The Last Dance (2020): Season 1, Episode 4 - Episode #1.4 - full transcript
I do remember being in Vegas with him.
It was on!
The party was starting right away.
Mixin' it up. Bring on the shookers!
That's whores and sluts,
you're gonna learn.
- That's smart hookers.
- Yeah.
Wow.
One thing about
Dennis: He had to escape.
He'd like to go out.
He liked to go to clubs.
We'd go to his favorite restaurant,
then we'd go to a nightclub,
then we'd go to after hours.
It didn't stop.
It's all about getting
your groove on, right?
It was definitely an occupational hazard
to be Dennis' girlfriend.
He was wild.
Suck it down, motherfucker!
But to be honest, I didn't realize
what the team's schedule was.
I didn't know he took a detour.
Did Dennis come back on time?
Mmm-mmm.
He didn't come back on time.
We had to go get his ass out of bed.
And I'm not gonna say what's in his bed
and where he was and blah, blah, blah.
There's a knock on the door.
It's Michael Jordan,
and I hid.
I didn't want him
to see me like that, so I...
I'm just hiding behind the couch
with covers over me.
"Come on, you...
We gotta get to practice."
Dennis came back and joined the team.
And that's the way it went that year.
I wanted to tell you...
Did you get your body
through anything today, Dennis?
You gotta put your body through things
so the muscles have a memorization, too.
His body made it here, Phil.
Don't beg for too much.
Michael and Scottie
accepted me for who I am.
They say, "You know what? He does
what he does, but he cares a lot."
I go party hard, but I work hard.
I think that we get along so well because
we wanna win. We wanna win a championship.
Kamikaze.
A spectacular move!
The game's over!
Chicago Stadium is going wild!
First of all, there's
no backstabbing going on here.
It's time for me to move on.
This will be Phil's last year
as coach of the Bulls.
- Are the expectations too high?
- Where do we go from here?
The only
question: How long can it last?
After his vacation,
Dennis comes back to practice.
Phil's now... His whole motive
is to get Dennis back in shape.
So, we start this drill
called the Indian drill.
Everybody starts running in a line.
And Phil blows a whistle.
Whoever's at the back, run to the front.
Now, you can't stop.
Whoever's in front controls the pace.
So, I'm saying,
"Fuck, this is kind of messed up,"
because now I'm getting caught up
in "Dennis getting in shape drill,"
when in essence,
I hadn't taken a vacation.
So I tell everybody in that group, "Look,
whoever gets in the front of that row",
slow down to a fucking walk.
"We just gonna jog and jog
and jog and jog."
So, Steve Kerr and Jud Buechler,
they all get to the line, we just slowly,
we just running, slowly just running,
and then,
Dennis takes off. Boom!
Now, he blows the whistle.
Now, we cannot stop
until we get back in front of Dennis.
It took us four laps
to catch up to Dennis.
It was in his psyche.
He needed to get away.
But, in all honesty,
Dennis was always there.
He was always on point.
Phil realized
that I was different, man.
Phil knew me so well,
'cause he knew I...
So much shit I was doing.
But I had to get my head right.
But that's what's so cool about
playing with that team,
and they was all about... Anybody needed
to do something, they was all about it.
And Phil was cool about it.
Dennis is always a rebel, at some point.
He wants to join the group, but the other
part of him wants to be autonomous.
So, we appreciate the fact
that he's a maverick.
But yet, when it comes time
for him to perform,
he's always on the court for us,
always playing hard for us.
Dennis and I have this...
Native American bond between us.
He comes in one day,
and Dennis and I met in the team room.
In the team room,
I have a bear claw necklace,
a turtle shell that came from
another Indian reservation,
and various other Indian artifacts.
And so, Dennis is like, "Wow."
He said, "I have this necklace from
the Ponca Indians in Oklahoma."
I can... I'm hip to that."
And I say, "Dennis, in their tradition,
and the tradition that I knew",
you would be a heyoka,
a backward-walking person.
There were people that were different,
and you're a heyoka.
"So, you're this heyoka in this tribe."
He don't look at me
as a basketball player.
He look at me as a great friend.
He realized that I probably needed him
for inspiration.
He wants to see me persevere.
I had never met a coach
who was that different
and genuine when it came
to bringing the group together.
He had this real interest
in Native American history,
and he would weave that
into our own culture.
He brought in Zen Buddhism
and Native American Indian philosophies.
Everything was about being focused,
playing as one.
When I was at Great Falls
as a kid growing up,
my grandparents had this boarding house
with small little cabins.
And Native American people
from a popular Indian reservation
used to come and they'd have their kids.
And so I started learning more and more
about this Native American culture.
There was a certain negativity
about playing with these kids.
I didn't feel that at all.
Cowboys and Indians was a game
that kids played.
And I was always the Indian.
My dad was a pastor.
My mother was also a minister.
She had an extreme belief
about the, uh, second coming of Christ.
So, that was something that was
foremost in your mind in growing up.
"Would you be ready, if Christ came,
to be taken as part of that group
that would be raptured?"
My goal was always in conflict.
I would rather be playing sports
than being on my knees, praying.
I played basketball from the time
I was a little kid,
and eventually went
to the University of North Dakota.
Jackson is having
a whale of a night.
He scored 28 in the first half
and has continued the onslaught
here in the second half.
The Knicks drafted me
in the second round.
And I'd made the All-Rookie Team,
my rookie season.
Jackson defensively
gets the ball.
I remember seeing Phil Jackson.
Jackson knocking it away...
He was always smacking guys around.
He was like an earlier version
of Dennis Rodman.
I was 11 years with the Knicks.
We had seven good years.
We went to the finals three years.
White has the ball.
Stolen by Jackson!
Racing ahead of the field,
he drives, lays it up...
And we won two championships.
Phil and I wrote
Maverick together.
In that book,
Phil talks about taking acid.
And thinking he was a lion,
roaring up and down the beach in LA.
Phil was like a hippie
and different from the NBA fraternity.
When I was playing as a pro,
Red Holzman encouraged me
to think about coaching,
and particularly in Puerto Rico,
where I ended up coaching for a while.
I spent a lot of time down there
in the Superior League, it was called.
They played every other day.
And these players
would just play ferociously.
Jackson steps
on the court to argue with the referees.
There was a local animosity
among these small towns.
There were fires on your way out of town,
and rocks being thrown at your car.
They'd kill a chicken... in a graveyard,
and pour the blood
on the visiting team's bench.
The town I went to,
Quebradillas, was ferocious.
The mayor had actually shot an official
one time with a gun
and hit him in the lower leg.
So, his punishment was
he wasn't allowed to go to any more
home games for the rest of the season.
But, really,
there's a lot of love about the game,
and I learned a lot of things
from the process.
And then I got a call about coaching
over in the CBA for the Albany Patroons.
And now introducing
the head coach of the Patroons,
formerly of the New York Knickerbockers,
Phil Jackson.
Phil Jackson.
Then in '84,
we won the championship.
They came together as a group,
and it's been a great team effort
ever since.
- We're ecstatic.
- Whoo!
After that,
the Bulls tracked me down,
and I got up to interview for
an assistant job under Stan Albeck.
Jerry Krause and I
had a really good relationship.
I wanted to bring Phil in.
He came in, uh... not dressed real well.
Stan was very conservative.
Phil looked anything
but conservative at that point.
And Stan quickly, uh, nixed that idea.
Two years later, we had an opening.
And this time I called Phil,
and I told him how to dress
and how to, uh, talk to Doug.
Doug Collins was our coach.
And I kind of helped Doug think about it,
and we hired Phil.
Under Doug Collins,
one of the assistant coaches
was Tex Winter.
Jerry Krause had the idea
that Tex was gonna be a mentor.
Doug was gonna follow the things
that he would teach as a coach.
When I took this job 11 years ago,
the first person we hired was Tex Winter.
He's a brilliant man.
The finest offensive mind in basketball.
Triangle is formed between...
Forward Two, Guard One,
who has now moved to the corner,
and Center Five,
who forms the apex of the triangle.
He had a system
called "the triangle."
Jerry said, "I've been listening
to his basketball philosophy for years.
He's got the kind of philosophy
I'd like to see happen with this team."
Doug's philosophy was different.
Doug would have these plays that always
ended up with Michael Jordan
being the recipient of the score.
Tex was always like,
"There's a way of playing this game
that's different than that."
Tex Winter... would berate Doug about,
"You should institute the triangle."
Doug would not hear of it.
Doug finally had heard it enough and said,
"I'm tired of hearing that,"
and then the argument escalated a bit,
and Tex Winter was banned from the bench.
He wasn't coaching on the floor anymore.
He was sitting in the corner,
taking notes about the practice.
Jerry Krause was really unhappy with that.
During that period of time,
Krause made the decision that I should
work together with Tex.
Phil was picking the brains of
the best basketball man I've ever known,
and I was watching it.
And I thought, you know what?
This is getting more and more interesting
all the time.
Is there anything that you missed?
You still got a bit more room.
I could've done
another tier here, Mike.
Mike, we want you to deny the ball,
so they can't throw the ball
in easy to the blocks.
So, big man, if your man clears,
you must tell Michael
that he's alone out there
so he doesn't get naked
on a back-door situation.
Midway through my second year,
I felt Phil could be the coach.
- What gave you that sense?
- Just sense.
- You don't want to go into the details?
- It's just feeling.
Jerry wanted to talk to me,
so I go in and talk.
He says, "I may have to do something
that's gonna rock this... franchise."
I said, "What?" He says,
"I'm gonna have to fire Doug Collins."
I said, "It's gonna be some fuckin' balls",
fire a guy that just took us
to the Eastern Conference Final."
If you're getting ready for work now,
you're probably not Doug Collins.
The Bulls head coach was fired
in a surprise move yesterday.
I have the worst-kept secret in town
sitting next to me.
You guys, as usual, got us on that one.
For the last two years,
Phil Jackson has been a very integral part
of this organization.
He's now ready to be a head coach.
Welcome, coach.
Thanks, Jerry.
Have you talked to
Michael Jordan yet?
- Yes, I have.
- What'd he say?
"Congratulations!
Let's go win a championship."
Phil took over and just
had a different approach.
Doug's approach was
more catered to Michael,
and Phil's approach was more catered
to the team.
I wasn't a Phil Jackson fan,
you know, when he first came in,
because he was coming in
to take the ball out of my hands.
Doug put the ball in my hands.
Tex Winter, his right-hand man,
had sold him on an offense
that he believed
would get us out of this
one-on-one type of basketball.
The triangle offense is set
so that there's a key pass
that creates motion.
Then there's 33 different types of options
that come out of that single pass.
Players can do spontaneous,
creative things using their strengths.
Everybody has an opportunity
to touch the ball
but I didn't want Bill Cartwright
to have the ball with five seconds left.
Bounce into Cartwright,
shoots over Rollins. Nope.
That's not equal-opportunity offense.
That's fucking bullshit.
Oh, my!
Michael Jordan has 54 points!
Sixty points for Jordan!
Sixty-nine points for Michael Jordan.
There was so many times
Tex used to yell at me, saying,
"Move the ball. Move the ball."
He says, "No 'I' in team."
I said, "There's an 'I' in win."
I met Michael and I told him
what we were gonna do.
"Obviously, you've scored 37,
38 points a game the last couple years."
I don't anticipate you're going to be
the scoring champion in the league.
The spotlight's on the ball and if you're
always the guy that's gonna have the ball,
teams can generate a defense against that,
"which happened with the Pistons
the last couple years."
He said, "I'm not worried about you",
but we gotta find a way
to make everybody else better.
"We gotta create other threats."
I came in the game as being a point guard,
but my growth sort of, uh,
grew me into a small forward.
The triangle offense allowed me
to be more of what I wanted to be.
Scottie Pippen's turnaround!
Scottie kinda developed that new position
called the point forward.
Instead of being in Michael's shadow,
Scottie was starting to blossom
as one of the top players in the NBA.
Beautiful move by Scottie!
Making his All-Star debut
from the Chicago Bulls, Scottie Pippen.
Michael Jordan is making
an adjustment to this new philosophy,
which tries to relieve him
of the offensive burden.
He realized that him playing
and just scoring 30 points
wasn't going to win
the last game of the season.
I'm not gonna be the type of person
who's very hungry to lead the league
in scoring once again,
or to chase individual accolades.
He made a conscious effort to say,
"No individual is gonna be the team."
Now, I'm more or less
geared towards team success.
That's a special thing to have happen,
when the largest icon
that the NBA's ever had understands that,
"I don't have to have the ball
in my hands all the time."
With the triangle offense, certainly,
it needed some little time to adjust,
for everyone to adjust to it
at their own pace,
and it took us about a year or so,
as a team, to do it.
But by the 1990 playoffs, we all felt that
we were ready to beat the Detroit Pistons.
The hurdle that comes up
now is the big one.
And we know that the challenge
of the Detroit Pistons is immense.
It's one that we've been
waiting for all season long.
Chicago was the only team to beat
the Pistons in the playoffs last year
and they're a deeper
and more balanced team this time around.
I felt like we were
in a position to win, you know.
And we pushed them to a game seven
in their building.
That's the Scottie
migraine game, right?
Yeah.
The defending
world champions, the Detroit Pistons,
extended to a seventh game.
And 21,500 are gathered here
for a very special afternoon.
When I got up that morning
and went down for breakfast,
I had a headache.
I started feeling like
I wanted to throw up.
I went to the arena,
did my regular routine warming up,
and I was just, like, blind.
I couldn't see.
Game seven... Let's go!
- You know what time it is.
- Go 110%.
Know what time it is.
We got Scottie and BJ?
- Yeah.
- You know we gotta go.
- This is it.
- Let's go.
All in.
- All out.
- No doubt.
We worked all season for this, guys.
Let's play hard.
Leave it all on the floor.
Game seven from the Palace.
Piston ball.
As the game started,
I couldn't focus.
Everything was blurry,
I was seeing double, black, and I just...
I couldn't get my eyesight.
Pippen is one and five
in the field.
One and six.
I told 'em, "I can't see,"
and I was taken out of the game.
He said he had a migraine. I don't...
I can't argue the point
that he had a migraine.
It was just one of those things that,
you know, it was so unfortunate.
When you can't see,
you're seeing double, and want to vomit,
and you gotta play
against Dennis Rodman?
Pippen passes inside,
Laimbeer knocks it away.
4:10 to go. Here's Isiah.
The players on the Bulls
are playing from desperation.
Guys are trying to do more
than they're capable of doing,
and that includes Michael Jordan.
The lead is 20.
The Detroit Pistons will meet
the Portland Trail Blazers
in a best of seven,
beginning Tuesday night on CBS.
Michael Jordan had 31,
and he's with Pat O'Brien.
Mike... Michael Jordan here,
in the midst of the celebration.
What are you saying to the other players?
All you can do is wish them good luck.
We fought hard. They were the better team.
We wanna be where they are.
We still gotta wait our turn,
and try to improve our team.
They were the better team
and played better today.
We were sitting
in the locker room after the game,
and nothing was said.
Everyone just sat there for a moment.
We had a chance to beat 'em.
We just didn't respond.
We got to that hill,
we almost looked over the hill.
I was devastated.
I was absolutely devastated.
I cried on the bus.
My father came on and said,
"Look, it's just one game.
Bounce back, come back next year."
I remember losing to the Pistons.
Damn Pistons.
Um...
That shit hurt.
You couldn't deny
that they were a great team.
We had to either change
something about ourself,
or we weren't gonna beat them.
Can't touch this!
- Congratulations!
- Thanks, Pat!
After that game,
instead of us all going on vacation,
we all showed up
and we started working out.
Everybody, starting with Michael, changed.
Before the Pistons,
Michael didn't weight train.
He didn't go in much
for strength training.
After the Pistons
beat the shit out of him,
he finally decided,
"I gotta put some muscle on."
I was getting
brutally beaten up.
And I want to administer pain.
I wanted to start fighting back.
It's difficult to add muscle
for an athlete that's
constantly burning calories,
running up and down all the time.
We started at 200.
We added five pounds
until he got to 215.
When did you decide to build it?
I put it in just to get myself physically
strong enough to go against Detroit.
I was a slim and skinny kid.
But now, after I put on a couple pounds,
I can throw my weight around
a little more.
I would give him
a certain amount of reps to do.
He would never stop at that number.
If I asked for six,
I know he was gonna do 12.
He got to the point where he was like,
"Instead of them dishing it to me,
I'm gonna dish it back to them."
One of the criticisms has been
that Jordan is a great player,
but he can't lead his teammates
to a championship.
He can't make them better players.
You were known at that time
as the guy
who was a spectacular performer,
but not the winner
that Magic and Larry were.
Which ate at me.
It did. It did.
My energy started
to gear towards my teammates,
and pushing them to excel.
Michael forced the hand
of a lot of the players
to really dedicate themselves
to off-season training.
"Okay, we're gonna spend the summer
dedicated to this proposition,
that we're not gonna be runners-up.
We're gonna be champions."
Michael was on us.
No mistakes allowed.
Man, I see a screaming devil.
You make a mistake,
he's gonna scream at you,
he's gonna belittle you.
He demands almost perfection.
Man, when you see your leader
working extremely hard in practice,
you feel like, "Oh, man, if I don't
give it my all, I shouldn't be here."
He taught me how to stay in the gym.
And he spent a lot of time starting
to build the confidence that I needed.
Pippen became my focal point.
More than any other player,
Scottie benefited from
playing with Michael Jordan...
because Scottie had this
raw athletic ability.
Two-hand dunk by Pippen!
What he didn't have was
what Michael brought every day,
which was the drive to be the very best,
every single day.
The mental focus of the game.
Dumars, see I gotta help,
I gotta give him a bump...
So I'm gonna be a step slow.
I'll go to yours.
The thing about Pip is, you know,
you stand next to him,
you make him stronger.
All the Detroit times
when Rodman wanted to pick on him,
he needed someone there
to stand there and say,
"I'll fight with you, just fight."
Scottie and I bonded because he felt,
okay, he has someone that he can count on.
And I'm looking at, "Okay, I got someone
who I can actually count on."
And then Horace came right behind that.
During the time that the Pistons
reigned over us,
every time they'd do something to us,
we would complain to the referee
or try to go back at them.
Horace used to get beaten up.
He got Grant
with an elbow in the side...
And he would come back whining.
And I'd say, "Don't fucking whine."
Don't let 'em see you whine.
That's when they know they got you."
With them being more
mentally dominant than we were,
they knew, soon as we start complaining,
they had us. And they did.
Grant has got
to realize this game is not over.
You can't give
the world champions anything.
Just be strong.
We gonna beat these bullies.
In '91,
the Bulls were determined
to be the tougher team.
The pain of losing to Detroit,
again, the year before,
brought a fury into that season
that they had not had.
Jordan knocks the ball
out of bounds.
No, he didn't! He saved it and played...
What a spectacular defensive play
by Jordan!
A pass stolen by Jordan...
Being around Michael every day
like that, it just brought it out of us.
Scottie evolved, Horace evolved,
I evolved.
It was a great feeling.
We had matured in a lot of ways,
physically, mentally.
Jordan dribbles out,
a hook pass to Pippen for the dunk.
It was time for us to become
the top team in the game.
And now, the starting lineup
for your Chicago Bulls...
Everybody in Chicago
hated the Pistons.
This was personal.
Anybody says it wasn't personal,
it was personal.
Game one of the best of seven.
I didn't wanna deal with
my relatives in Detroit during that time.
I didn't wanna go stay with them.
My first cousins,
"Yeah, whatever. We don't like you
right now." They didn't like us.
The opening tip. Game one.
Our character was challenged
the last two years and we failed.
But that third year,
we put them in our rearview mirror.
Bill Laimbeer.
Jordan with the steal.
Jordan!
He'll go to the foul line.
Jordan is not gonna
back down from anyone right now.
He's the leader and understands
what to expect during the series.
He's gonna hold his ground,
make a statement.
I thought we were
a good enough team
to at least make the series
a little bit more competitive.
And we didn't.
Pippen against Vinnie
up the right side to the baseline.
Fills it up, and a foul!
All right, Ahmad,
game four of the best of seven.
Nice fake by Jordan... Goes to the scoop!
Pippen...
Oh! Beautiful move by...
Scottie Pippen off to a fast start.
He has ten points.
You know something's coming.
This team is desperate.
They've done everything they can.
Now, they're really desperate.
Armstrong and Craig Hodges
in the back court.
Cliff Levingston, Bill Cartwright
and Scottie Pippen up for...
A beautiful back court pass for Pippen!
And he is walloped.
And that will be a flagrant foul.
And it's getting
very, very tough out there.
Dennis Rodman pushed Scottie,
and could have injured him
pretty severely.
It was clearly, um, a flagrant foul.
That's a clear-cut
cheap shot, no question. Clear cut.
Scottie Pippen was racked up.
When Pippen didn't respond
to that abuse...
there was nothing
they could do to beat us then.
Scottie was unshakable,
didn't even want a Band-Aid.
When we saw that, it was over.
You know, it was like, "Okay, it's a foul."
Um, let's go ahead and finish
kicking their ass and you know..."
And put 'em out of their misery.
Jordan rebounds. He has Pippen.
The Chicago Bulls
about to put the Pistons away in four...
And Pippen able to feed it off to Jordan!
Chuck is now clearing the bench.
Miller Genuine Draft
player of the game,
Scottie Pippen of the Chicago Bulls.
We were tasting victory over
a team that just kicked your butt
for the last three or four years.
I mean, the gratification...
You truly cannot put it into words.
It is all over.
That was the only time
that I think I'd ever been swept, um...
in a series. I was normally the one
doing the sweeping.
Their time had arrived and ours was over.
As we're coming out of the game,
Laimbeer said, "You know..."
we're not shaking their hands.
"This is how we're leaving."
The Pistons wasting no time
in getting outta here,
as they are headed off...
We didn't shake hands.
We just walked off the court.
"Fuck you guys.
Thank you for kicking our ass."
They left the bench
although there's seven seconds remaining.
The Pistons just left.
I think
it was difficult for them
because they were two-time champions.
But, you know,
there certainly has to be some respect.
Straight up bitches.
That's what
they walked off like.
"Yeah, we just kicked your ass.
Go ahead and go."
Detroit had a similar thing with Boston
that we had with them.
They had to overcome Boston, and they did.
I still remember...
it was the first time that, uh...
Detroit beat them,
and I can see Kevin McHale
coming out to half court
and shaking hands, things like that.
No.
Adrian Dantley
was shooting a free throw
and the Boston Celtics
were walking off during the game.
And I grab McHale,
and then he stopped
as he was walking off the floor.
That's how they left the floor.
And to us, that was okay.
Knowing what we know now,
and the aftermath of what took place,
I think we would have stopped
and said, "Hey, congratulate..."
like they do now.
"Hey, congratulate... ""Love ya, man!"
"Hey, congratulations..."
We would have did it.
Of course, we would have done it.
But during that period of time,
that's just not how it was passed.
When you lost, you left the floor.
That was it.
This is Isiah,
talking about the walk-off.
Well, I know it's all bullshit.
Whatever he says now,
you know it wasn't his true actions then.
He's had time enough to think about it.
Or the reaction of the public
that's changed his perspective of it.
You can show me
anything you want.
There's no way you can convince me
he wasn't an asshole.
Knowing what we know now,
and the aftermath of what took place...
But during that period of time,
that's just not how it was passed.
It just... Just wasn't.
You can go back
and look at any of those old games,
or whatever, when you lost,
you left the floor.
All you gotta do is you go back
to us losing in game seven.
I shook everybody hand.
Two years in a row.
We shook their hands when they beat us.
There's a certain respect to the game
that we paid to them.
That's sportsmanship,
no matter how much it hurts.
And believe me, it fucking hurt.
But they didn't have to shake our hands.
We knew we whooped their ass already.
We'd gotten past them
and that was the most...
To me, that was better than,
in some ways, winning a championship.
Sweep! Sweep! Sweep! Sweep! Sweep! Sweep!
Go, Jerry! Go, Jerry! Go, Jerry!
Go sit down, Jerry!
In sports,
the stage is set for the Air-Magic show
in the NBA Finals.
Starting Sunday, it'll be Michael Jordan
and the Chicago Bulls
against Magic Johnson and the LA Lakers.
When you're a competitor,
you want to play against the best.
I played against Larry,
and I've always wanted
to play against Michael.
Up until that point,
there was a stigma that...
"Michael Jordan only wins scoring titles,
never championships."
That was my chance
to get in the category
of Larry Bird and Magic Johnson.
I guess this is something that
I've been waiting for.
It's the team that's won it the most,
in the time I've been in the league...
Even though they may have that experience,
we have that hunger.
The NBA is a league of stars,
and none shine brighter
than Magic Johnson and Michael Jordan.
While much has been said
about their respective teams,
nothing has been more anticipated
than their individual match-up.
We're set
for the start of game one.
The opening tip
controlled by the LA Lakers,
as Magic Johnson moves across,
against Michael Jordan.
You know, we were nervous.
It's our first time,
and we didn't even play well.
And now,
Magic got it out for Worthy...
What a play! Magic Johnson...
Sam Perkins
hits a three at the end.
He's got it!
And the Bulls lose game one.
Everybody, including me, goes,
"Lakers are gonna win this thing."
They beat us on our home court,
but in our minds,
we had a chance to beat them,
and we didn't even play good.
We were looking forward to game two.
We are set for game two
of the NBA Finals.
So, game two, Jordan goes nuts.
Over Scott.
Michael Jordan on fire.
He's got it. Twelve straight field goals
for Michael Jordan!
Look away, to Levingston... Jordan...
Oh! A spectacular move by Michael Jordan!
That's 13 consecutive field goals!
The change
of putting Pippen on Magic Johnson
rather than Michael Jordan...
Johnson's the greatest
point guard I've ever seen,
and Scottie Pippen was picking
Magic Johnson up full court.
Nobody did that.
Scottie accepted that challenge
and I knew what Scottie was gonna do.
I see it in practice all the time.
He gets up in your face
and he harasses you and...
Pip never let him get started.
The crowd reacts
to Scottie Pippen
who did a tremendous job
in defending against Magic...
Once we did that in game two,
we never looked back.
Jordan around Divac.
Chicago Bulls take a 2-1 lead
in the best of seven.
And Teagle now one for six,
and it leads to this!
The Chicago Bulls come away
with a resounding victory.
In command
virtually all the way.
And it's this simple,
the Lakers have to win three in a row.
Game five, moments away.
Hello, I'm Bob Costas.
This is the Larry O'Brien Trophy.
All indications are that by evening's end,
it'll be in the possession
of the Chicago Bulls.
Game five was a great back-and-forth,
back-and-forth game.
Magic fires for Smith...
Good recovery...
It counts!
Lakers with a one-point lead.
Jordan with a gorgeous move.
The Bulls lead it by three.
Magic...
Drops it off...
After three, the Bulls and the Lakers
are tied at 80.
So, the fourth quarter,
it's a precarious lead.
So, during a timeout, Phil asks Michael,
"MJ, who's open?" And he goes, "Paxson."
He goes, "Then get him the ball."
You don't have to shoot that shot.
Run around to the point.
John's open right there.
You can still create.
All right?
He's hitting shots.
Phil said, you know, forcefully,
"Paxson is open, get him the ball."
And I started looking for Paxson.
Everybody in the world's expecting Jordan
to force something through a double team.
He doesn't do it. He draws and dishes.
Paxson open again...
He trusts his teammate to make the shot.
Once Pax hits that first shot,
"Oh, okay. Fine.
Let me do this again.
Penetrate, find Pax."
And he kept hitting 'em, kept hitting 'em.
Again! Eighteen for Paxson!
That was exactly what Phil was trying
to get Michael to understand
and believe in over the couple years,
is that,
"These other guys can help you out."
It is a two-point lead
for Chicago.
Paxson!
Yes! John Paxson again!
The Chicago Bulls have won
their first-ever NBA championship!
You did it the right way.
You did it the right way.
I love you.
- Scottie...
- Yes!
When you get to that finish line
and you know that you won...
all those emotions
that you wrapped up into,
you can just let go.
I'm so happy.
Everybody knows...
Has the picture in their mind of
when we beat Cleveland on that last shot
and he's punching the air,
he's all excited.
That's who we knew,
the competitive Michael Jordan.
The win-at-all-costs Michael Jordan.
Sometimes we'd question
whether he was human,
whether he had feelings.
A guy that was totally focused
on one thing and one thing only.
The only emotion
we had ever seen out of him
was anger or frustration.
We were literally stunned
to see those emotions.
Seven-year struggle.
Seven-year struggle.
And when they beat us, well,
we met in between both locker rooms,
and he put his arms...
and started crying.
He was so happy that he had won,
that he busted through.
That was a special moment
for him and myself.
It's a beautiful feeling.
If you're gonna lose, you lose to them.
I'm going to lose to Michael.
And that... That's how...
how it should be.
At last, I fit somewhere in
the category of Larry Bird
and Magic Johnson.
Shit! C'mon, drop my money down.
You said I can't show nobody
what I give you.
No. We're here. Don't show it to anybody.
Let me show it.
Yeah.
Denver. Denver.
How 'bout them Broncos?
Hey! Hey! Cheesehead!
Security. Security.
This man never gets sleep.
- Dennis Rodman... Junior.
- Come on.
Hey, hey, don't say it on camera.
He never gets his sleep. Single man.
Thinks he can hang out all night.
Hey, hey, don't put that on tape.
Don't put that on... Hey, M.
- If he committed to one girl...
- M...
- M, come on.
- It's a lie.
It's a lie, he's out every night.
Do not put this on tape right here.
- Why not? Get some sleep, man!
- That's messed up.
I get a whole lot of sleep.
- You've got a hangover this morning.
- No, I... M.
My mom and dad are gonna watch this, M.
Mom and dad, he's an alcoholic.
Hey.
Hey, hey, Phil, he can't work
for the media and be on this plane.
Right here, see him?
The highest-paid media guy in the world.
Come on, Ahmad makes more than me.
No. He wishes, though.
He wishes he does. Believe me.
The FC finally won.
It's actually kind of like a sign
of times are changing.
Might be changing the NBA, too.
While the Bulls
were on the road,
their GM took his shot back home.
Jerry Krause again
made his plans for next season very clear.
Coach Jackson won't be back.
And with Michael Jordan on record
as saying he won't play
for anyone other than Jackson,
Krause told the Chicago Tribune,
"If Michael chooses to leave
because there is another coach here,"
then it's his choice, not ours.
We would love to have Michael back.
But Michael is going to have to play
for someone else.
"It isn't going to be Phil."
If Phil's not back,
then certainly I'm not back.
So, I mean, you know, it doesn't leave me
with any other choices,
but not to play next year.
There's no room at all for you coming back
under any other circumstances?
No. None. None at all.
The Bulls
were dominating the east.
The east didn't seem to be a question.
The question was out west
with the team that they had met
in the finals the year before, Utah.
Now, keep in mind,
this was probably a finals preview.
This is the litmus test.
Good evening.
Welcome to the Delta Center.
The thing that's really surprising
is the timing of that story
by Jerry Krause.
Yeah, Dick, unfortunately,
it's very cold. It's sad.
And if you really think about this,
performance and loyalty,
by the coaches and players,
are being just thrown out the window.
And the Bulls
starting out solidly, lead 8-2.
Here's Rodman,
after Pippen got the loose ball,
and Jordan hits the open shot!
The Bulls are doing it all.
It has been all Bulls...
Great pass from Longley
to a cutting Scottie Pippen.
And it's a 47-24 lead.
The Chicago Bulls
are running the Jazz wild
on the Jazz home court.
Loose ball, Karl Malone...
Dennis... There it is.
Down goes Malone and Rodman.
A double foul will be called.
You can see that this could
ignite something here that we don't need.
The Jazz with a 7-0 run
of their own here.
It's an eight-point game,
believe it or not.
This is as close as the Jazz have come.
Malone over Pippen, he's got it.
He's got it, he's right.
- He's un...
- Yeah. Unstoppable.
Yes! And the Jazz have come back big!
Standing ovation for the Jazz,
who had to fight way back in this game.
Utah Jazz ending up
sweeping the Chicago Bulls this year,
winning here in Salt Lake City.
But Jerry Krause, the big question is,
"Why now, come out
with a statement like this,
at the All-Star break?"
It's something for after the season.
I think it's just
a bad case of judgment on his part.
This looks like
a reality check for everybody.
Is this the end of the Bulls
as we know them?
It was on!
The party was starting right away.
Mixin' it up. Bring on the shookers!
That's whores and sluts,
you're gonna learn.
- That's smart hookers.
- Yeah.
Wow.
One thing about
Dennis: He had to escape.
He'd like to go out.
He liked to go to clubs.
We'd go to his favorite restaurant,
then we'd go to a nightclub,
then we'd go to after hours.
It didn't stop.
It's all about getting
your groove on, right?
It was definitely an occupational hazard
to be Dennis' girlfriend.
He was wild.
Suck it down, motherfucker!
But to be honest, I didn't realize
what the team's schedule was.
I didn't know he took a detour.
Did Dennis come back on time?
Mmm-mmm.
He didn't come back on time.
We had to go get his ass out of bed.
And I'm not gonna say what's in his bed
and where he was and blah, blah, blah.
There's a knock on the door.
It's Michael Jordan,
and I hid.
I didn't want him
to see me like that, so I...
I'm just hiding behind the couch
with covers over me.
"Come on, you...
We gotta get to practice."
Dennis came back and joined the team.
And that's the way it went that year.
I wanted to tell you...
Did you get your body
through anything today, Dennis?
You gotta put your body through things
so the muscles have a memorization, too.
His body made it here, Phil.
Don't beg for too much.
Michael and Scottie
accepted me for who I am.
They say, "You know what? He does
what he does, but he cares a lot."
I go party hard, but I work hard.
I think that we get along so well because
we wanna win. We wanna win a championship.
Kamikaze.
A spectacular move!
The game's over!
Chicago Stadium is going wild!
First of all, there's
no backstabbing going on here.
It's time for me to move on.
This will be Phil's last year
as coach of the Bulls.
- Are the expectations too high?
- Where do we go from here?
The only
question: How long can it last?
After his vacation,
Dennis comes back to practice.
Phil's now... His whole motive
is to get Dennis back in shape.
So, we start this drill
called the Indian drill.
Everybody starts running in a line.
And Phil blows a whistle.
Whoever's at the back, run to the front.
Now, you can't stop.
Whoever's in front controls the pace.
So, I'm saying,
"Fuck, this is kind of messed up,"
because now I'm getting caught up
in "Dennis getting in shape drill,"
when in essence,
I hadn't taken a vacation.
So I tell everybody in that group, "Look,
whoever gets in the front of that row",
slow down to a fucking walk.
"We just gonna jog and jog
and jog and jog."
So, Steve Kerr and Jud Buechler,
they all get to the line, we just slowly,
we just running, slowly just running,
and then,
Dennis takes off. Boom!
Now, he blows the whistle.
Now, we cannot stop
until we get back in front of Dennis.
It took us four laps
to catch up to Dennis.
It was in his psyche.
He needed to get away.
But, in all honesty,
Dennis was always there.
He was always on point.
Phil realized
that I was different, man.
Phil knew me so well,
'cause he knew I...
So much shit I was doing.
But I had to get my head right.
But that's what's so cool about
playing with that team,
and they was all about... Anybody needed
to do something, they was all about it.
And Phil was cool about it.
Dennis is always a rebel, at some point.
He wants to join the group, but the other
part of him wants to be autonomous.
So, we appreciate the fact
that he's a maverick.
But yet, when it comes time
for him to perform,
he's always on the court for us,
always playing hard for us.
Dennis and I have this...
Native American bond between us.
He comes in one day,
and Dennis and I met in the team room.
In the team room,
I have a bear claw necklace,
a turtle shell that came from
another Indian reservation,
and various other Indian artifacts.
And so, Dennis is like, "Wow."
He said, "I have this necklace from
the Ponca Indians in Oklahoma."
I can... I'm hip to that."
And I say, "Dennis, in their tradition,
and the tradition that I knew",
you would be a heyoka,
a backward-walking person.
There were people that were different,
and you're a heyoka.
"So, you're this heyoka in this tribe."
He don't look at me
as a basketball player.
He look at me as a great friend.
He realized that I probably needed him
for inspiration.
He wants to see me persevere.
I had never met a coach
who was that different
and genuine when it came
to bringing the group together.
He had this real interest
in Native American history,
and he would weave that
into our own culture.
He brought in Zen Buddhism
and Native American Indian philosophies.
Everything was about being focused,
playing as one.
When I was at Great Falls
as a kid growing up,
my grandparents had this boarding house
with small little cabins.
And Native American people
from a popular Indian reservation
used to come and they'd have their kids.
And so I started learning more and more
about this Native American culture.
There was a certain negativity
about playing with these kids.
I didn't feel that at all.
Cowboys and Indians was a game
that kids played.
And I was always the Indian.
My dad was a pastor.
My mother was also a minister.
She had an extreme belief
about the, uh, second coming of Christ.
So, that was something that was
foremost in your mind in growing up.
"Would you be ready, if Christ came,
to be taken as part of that group
that would be raptured?"
My goal was always in conflict.
I would rather be playing sports
than being on my knees, praying.
I played basketball from the time
I was a little kid,
and eventually went
to the University of North Dakota.
Jackson is having
a whale of a night.
He scored 28 in the first half
and has continued the onslaught
here in the second half.
The Knicks drafted me
in the second round.
And I'd made the All-Rookie Team,
my rookie season.
Jackson defensively
gets the ball.
I remember seeing Phil Jackson.
Jackson knocking it away...
He was always smacking guys around.
He was like an earlier version
of Dennis Rodman.
I was 11 years with the Knicks.
We had seven good years.
We went to the finals three years.
White has the ball.
Stolen by Jackson!
Racing ahead of the field,
he drives, lays it up...
And we won two championships.
Phil and I wrote
Maverick together.
In that book,
Phil talks about taking acid.
And thinking he was a lion,
roaring up and down the beach in LA.
Phil was like a hippie
and different from the NBA fraternity.
When I was playing as a pro,
Red Holzman encouraged me
to think about coaching,
and particularly in Puerto Rico,
where I ended up coaching for a while.
I spent a lot of time down there
in the Superior League, it was called.
They played every other day.
And these players
would just play ferociously.
Jackson steps
on the court to argue with the referees.
There was a local animosity
among these small towns.
There were fires on your way out of town,
and rocks being thrown at your car.
They'd kill a chicken... in a graveyard,
and pour the blood
on the visiting team's bench.
The town I went to,
Quebradillas, was ferocious.
The mayor had actually shot an official
one time with a gun
and hit him in the lower leg.
So, his punishment was
he wasn't allowed to go to any more
home games for the rest of the season.
But, really,
there's a lot of love about the game,
and I learned a lot of things
from the process.
And then I got a call about coaching
over in the CBA for the Albany Patroons.
And now introducing
the head coach of the Patroons,
formerly of the New York Knickerbockers,
Phil Jackson.
Phil Jackson.
Then in '84,
we won the championship.
They came together as a group,
and it's been a great team effort
ever since.
- We're ecstatic.
- Whoo!
After that,
the Bulls tracked me down,
and I got up to interview for
an assistant job under Stan Albeck.
Jerry Krause and I
had a really good relationship.
I wanted to bring Phil in.
He came in, uh... not dressed real well.
Stan was very conservative.
Phil looked anything
but conservative at that point.
And Stan quickly, uh, nixed that idea.
Two years later, we had an opening.
And this time I called Phil,
and I told him how to dress
and how to, uh, talk to Doug.
Doug Collins was our coach.
And I kind of helped Doug think about it,
and we hired Phil.
Under Doug Collins,
one of the assistant coaches
was Tex Winter.
Jerry Krause had the idea
that Tex was gonna be a mentor.
Doug was gonna follow the things
that he would teach as a coach.
When I took this job 11 years ago,
the first person we hired was Tex Winter.
He's a brilliant man.
The finest offensive mind in basketball.
Triangle is formed between...
Forward Two, Guard One,
who has now moved to the corner,
and Center Five,
who forms the apex of the triangle.
He had a system
called "the triangle."
Jerry said, "I've been listening
to his basketball philosophy for years.
He's got the kind of philosophy
I'd like to see happen with this team."
Doug's philosophy was different.
Doug would have these plays that always
ended up with Michael Jordan
being the recipient of the score.
Tex was always like,
"There's a way of playing this game
that's different than that."
Tex Winter... would berate Doug about,
"You should institute the triangle."
Doug would not hear of it.
Doug finally had heard it enough and said,
"I'm tired of hearing that,"
and then the argument escalated a bit,
and Tex Winter was banned from the bench.
He wasn't coaching on the floor anymore.
He was sitting in the corner,
taking notes about the practice.
Jerry Krause was really unhappy with that.
During that period of time,
Krause made the decision that I should
work together with Tex.
Phil was picking the brains of
the best basketball man I've ever known,
and I was watching it.
And I thought, you know what?
This is getting more and more interesting
all the time.
Is there anything that you missed?
You still got a bit more room.
I could've done
another tier here, Mike.
Mike, we want you to deny the ball,
so they can't throw the ball
in easy to the blocks.
So, big man, if your man clears,
you must tell Michael
that he's alone out there
so he doesn't get naked
on a back-door situation.
Midway through my second year,
I felt Phil could be the coach.
- What gave you that sense?
- Just sense.
- You don't want to go into the details?
- It's just feeling.
Jerry wanted to talk to me,
so I go in and talk.
He says, "I may have to do something
that's gonna rock this... franchise."
I said, "What?" He says,
"I'm gonna have to fire Doug Collins."
I said, "It's gonna be some fuckin' balls",
fire a guy that just took us
to the Eastern Conference Final."
If you're getting ready for work now,
you're probably not Doug Collins.
The Bulls head coach was fired
in a surprise move yesterday.
I have the worst-kept secret in town
sitting next to me.
You guys, as usual, got us on that one.
For the last two years,
Phil Jackson has been a very integral part
of this organization.
He's now ready to be a head coach.
Welcome, coach.
Thanks, Jerry.
Have you talked to
Michael Jordan yet?
- Yes, I have.
- What'd he say?
"Congratulations!
Let's go win a championship."
Phil took over and just
had a different approach.
Doug's approach was
more catered to Michael,
and Phil's approach was more catered
to the team.
I wasn't a Phil Jackson fan,
you know, when he first came in,
because he was coming in
to take the ball out of my hands.
Doug put the ball in my hands.
Tex Winter, his right-hand man,
had sold him on an offense
that he believed
would get us out of this
one-on-one type of basketball.
The triangle offense is set
so that there's a key pass
that creates motion.
Then there's 33 different types of options
that come out of that single pass.
Players can do spontaneous,
creative things using their strengths.
Everybody has an opportunity
to touch the ball
but I didn't want Bill Cartwright
to have the ball with five seconds left.
Bounce into Cartwright,
shoots over Rollins. Nope.
That's not equal-opportunity offense.
That's fucking bullshit.
Oh, my!
Michael Jordan has 54 points!
Sixty points for Jordan!
Sixty-nine points for Michael Jordan.
There was so many times
Tex used to yell at me, saying,
"Move the ball. Move the ball."
He says, "No 'I' in team."
I said, "There's an 'I' in win."
I met Michael and I told him
what we were gonna do.
"Obviously, you've scored 37,
38 points a game the last couple years."
I don't anticipate you're going to be
the scoring champion in the league.
The spotlight's on the ball and if you're
always the guy that's gonna have the ball,
teams can generate a defense against that,
"which happened with the Pistons
the last couple years."
He said, "I'm not worried about you",
but we gotta find a way
to make everybody else better.
"We gotta create other threats."
I came in the game as being a point guard,
but my growth sort of, uh,
grew me into a small forward.
The triangle offense allowed me
to be more of what I wanted to be.
Scottie Pippen's turnaround!
Scottie kinda developed that new position
called the point forward.
Instead of being in Michael's shadow,
Scottie was starting to blossom
as one of the top players in the NBA.
Beautiful move by Scottie!
Making his All-Star debut
from the Chicago Bulls, Scottie Pippen.
Michael Jordan is making
an adjustment to this new philosophy,
which tries to relieve him
of the offensive burden.
He realized that him playing
and just scoring 30 points
wasn't going to win
the last game of the season.
I'm not gonna be the type of person
who's very hungry to lead the league
in scoring once again,
or to chase individual accolades.
He made a conscious effort to say,
"No individual is gonna be the team."
Now, I'm more or less
geared towards team success.
That's a special thing to have happen,
when the largest icon
that the NBA's ever had understands that,
"I don't have to have the ball
in my hands all the time."
With the triangle offense, certainly,
it needed some little time to adjust,
for everyone to adjust to it
at their own pace,
and it took us about a year or so,
as a team, to do it.
But by the 1990 playoffs, we all felt that
we were ready to beat the Detroit Pistons.
The hurdle that comes up
now is the big one.
And we know that the challenge
of the Detroit Pistons is immense.
It's one that we've been
waiting for all season long.
Chicago was the only team to beat
the Pistons in the playoffs last year
and they're a deeper
and more balanced team this time around.
I felt like we were
in a position to win, you know.
And we pushed them to a game seven
in their building.
That's the Scottie
migraine game, right?
Yeah.
The defending
world champions, the Detroit Pistons,
extended to a seventh game.
And 21,500 are gathered here
for a very special afternoon.
When I got up that morning
and went down for breakfast,
I had a headache.
I started feeling like
I wanted to throw up.
I went to the arena,
did my regular routine warming up,
and I was just, like, blind.
I couldn't see.
Game seven... Let's go!
- You know what time it is.
- Go 110%.
Know what time it is.
We got Scottie and BJ?
- Yeah.
- You know we gotta go.
- This is it.
- Let's go.
All in.
- All out.
- No doubt.
We worked all season for this, guys.
Let's play hard.
Leave it all on the floor.
Game seven from the Palace.
Piston ball.
As the game started,
I couldn't focus.
Everything was blurry,
I was seeing double, black, and I just...
I couldn't get my eyesight.
Pippen is one and five
in the field.
One and six.
I told 'em, "I can't see,"
and I was taken out of the game.
He said he had a migraine. I don't...
I can't argue the point
that he had a migraine.
It was just one of those things that,
you know, it was so unfortunate.
When you can't see,
you're seeing double, and want to vomit,
and you gotta play
against Dennis Rodman?
Pippen passes inside,
Laimbeer knocks it away.
4:10 to go. Here's Isiah.
The players on the Bulls
are playing from desperation.
Guys are trying to do more
than they're capable of doing,
and that includes Michael Jordan.
The lead is 20.
The Detroit Pistons will meet
the Portland Trail Blazers
in a best of seven,
beginning Tuesday night on CBS.
Michael Jordan had 31,
and he's with Pat O'Brien.
Mike... Michael Jordan here,
in the midst of the celebration.
What are you saying to the other players?
All you can do is wish them good luck.
We fought hard. They were the better team.
We wanna be where they are.
We still gotta wait our turn,
and try to improve our team.
They were the better team
and played better today.
We were sitting
in the locker room after the game,
and nothing was said.
Everyone just sat there for a moment.
We had a chance to beat 'em.
We just didn't respond.
We got to that hill,
we almost looked over the hill.
I was devastated.
I was absolutely devastated.
I cried on the bus.
My father came on and said,
"Look, it's just one game.
Bounce back, come back next year."
I remember losing to the Pistons.
Damn Pistons.
Um...
That shit hurt.
You couldn't deny
that they were a great team.
We had to either change
something about ourself,
or we weren't gonna beat them.
Can't touch this!
- Congratulations!
- Thanks, Pat!
After that game,
instead of us all going on vacation,
we all showed up
and we started working out.
Everybody, starting with Michael, changed.
Before the Pistons,
Michael didn't weight train.
He didn't go in much
for strength training.
After the Pistons
beat the shit out of him,
he finally decided,
"I gotta put some muscle on."
I was getting
brutally beaten up.
And I want to administer pain.
I wanted to start fighting back.
It's difficult to add muscle
for an athlete that's
constantly burning calories,
running up and down all the time.
We started at 200.
We added five pounds
until he got to 215.
When did you decide to build it?
I put it in just to get myself physically
strong enough to go against Detroit.
I was a slim and skinny kid.
But now, after I put on a couple pounds,
I can throw my weight around
a little more.
I would give him
a certain amount of reps to do.
He would never stop at that number.
If I asked for six,
I know he was gonna do 12.
He got to the point where he was like,
"Instead of them dishing it to me,
I'm gonna dish it back to them."
One of the criticisms has been
that Jordan is a great player,
but he can't lead his teammates
to a championship.
He can't make them better players.
You were known at that time
as the guy
who was a spectacular performer,
but not the winner
that Magic and Larry were.
Which ate at me.
It did. It did.
My energy started
to gear towards my teammates,
and pushing them to excel.
Michael forced the hand
of a lot of the players
to really dedicate themselves
to off-season training.
"Okay, we're gonna spend the summer
dedicated to this proposition,
that we're not gonna be runners-up.
We're gonna be champions."
Michael was on us.
No mistakes allowed.
Man, I see a screaming devil.
You make a mistake,
he's gonna scream at you,
he's gonna belittle you.
He demands almost perfection.
Man, when you see your leader
working extremely hard in practice,
you feel like, "Oh, man, if I don't
give it my all, I shouldn't be here."
He taught me how to stay in the gym.
And he spent a lot of time starting
to build the confidence that I needed.
Pippen became my focal point.
More than any other player,
Scottie benefited from
playing with Michael Jordan...
because Scottie had this
raw athletic ability.
Two-hand dunk by Pippen!
What he didn't have was
what Michael brought every day,
which was the drive to be the very best,
every single day.
The mental focus of the game.
Dumars, see I gotta help,
I gotta give him a bump...
So I'm gonna be a step slow.
I'll go to yours.
The thing about Pip is, you know,
you stand next to him,
you make him stronger.
All the Detroit times
when Rodman wanted to pick on him,
he needed someone there
to stand there and say,
"I'll fight with you, just fight."
Scottie and I bonded because he felt,
okay, he has someone that he can count on.
And I'm looking at, "Okay, I got someone
who I can actually count on."
And then Horace came right behind that.
During the time that the Pistons
reigned over us,
every time they'd do something to us,
we would complain to the referee
or try to go back at them.
Horace used to get beaten up.
He got Grant
with an elbow in the side...
And he would come back whining.
And I'd say, "Don't fucking whine."
Don't let 'em see you whine.
That's when they know they got you."
With them being more
mentally dominant than we were,
they knew, soon as we start complaining,
they had us. And they did.
Grant has got
to realize this game is not over.
You can't give
the world champions anything.
Just be strong.
We gonna beat these bullies.
In '91,
the Bulls were determined
to be the tougher team.
The pain of losing to Detroit,
again, the year before,
brought a fury into that season
that they had not had.
Jordan knocks the ball
out of bounds.
No, he didn't! He saved it and played...
What a spectacular defensive play
by Jordan!
A pass stolen by Jordan...
Being around Michael every day
like that, it just brought it out of us.
Scottie evolved, Horace evolved,
I evolved.
It was a great feeling.
We had matured in a lot of ways,
physically, mentally.
Jordan dribbles out,
a hook pass to Pippen for the dunk.
It was time for us to become
the top team in the game.
And now, the starting lineup
for your Chicago Bulls...
Everybody in Chicago
hated the Pistons.
This was personal.
Anybody says it wasn't personal,
it was personal.
Game one of the best of seven.
I didn't wanna deal with
my relatives in Detroit during that time.
I didn't wanna go stay with them.
My first cousins,
"Yeah, whatever. We don't like you
right now." They didn't like us.
The opening tip. Game one.
Our character was challenged
the last two years and we failed.
But that third year,
we put them in our rearview mirror.
Bill Laimbeer.
Jordan with the steal.
Jordan!
He'll go to the foul line.
Jordan is not gonna
back down from anyone right now.
He's the leader and understands
what to expect during the series.
He's gonna hold his ground,
make a statement.
I thought we were
a good enough team
to at least make the series
a little bit more competitive.
And we didn't.
Pippen against Vinnie
up the right side to the baseline.
Fills it up, and a foul!
All right, Ahmad,
game four of the best of seven.
Nice fake by Jordan... Goes to the scoop!
Pippen...
Oh! Beautiful move by...
Scottie Pippen off to a fast start.
He has ten points.
You know something's coming.
This team is desperate.
They've done everything they can.
Now, they're really desperate.
Armstrong and Craig Hodges
in the back court.
Cliff Levingston, Bill Cartwright
and Scottie Pippen up for...
A beautiful back court pass for Pippen!
And he is walloped.
And that will be a flagrant foul.
And it's getting
very, very tough out there.
Dennis Rodman pushed Scottie,
and could have injured him
pretty severely.
It was clearly, um, a flagrant foul.
That's a clear-cut
cheap shot, no question. Clear cut.
Scottie Pippen was racked up.
When Pippen didn't respond
to that abuse...
there was nothing
they could do to beat us then.
Scottie was unshakable,
didn't even want a Band-Aid.
When we saw that, it was over.
You know, it was like, "Okay, it's a foul."
Um, let's go ahead and finish
kicking their ass and you know..."
And put 'em out of their misery.
Jordan rebounds. He has Pippen.
The Chicago Bulls
about to put the Pistons away in four...
And Pippen able to feed it off to Jordan!
Chuck is now clearing the bench.
Miller Genuine Draft
player of the game,
Scottie Pippen of the Chicago Bulls.
We were tasting victory over
a team that just kicked your butt
for the last three or four years.
I mean, the gratification...
You truly cannot put it into words.
It is all over.
That was the only time
that I think I'd ever been swept, um...
in a series. I was normally the one
doing the sweeping.
Their time had arrived and ours was over.
As we're coming out of the game,
Laimbeer said, "You know..."
we're not shaking their hands.
"This is how we're leaving."
The Pistons wasting no time
in getting outta here,
as they are headed off...
We didn't shake hands.
We just walked off the court.
"Fuck you guys.
Thank you for kicking our ass."
They left the bench
although there's seven seconds remaining.
The Pistons just left.
I think
it was difficult for them
because they were two-time champions.
But, you know,
there certainly has to be some respect.
Straight up bitches.
That's what
they walked off like.
"Yeah, we just kicked your ass.
Go ahead and go."
Detroit had a similar thing with Boston
that we had with them.
They had to overcome Boston, and they did.
I still remember...
it was the first time that, uh...
Detroit beat them,
and I can see Kevin McHale
coming out to half court
and shaking hands, things like that.
No.
Adrian Dantley
was shooting a free throw
and the Boston Celtics
were walking off during the game.
And I grab McHale,
and then he stopped
as he was walking off the floor.
That's how they left the floor.
And to us, that was okay.
Knowing what we know now,
and the aftermath of what took place,
I think we would have stopped
and said, "Hey, congratulate..."
like they do now.
"Hey, congratulate... ""Love ya, man!"
"Hey, congratulations..."
We would have did it.
Of course, we would have done it.
But during that period of time,
that's just not how it was passed.
When you lost, you left the floor.
That was it.
This is Isiah,
talking about the walk-off.
Well, I know it's all bullshit.
Whatever he says now,
you know it wasn't his true actions then.
He's had time enough to think about it.
Or the reaction of the public
that's changed his perspective of it.
You can show me
anything you want.
There's no way you can convince me
he wasn't an asshole.
Knowing what we know now,
and the aftermath of what took place...
But during that period of time,
that's just not how it was passed.
It just... Just wasn't.
You can go back
and look at any of those old games,
or whatever, when you lost,
you left the floor.
All you gotta do is you go back
to us losing in game seven.
I shook everybody hand.
Two years in a row.
We shook their hands when they beat us.
There's a certain respect to the game
that we paid to them.
That's sportsmanship,
no matter how much it hurts.
And believe me, it fucking hurt.
But they didn't have to shake our hands.
We knew we whooped their ass already.
We'd gotten past them
and that was the most...
To me, that was better than,
in some ways, winning a championship.
Sweep! Sweep! Sweep! Sweep! Sweep! Sweep!
Go, Jerry! Go, Jerry! Go, Jerry!
Go sit down, Jerry!
In sports,
the stage is set for the Air-Magic show
in the NBA Finals.
Starting Sunday, it'll be Michael Jordan
and the Chicago Bulls
against Magic Johnson and the LA Lakers.
When you're a competitor,
you want to play against the best.
I played against Larry,
and I've always wanted
to play against Michael.
Up until that point,
there was a stigma that...
"Michael Jordan only wins scoring titles,
never championships."
That was my chance
to get in the category
of Larry Bird and Magic Johnson.
I guess this is something that
I've been waiting for.
It's the team that's won it the most,
in the time I've been in the league...
Even though they may have that experience,
we have that hunger.
The NBA is a league of stars,
and none shine brighter
than Magic Johnson and Michael Jordan.
While much has been said
about their respective teams,
nothing has been more anticipated
than their individual match-up.
We're set
for the start of game one.
The opening tip
controlled by the LA Lakers,
as Magic Johnson moves across,
against Michael Jordan.
You know, we were nervous.
It's our first time,
and we didn't even play well.
And now,
Magic got it out for Worthy...
What a play! Magic Johnson...
Sam Perkins
hits a three at the end.
He's got it!
And the Bulls lose game one.
Everybody, including me, goes,
"Lakers are gonna win this thing."
They beat us on our home court,
but in our minds,
we had a chance to beat them,
and we didn't even play good.
We were looking forward to game two.
We are set for game two
of the NBA Finals.
So, game two, Jordan goes nuts.
Over Scott.
Michael Jordan on fire.
He's got it. Twelve straight field goals
for Michael Jordan!
Look away, to Levingston... Jordan...
Oh! A spectacular move by Michael Jordan!
That's 13 consecutive field goals!
The change
of putting Pippen on Magic Johnson
rather than Michael Jordan...
Johnson's the greatest
point guard I've ever seen,
and Scottie Pippen was picking
Magic Johnson up full court.
Nobody did that.
Scottie accepted that challenge
and I knew what Scottie was gonna do.
I see it in practice all the time.
He gets up in your face
and he harasses you and...
Pip never let him get started.
The crowd reacts
to Scottie Pippen
who did a tremendous job
in defending against Magic...
Once we did that in game two,
we never looked back.
Jordan around Divac.
Chicago Bulls take a 2-1 lead
in the best of seven.
And Teagle now one for six,
and it leads to this!
The Chicago Bulls come away
with a resounding victory.
In command
virtually all the way.
And it's this simple,
the Lakers have to win three in a row.
Game five, moments away.
Hello, I'm Bob Costas.
This is the Larry O'Brien Trophy.
All indications are that by evening's end,
it'll be in the possession
of the Chicago Bulls.
Game five was a great back-and-forth,
back-and-forth game.
Magic fires for Smith...
Good recovery...
It counts!
Lakers with a one-point lead.
Jordan with a gorgeous move.
The Bulls lead it by three.
Magic...
Drops it off...
After three, the Bulls and the Lakers
are tied at 80.
So, the fourth quarter,
it's a precarious lead.
So, during a timeout, Phil asks Michael,
"MJ, who's open?" And he goes, "Paxson."
He goes, "Then get him the ball."
You don't have to shoot that shot.
Run around to the point.
John's open right there.
You can still create.
All right?
He's hitting shots.
Phil said, you know, forcefully,
"Paxson is open, get him the ball."
And I started looking for Paxson.
Everybody in the world's expecting Jordan
to force something through a double team.
He doesn't do it. He draws and dishes.
Paxson open again...
He trusts his teammate to make the shot.
Once Pax hits that first shot,
"Oh, okay. Fine.
Let me do this again.
Penetrate, find Pax."
And he kept hitting 'em, kept hitting 'em.
Again! Eighteen for Paxson!
That was exactly what Phil was trying
to get Michael to understand
and believe in over the couple years,
is that,
"These other guys can help you out."
It is a two-point lead
for Chicago.
Paxson!
Yes! John Paxson again!
The Chicago Bulls have won
their first-ever NBA championship!
You did it the right way.
You did it the right way.
I love you.
- Scottie...
- Yes!
When you get to that finish line
and you know that you won...
all those emotions
that you wrapped up into,
you can just let go.
I'm so happy.
Everybody knows...
Has the picture in their mind of
when we beat Cleveland on that last shot
and he's punching the air,
he's all excited.
That's who we knew,
the competitive Michael Jordan.
The win-at-all-costs Michael Jordan.
Sometimes we'd question
whether he was human,
whether he had feelings.
A guy that was totally focused
on one thing and one thing only.
The only emotion
we had ever seen out of him
was anger or frustration.
We were literally stunned
to see those emotions.
Seven-year struggle.
Seven-year struggle.
And when they beat us, well,
we met in between both locker rooms,
and he put his arms...
and started crying.
He was so happy that he had won,
that he busted through.
That was a special moment
for him and myself.
It's a beautiful feeling.
If you're gonna lose, you lose to them.
I'm going to lose to Michael.
And that... That's how...
how it should be.
At last, I fit somewhere in
the category of Larry Bird
and Magic Johnson.
Shit! C'mon, drop my money down.
You said I can't show nobody
what I give you.
No. We're here. Don't show it to anybody.
Let me show it.
Yeah.
Denver. Denver.
How 'bout them Broncos?
Hey! Hey! Cheesehead!
Security. Security.
This man never gets sleep.
- Dennis Rodman... Junior.
- Come on.
Hey, hey, don't say it on camera.
He never gets his sleep. Single man.
Thinks he can hang out all night.
Hey, hey, don't put that on tape.
Don't put that on... Hey, M.
- If he committed to one girl...
- M...
- M, come on.
- It's a lie.
It's a lie, he's out every night.
Do not put this on tape right here.
- Why not? Get some sleep, man!
- That's messed up.
I get a whole lot of sleep.
- You've got a hangover this morning.
- No, I... M.
My mom and dad are gonna watch this, M.
Mom and dad, he's an alcoholic.
Hey.
Hey, hey, Phil, he can't work
for the media and be on this plane.
Right here, see him?
The highest-paid media guy in the world.
Come on, Ahmad makes more than me.
No. He wishes, though.
He wishes he does. Believe me.
The FC finally won.
It's actually kind of like a sign
of times are changing.
Might be changing the NBA, too.
While the Bulls
were on the road,
their GM took his shot back home.
Jerry Krause again
made his plans for next season very clear.
Coach Jackson won't be back.
And with Michael Jordan on record
as saying he won't play
for anyone other than Jackson,
Krause told the Chicago Tribune,
"If Michael chooses to leave
because there is another coach here,"
then it's his choice, not ours.
We would love to have Michael back.
But Michael is going to have to play
for someone else.
"It isn't going to be Phil."
If Phil's not back,
then certainly I'm not back.
So, I mean, you know, it doesn't leave me
with any other choices,
but not to play next year.
There's no room at all for you coming back
under any other circumstances?
No. None. None at all.
The Bulls
were dominating the east.
The east didn't seem to be a question.
The question was out west
with the team that they had met
in the finals the year before, Utah.
Now, keep in mind,
this was probably a finals preview.
This is the litmus test.
Good evening.
Welcome to the Delta Center.
The thing that's really surprising
is the timing of that story
by Jerry Krause.
Yeah, Dick, unfortunately,
it's very cold. It's sad.
And if you really think about this,
performance and loyalty,
by the coaches and players,
are being just thrown out the window.
And the Bulls
starting out solidly, lead 8-2.
Here's Rodman,
after Pippen got the loose ball,
and Jordan hits the open shot!
The Bulls are doing it all.
It has been all Bulls...
Great pass from Longley
to a cutting Scottie Pippen.
And it's a 47-24 lead.
The Chicago Bulls
are running the Jazz wild
on the Jazz home court.
Loose ball, Karl Malone...
Dennis... There it is.
Down goes Malone and Rodman.
A double foul will be called.
You can see that this could
ignite something here that we don't need.
The Jazz with a 7-0 run
of their own here.
It's an eight-point game,
believe it or not.
This is as close as the Jazz have come.
Malone over Pippen, he's got it.
He's got it, he's right.
- He's un...
- Yeah. Unstoppable.
Yes! And the Jazz have come back big!
Standing ovation for the Jazz,
who had to fight way back in this game.
Utah Jazz ending up
sweeping the Chicago Bulls this year,
winning here in Salt Lake City.
But Jerry Krause, the big question is,
"Why now, come out
with a statement like this,
at the All-Star break?"
It's something for after the season.
I think it's just
a bad case of judgment on his part.
This looks like
a reality check for everybody.
Is this the end of the Bulls
as we know them?