give me a break, quitten & MJ

Yeah, right. And you would have won those two championships if Jordan wasn't playing baseball.

Oh, and Jordan only retired because his buddy Jackson wasn't going to be coach? That's cool -- MJ would rather quit than accept the new challenge of proving he could win with a new coach ... Think Magic or Larry would have quit if their coaches left? Oh wait, their coaches did leave, and neither of them quit...

http://sports.yahoo.com/nba/news/ap/20001216/ap-pippen-bulls.html





Pippen agrees with Jordan: Bulls would still be champs

December 16, 2000


CHICAGO (AP) -- Scottie Pippen agrees with former teammate Michael Jordan: If the Chicago Bulls had kept their nucleus together, they would be playing for their ninth NBA title.

Jordan, now the general manager of the Washington Wizards, was quoted in Friday's Chicago Sun-Times, saying that if the Bulls hadn't broken up their core of him, Pippen and coach Phil Jackson, ``we'd still be defending champions.''

``I second that,'' Pippen said. ``We were a great team. I mean, it's hard for someone to compliment himself as being a part of a great team, but we were a great team. We had great role players and guys who worked hard. We came with it every night for 82 games and then took it into the playoffs.''

Pippen is having his worst season statistically since his rookie season with the Bulls in 1987-88, when he averaged 7.9 points. He is averaging 8.8 points for the Portland Trail Blazers, who are tied for first place in the Pacific Division with Sacramento.

After the Bulls won their sixth title in eight years, 1998, owner Jerry Reinsdorf and general manager Jerry Krause decided to scrap the expensive lineup and rebuild. Jordan retired, Pippen went to Houston and Jackson sat out a season before taking over as coach of the Lakers and winning another title.

Pippen, traded to Portland last year after one contentious season with the Rockets, said it was difficult leaving Chicago after 11 successful seasons.

``I always think about it -- wanting to have played for one team in one city and finished my career there,'' he said. ``There's not much I can change about it now. What's happened has happened, and I can't bring it back.''

Jordan said that he did not intend to retire, but knew the rift between Reinsdorf and Jackson was irreparable.

``I can't point any fingers at anyone,'' Pippen said. ``We kind of knew that certain individuals weren't going to be there. Phil and Jerry weren't getting along, so Michael and myself, we didn't really feel very comfortable trying to start over and start with a new coach.''



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FYI -- Here's the Chicago Sun-Times story:

Jordan talks about regret, frustration

December 15, 2000

BY JAY MARIOTTI SUN-TIMES COLUMNIST


WASHINGTON--Just so everyone knows, just so the revisionist historians remember properly, Michael Jordan never wanted to stop playing basketball. He thoroughly believes that if peace were in the air, the Jerrys weren't dissing Phil Jackson and everyone had been paid what they deserved, the Bulls would be pursuing their ninth championship this season.

Title IX, the T-shirts would say.

"We'd still be the defending champions," Jordan said, sounding wistful as his 38th birthday nears and wrinkles begin to crinkle his face. "I was really looking forward to continuing to play. If Phil and Scottie Pippen would have been there, I'd still be playing. That's how we could have kept the streak going. Maybe we wouldn't be as successful during the course of the year, but when the time came and things were on the line, we'd have been fine the last two years. Sure, I would have loved to keep playing."

And just so everyone knows, just so the United Center spin doctors can't Jerry-rig this one, Jordan is confused and hurt that the Bulls never offered him a high-level executive role and a piece of ownership after the dynasty was dismantled. If it seems absurd why a team would let the greatest resource in basketball history leave Chicago and become the management face of the hopelessly bedraggled Washington Wizards, the same thoughts continue to occupy Jordan.

"In all honesty, I've got to ask that question myself," he said. "I'm puzzled. I'm not mad, but I'm puzzled that Chicago never even once called me about any type of arrangement. These deals of ownership started coming to me, starting with Charlotte, and the most puzzling thing is that for the next year, people were bringing me deals--Vancouver and the St. Louis interest that was involved awhile, and Milwaukee right up the street--and still Chicago never called. Not that I would have taken it, but it was never on the table. I would have at least liked to consider it."

All it would have taken was, what, the title of team president? A respectable piece of the big, beautiful financial pie that he basically baked for 13 years on Madison Street? The right to make personnel decisions and stuff Jerry Krause in the broom closet when marquee free agents come to town every summer?

"Anything compatible to what I have here, I would have taken a good look at it," he said this week from his power seat at the MCI Center. "By all means, the Bulls would have had the advantage over any other situation because of where I live and my participation in the organization. I would have loved to know what they would have put on the table. They would have had a lot of things weighed upon their proposal greater than anything else coming outside the state."

Alas, those are only regrets now, remnants of the most unnecessary, ego-driven and foolish breakup in American sports history. Isn't it sad how Jordan and the Bulls, once the most popular and successful team in all the world, have divorced and settled into similar states of misery and futility? Together, they could have kept winning championships, kept Chicago in euphoria and kept the now-struggling NBA in healthy condition. Instead, a day doesn't pass when Jordan isn't boiling in frustration, throwing objects against his office wall and chewing out the league's second-worst team, while his old team remains equally pathetic, worst in the league. He wonders, all the time, why such a wonderful thing had to end in such pain and rancor.

The cutthroat competitor, the superhero with the dangling tongue and the inferno eyes, isn't handling failure well. It has reached the point where Jordan sometimes can't watch the Wizards in his arena suite, where the few thousand fans who show up frequently are booing. He has taken to staying in his office, where he can suffer alone while watching on his flat-screen TV. Last week, he marched downstairs after the Wizards blew a 19-point fourth-quarter lead to the Clippers--absorb that for a moment--and let loose with a tirade that briefly snapped D.C. out of its Bush-Gore daze. Among other nasty missiles, he called his players "a disgrace to the fans in Washington" and suggested "we're wasting our energy in trying to turn this around." They haven't won a game since, falling to 4-18. At the moment, the six trophies feel like they were won on another planet.

"I've never been this frustrated," Jordan said. "Never. It's a totally new experience for me. I haven't been like this in a long time, since I had a fight in practice with Steve Kerr. Instead of playing to win, these guys play not to lose. They are totally scared, and it's embarrassing to sit there and watch the game. I understand why the fans boo. You should see me. I throw [bleep] at the TV, I'm cussing at the TV. I'm not handling it well at all.

"The problem is, I expect more from them, but they don't expect anything from themselves. That's pretty lopsided. I have to change the mentality of some of these players, like it was in Chicago when I first started. A lot of guys assume every game is a loss without going out and pushing themselves, doing extra work and the things the winners do. They take the short cut, the losers' mentality."

Jordan knew what was coming next from his interrogator. Earlier this week, 35-year-old Mario Lemieux, owner of the Pittsburgh Penguins, confirmed he was coming out of retirement to play hockey. Lemieux even called Jordan, his golf buddy and companion at last year's Ryder Cup, and consulted with him before the news went public. Sooooooooooo, not to disrupt the Hollywood ending to the Hollywood sports career back in Salt Lake City, but ...

"No, I'm not coming back," Jordan said. "I'm up to 230 and I have a gut. Really, I do."

Come on. You say you still would be winning championships. As a part-owner, you have empty seats that need bodies. The Wizards are dying, the NBA is dying. The politicos in Washington are calling you a fraud, saying you're rarely in town and running the Wizards from the North Shore. Couldn't you resurrect a team, revive a league and titillate a country by playing again, if even for a year? Wouldn't you remind Alex Rodriguez, Tiger Woods and all the NBA punks that it's still your world and they are mere satellites?

"Nope. It's not happening," said Jordan, who has practiced only once with the Wizards this season. "I have my days of `What if?' That's just natural, especially with the young talent out there and the success they have, from the Kobe Bryants to the Vince Carters. Sure, I have `What if?' questions with myself. But nothing to the point that drives me to getting in shape and playing basketball again. I've entered another walk of life. I'm content with that.

"Besides, I wouldn't want to play outside of Chicago. To me, that is the loyalty I have toward Chicago fans. If I played somewhere else, they should boo me. I would never want to play outside Chicago for any reason. The fans know where my loyalty lies. It will always be in Chicago because of the opportunity the city provided me. I just work elsewhere, and that's not really and truly by my choice because I didn't have any alternative."

Notice how he talks about the Chicago fans, not the Chicago Bulls. He has no compassion for the organization but aches for the people who drowned out public-address announcer Ray Clay and roared his name. "I feel sympathy for the fans having to go through that process," Jordan said. "But the organization? That's something they chose to go through. They had a lot of opportunities to keep the team together. They've made a lot of financial gain since then from a business standpoint, but from a fan's standpoint, it's tough to go from a championship to a lottery. That's what I feel bad about and feel sorry for."

He continues to remain friendly with chairman Jerry Reinsdorf and says he has "no animosity toward him." But Jordan says he didn't realize during the breakup that Jackson had problems with Reinsdorf that linger to this day, in part because of caustic comments made about the Jerrys by Jackson's agent, Todd Musburger. "I didn't realize Phil was fed up with the relationship between he and Jerry [Reinsdorf]," Jordan said. "That led a lot to the dismantling of the team, too."

Eventually, Jordan knows he has to move on and detach himself from the bitter past. After all, he has his own problems. It has reached the absurd point where Jordan actually is calling his nemesis, Krause, and trying to make a deal that might free the Wizards of a paralyzed salary cap. Wouldn't Jordan love to fleece The Sleuth, make him take Juwan Howard's albatross contract? Wouldn't he like to have Elton Brand, Marcus Fizer?

"We have an interest in some of his players," Jordan said. "He's evaluating some of the things I have suggested to him. It's not awkward talking with him. I'm willing to put business first and forget about what happened in the past. I hope he is, too. I don't want him to sit there and hold grudges if he thinks one of our players can help his team. Let's do business."

Such is the measure of his desperation. Committed to honoring his five-year contract--"I'll stick it out," he said--Jordan is ready to "exercise some options" on salary-bloated, past-tense veterans (see Rod Strickland and injured Mitch Richmond) and start emphasizing young players like Richard Hamilton, Felipe Lopez and Jahidi White. Howard, the Chicago native, is a lost cause and a forgotten fourth-quarter option. "These are the players I inherited," Jordan said. "People have to give me a chance to go through a turnover, move some guys out and establish my team."

And to think they thought Michael Jordan, in one swoop, would win a championship, revamp a shaky arena neighborhood and become the second-most important man in Washington. "Some of their expectations of me are unfair," he said. "People tend to forget I'm not in uniform. But when I have an opportunity to hand-pick my own players and draft, then they can judge me. I vowed not to market a losing situation; that's why people don't see me as much as they think they should. No way will I market a team that's 4-18. I'll market a team and be out and about when we're winning. I'm here about 10 days out of every month. I'm in Chicago more. But believe me, me not being here has no bearing on what's happening on the basketball court.

"I still have to prove myself to people. I don't think anyone's willing to give me anything for free. The whole thing--`Michael Jordan's working here in Washington'--has worn off because we're 4-18. That leads to skepticism that I can't turn it around. But I'm a competitor. I feel I can. The only way I can go is up. I can't go any [bleeping] lower."

As part of his deal with Ted Leonsis and Lincoln Holdings, Jordan actually owns a larger piece of the NHL's Washington Capitals than the Wizards. "You know, they may have a chance to get a ring before I do," he said, laughing a bit too long to think he enjoys that prospect. To tell you how dismal the Wizards are, principal team owner Abe Pollin--this was not Jordan's idea--brought in motivational speaker Anthony Robbins to pep up the troops. "To me, no speaker should have to motivate you," said rookie forward Michael Smith, whom Jordan selected in the second round. "I motivate myself every day." The next night, the Wizards were smoked by Philadelphia.

Jordan is cognizant of the rich kingdom he helped create in sports, the one that yields $252 million for Rodriguez. Once, he was the one demanding money from Reinsdorf. Now, he's an owner. Where does he side now? "That's a lot of money," he said of the A-Rod deal, "but I'm always going to be pro-player. If an owner wants to pay him, pay him. Everyone says it's going to affect the rest of the baseball market, but I can't fault a guy who pays him $25 million. It's not going to hurt that owner, so why should it hurt anybody else? If a guy comes in and asks the Cubs for $20 million and the Cubs can't afford it, don't pay him. But if you can't compete, quite naturally, teams like that should start getting out of the business."

He also sees the empty seats in NBA arenas, his and others. It's called the Jordan Effect. "I think it's an identity crisis," he said. "A lot of fans don't know these kids who are coming out of high school and leaving college early. Back in the day, people knew us because we stayed in college longer. Now, people won't pay to see these kids they don't know." The mutinous situations within NBA teams don't please him, either, such as the practice boycott by Denver players upset with coach Dan Issel. "If that happened here ... " Jordan huffed. "That's totally disrespectful of the game. When kids start doing that, they're disrespecting the game that's providing them a great opportunity." Translated, they're disrespecting His Airness.

If only a time machine could bring him back to the day, his day. Or, better said, if only the team Michael Jordan turned into a global happening wouldn't have turned its back on him two years ago. On a cold day far, far from Grant Park, he said goodbye and prepared for another game, which became another 20-point loss for the ultimate winner of our lives.

He may survive, but the flat-screen TV won't.



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