Tough love

gettinbranded · Jun 14, 2002

"That was a foul," he finally groaned.

There was an electric silence then. Play had stopped. A wide-eyed Jordan walked toward Brown. "You [expletive] flaming f*****," he exploded. "You don't get a foul call on a [expletive] little touch foul, you [expletive]. Get your [expletive] back on the floor and play. I don't want to hear that out of you again. Get your ass back and play, you [expletive]."

Also:

He relished uncertainty, a mind-set that had led him back to basketball and, a little after 11 p.m., past a cacophony of clanging slots and to this table in Pit 21 of the Mohegan Sun Casino, behind a red rope designed to keep $100-a-hand plebes at a distance. He sat alongside young Boston Celtics star Antoine Walker, whom he'd known since Walker was a promising junior high player in Chicago, and across the table from his Wizards teammate Richard Hamilton, with whom his relationship had yet to define itself. Jordan played blackjack into the early morning hours, down half a million dollars at one point, refusing to quit, sinking deeper into the red, trying to recover his losses by succumbing to the sucker's gambit -- raising his bets and playing multiple hands simultaneously.

Around 3 a.m., about the time his prospects looked the dreariest, he called for coffee to replace his drink and lit another cigar. The Jordan party -- bodyguards, teammates, his personal trainer, a few friends -- settled in for what appeared to be an all-nighter. Someone in the party whispered to Jordan that perhaps he ought to get some sleep, particularly as, in only three days, he would be in Madison Square Garden for opening night against the New York Knicks.

Jordan ignored the questions, the veiled admonishments that it was getting late. When he would miss critical shots down the stretch and seem to have nothing in his tank late in the fourth quarter during a narrow loss to the Knicks, it would leave at least one Wizards official wondering what price, if any, he had paid for Casino Night. But no one ever pressed him about such things.

It spoke of the bargain that basketball had made with him long before: Coaches and executives agreed implicitly to take on the burdens of his appetites. They lived with his vicissitudes, realizing that the very restlessness in him that sometimes triggered whispers was the flip side of a bottomless will without rival.
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good read:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A48055-2002Jun13.html

gr8-1 · Jun 14, 2002

Does Jordan hate gays or something?

AstroRocket · Jun 15, 2002

And any loss was a shaming for him. "Cards," he called, and a dealer in Pit 21 flicked out three more hands to him -- three more busts, as it turned out, at about 10 grand a hand. He was hemorrhaging cash and chips now. He raised the stakes, playing $15,000 hands, drinking more coffee, finally turning around the game near 4 a.m, drawing about even.

By breakfast he was moving ahead, winning three hands at a time over and over, going up about $600,000, exultant, manic now. Wanting his victory proclaimed, he began happily trash-talking, "Give me those cards, give me those damn cards. . . . You're gonna have to rob a register to pay me" -- not quitting until about 8 a.m., when he walked toward an exit of the Mohegan Sun with arms raised, as if he'd won Game 7 of a playoff series. Chattering. Woofing. Sleepless in Uncasville.
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In Chicago, the day after a January game there against the Bulls, the Wizards had just finished a practice at Grover's gym when Hamilton accepted Jordan's challenge to a shooting competition while the team bus waited for them. The competition dragged on. Ten, 15, 20 minutes. No player but Jordan would have dared to keep a team bus waiting. On this day, the contest involved shooting from midcourt. Hamilton went up several hundred dollars early, happily yelling, while the attendants, fetching balls, kept glancing at watches. Someone finally said: "Probably time to get going, Michael."

No, he said coolly.

Finally, Jordan started finding his range and hit eight of his last 13 shots to win more than $1,000 off the day's prey, now at last wrapping up. He grinned and whooped -- "coo, coo, coo" -- a signal that he had fleeced another pigeon, then pointed in a gesture of amused supremacy at the defeated Hamilton, who, turning his back, quietly walked to the back of the gym to retrieve his sweats, while a delighted Jordan fitted an earring into his left lobe and kept teasing. Hamilton never stopped walking. Jordan stared at Hamilton's back, calling out, "Rip, we'll do it again."
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Lucky, can't lose b*stard.

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