Obscure Moment Symbolizes the Greatest

Michael Jordan did the spectacular with such regularity that around Chicago those transcendent times became known simply as Michael Moments.

They needed Roman numerals to keep track of his series-winning, course-of-NBA-history-changing Shots, and those were only the ones against the Cleveland Cavaliers.

The Michael Moment I’ll always remember was not captured on videotape. It happened in a small hallway of a building that doesn’t exist anymore. I came across it by accident.

It was the 1993 playoffs, the Bulls were playing the Knicks at Chicago Stadium. Even before the teams took the court, the place was juiced. The Bulls needed to win to tie the series at two games each in their quest for a third consecutive championship. That was all fine and good, but at the time all I really cared about was getting a soda. The stadium was a relic, the only place where teams had to descend a long flight of stairs to reach the locker rooms. The media dining area was also downstairs, and as I ran down and turned to my right, out of the corner of my eye I noticed Jordan, a couple of security people and a couple of cheerleaders standing around in the hallway.

With my back to them, I heard a male falsetto voice chirp out “three-peat.” I took a couple more steps before I realized it could only have come from one person: Jordan. I looked back over my shoulder. Jordan was strutting around, head bobbing like a chicken, pausing every few steps to hold up three fingers and call out, “three-peat.”

The most pressure-packed night of the season, and this was what the world’s greatest player was doing to prepare for the game.

You’ve seen the interviews, read his books, seen “Space Jam,” bought his shoes and you think you know what makes him tick?

Uh-uh.

Through the course of his career, we learned more about Jordan than we ever thought necessary.

We even know he wore North Carolina practice shorts under his Chicago Bull game shorts, and thanks to one endorsement we even know his preferred brand of underwear.

He became so recognizable that the only icon necessary to advertise his cologne was a silhouette of his bald head.

But we never really knew what thoughts raced through that head--and I’m not so sure we’d really want to.

Come game time, Jordan was a warped individual. For anyone to care as much about anything the way he cared about winning borders on unhealthy.

He was obsessed. He had, as his father once said, “a competition problem.” Jordan played the game in an altered state. When he was on the court, he had no friends except the people wearing his same uniform--and even some of them were suspect at times.

He didn’t always want to win simply for the sake of victory. He was determined to have a reason to beat you, even if one didn’t exist. Sometimes he made up challenges, slights or insults.

My favorite was the 1993 second-round series against Cleveland. The Cavaliers had brought in Gerald Wilkins that year, and one of the reasons was he had had “some success” guarding Jordan, as he said in an interview.

Jordan scored 43 points in Game 1. Afterward he stepped to the news conference podium and smirked: “I guess ‘Jordan Stopper’ had a pretty tough night.”

Jordan Stopper? No one had ever heard anyone use that term regarding Wilkins. It didn’t matter to Jordan, though. The mere implication was enough.

When a game was on the line and the other team dared to stay close or take a lead, it was as if Jordan took it personally. The way he made big shot after big shot went beyond clutch; it was ruthless.

“He’s a hit man,” former Bull assistant coach John Bach liked to say.

In Game 2 of their 1996 playoff series against Orlando, the Bulls realized the best way to stop the Magic would be to cut off Penny Hardaway as soon as he got the ball. Jordan went after Hardaway like a hungry shark. Hardaway didn’t stand a chance.

Afterward, as Jordan described the strategy, he said: “We searched and searched for a weakness, and when we found it, we attacked it.”

He said it so icily, it sounded like a criminal’s courtroom confession. Playing the comment back on my tape recorder made me shiver.

That cold-blooded instinct, combined with that gifted athletic ability, set him apart.

But at the core of Jordan’s success was something any kid with spare time could develop: fundamental soundness.

Jordan’s gravity-defying exploits always overshadowed his mastery of the basics. The videos were called “Come Fly With Me,” not “Come Crouch Down in a Defensive Stance With Me.”

His fundamentals were the one area where Jordan didn’t receive enough credit. Sadly, they are the least-imitated aspect of his game, one of the reasons that today’s NBA is filled with guys who could put Jordan to shame in a dunk contest, but still can’t do a thing to stop him. Jordan didn’t have the dribbling wizardry of Isiah Thomas, but he was a skilled enough ballhandler that the Bulls moved him to point guard one season.

When he wanted to give up the ball, he zipped it to teammates at the perfect time and place. Some of the Bulls’ biggest non-Jordan shots in the finals, by John Paxson and Steve Kerr, came off Jordan assists.

He played defense as if he were trying out for the Secret Service. In the 1984 Olympic tryouts, whenever Coach Bob Knight wanted to see how good a player really was, he’d ask him to try to score against Jordan.

Two of the most famous images of Jordan are the jump shot he made to win the NCAA championship as a freshman at North Carolina and the jumper he made to win his sixth NBA championship.

He lost hair, added muscle and put on baggier shorts in the 16 years between the two pictures, but one thing didn’t change: the perfect form on his jump shot. Left hand guiding the ball, right hand pushing up and out and following through, wrist fully extended. (If we want to nit-pick, his shoulders aren’t completely squared to the basket against Utah.) Anyone could copy the form. No one could do it like Michael Jordan.

J.A. Adande can be reached at his e-mail address: j.a.adande@latimes.com.