The Early Jordan

     The first NBA game that Michael Jordan saw in person, he played in. It was at Chicago Stadium on Friday, October 26, 1984. Early in the second quarter, Jordan was soaring to the hoop for a dunk when the Washington Bullets’ bruising center Jeff Ruland leveled him. Welcome to the NBA. Jordan landed on his neck and lay motionless while the crowd of 13,913 fell silent (as was typical for Bulls games in those days, there were plenty of empty seats). 

     Teammate Orlando Woolridge took off after Ruland, but Jordan himself later said that Ruland had only been trying to block the shot and had no evil intent. Jordan got back to his feet, stayed in the game, and finished with 16 points, seven assists, six rebounds, and four blocked shots. 

     The star of the game was guard Quintin Dailey, who scored 25 points (including 12 in the fourth quarter) to lead the Bulls to a 109-93 win, but when it was over the media people were all clustered around Jordan. “I’ve got a sore neck and a big headache,” he said. “I’m going to bed.” Then he added, “This was a good start for my career.” No one would know for several more years that it was the start of one of the greatest careers in the history of professional sports.

 

MICHAEL JORDAN AS A ROOKIE.

Jordan first came to the attention of basketball fans nationwide as a 19-year-old freshman at the University of North Carolina. In the final game of the 1982 NCAA tournament, the Tarheels—led by James Worthy and Sam Perkins—faced the Georgetown Hoyas and their intimidating seven-foot center Patrick Ewing. The game more than lived up to its advance billing.

North Carolina trailed 32-31 at halftime and 62-61 with less than a minute remaining. Tarheels coach Dean Smith called a timeout with 32 seconds left, and most in the Louisiana Superdome crowd of 61,612 (not to mention the television audience of tens of millions) believed that he would draw up a play for Worthy, an All-American who had three years of pressure games under his belt. Instead, Smith turned to Jordan and said, “Knock it down, Michael.”

Jordan worked himself free to the left of the lane, received a pass from Jimmy Black, and, with 17 seconds on the clock, took a jump shot from 16 feet out. It was perfect. “I was all kinds of nervous,” he said after the game, “but I didn’t have time to think about doubts. I had a feeling it was going to go in.”

The victory was sealed when Georgetown’s Fred Brown, looking out of the corner of his eye, mistook Worthy for a teammate and threw him the ball with five seconds left. North Carolina’s 63-62 win gave Smith his first national championship after several near misses.

 

By 1984, his third year at North Carolina, Jordan was the best college basketball player in the nation. He declared himself eligible for the NBA draft. Bulls general manager Rod Thorn loved him, but whether the Bulls could get him or not would depend on a coin flip. They had lost a coin flip with the Los Angeles Lakers for Magic Johnson five years before and had been in the doldrums ever since. This time the Bulls held the third pick, while the Houston Rockets and Portland Trail Blazers were to flip for the top pick.

The key to the equation for the Bulls was that Portland was committed to the idea of drafting a big man. By consensus, Hakeem Olajuwon of the University of Houston was the top center available. If the Blazers won the flip, they would select Olajuwon, and the Rockets would probably take Jordan. But if the Rockets won the flip, they would select Olajuwon and the Blazers would take the next-best big man, Sam Bowie of Kentucky.

How different the history of basketball would have been if Portland had won that coin flip! For one thing, the Bulls would have six fewer world championships to their credit. But Houston won the flip and drafted Olajuwon, and Portland chose the injury-plagued Bowie, leaving Jordan for the Bulls. “Nobody, including me, knew Jordan was going to turn out to be what he is,” Thorn said later. “We didn’t work him out before the draft, but we interviewed him. He was confident. He felt he was gonna be good. It was obvious that Michael believed in himself, but even he had no idea just how good he was going to be.”

 

Before joining the Bulls, Jordan played for the United States in the 1984 Olympic Games in Los Angeles. Among his teammates were Sam Perkins and Patrick Ewing, who had played with and against him, respectively, in the NCAA championship game of 1982. Although coach Bobby Knight ran a highly structured offense that limited his opportunities to improvise, Jordan nonetheless made an impression with his gravity-defying athleticism. “Sometimes the players get into the habit of just watching Michael,” said Steve Alford, “because he’s usually going to do something you don’t want to miss.” With the Soviet Union and its satellites boycotting the Games, Jordan and the U.S. team easily won the gold medal.

The Olympics made Jordan a household name. When he appeared at the Bulls’ training camp afterwards, head coach Kevin Loughery said to assistant Bill Blair, “Let’s have a scrimmage and see if Michael’s as good as we think he is.”

“Michael took the ball off the rim at one end,” Blair remembered, “and went to the other end. From the top of the key he soared in and dunked it, and Kevin says, ‘We don’t have to scrimmage anymore.’”

“We saw his skills,” said Loughery, “but you’ve got to be around him every day to see the competitiveness of the guy. He was gonna try to take over every situation that was difficult. He was gonna put himself on the line. He enjoyed it.”

 

The Bulls’ veteran center Caldwell Jones became a believer after Jordan had played only a few games. “Michael Jordan is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth,” said Jones.

 As Jordan’s rookie year unfolded, his growing fame rubbed some people the wrong way. In the All-Star Game, Detroit’s Isiah Thomas decided to freeze Jordan out of the Eastern Conference’s offense by simply refusing to pass the ball to him. In 22 minutes in the game, Jordan managed only nine shots. 

The Bulls and Pistons were scheduled to meet in the first game after the break, and by this time the All-Star snub had become a cause celebre. Jordan scored 49 points and pulled down 15 rebounds in leading the Bulls to an overtime victory. Thomas and the Pistons learned a bitter lesson that would be reinforced time and again over the years: it doesn’t pay to make Michael mad.

 

 

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