he’ll wait until the book comes out to respond to it.

“I’m just accepting it and dealing with it,” he said. “I don’t have any choice. What am I going to do, quit the game of basketball? All the good things that happened to me, I dealt with them. The positive and negative things are going to happen and I have to deal with them. ...

“People are going to have their own opinions about whatever happens. I can’t change that. I’m not a politician. I’m not going to go out and lobby for people to believe me. That’s not my job, that’s not me. If you believe me, you believe me. If you don’t, you don’t.”

All this comes in the wake of Johnson’s disclosure last week that he has HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. He and Jordan didn’t start off on the right foot, but over the years have gotten closer. Jordan was among a handful of people Johnson called when he found out for certain he had tested positive.