Free The Jordan Rules by Sam Smith

in the first minute of the final conference playoff game in 1989. Were he and his buddy, Grant, serious enough? Paxson had broken down and the other guys hadn’t done much. Jordan had scored 31 points, 21 more than anyone else, but he’d also attempted 27 shots. And many were wondering how the Bulls were ever going to win if he was to continue to shoot at that pace.
    As for Jordan, he believed he had to continue at that pace. Otherwise, who would?
    Just before he stepped from the postgame podium and onto the golf courses of America, Jordan offered one final thought: “We have to do some things. We need to make some changes.”

Summer 1990
    J ERRY R EINSDORF SAT BACK, SURROUNDED BY HIS FELLOW National Basketball Association owners, at one of their regular meetings, enjoying another wonderful day in the summer of 1990.
    He was going to lose a player he would have liked to keep for his Bulls, but little setbacks like that didn’t bother Reinsdorf much; he was having too much fun being Jerry Reinsdorf.
    Being Jerry Reinsdorf didn’t look like it would be worth much when he was growing up. He was just another face in the crowd at Brooklyn’s Erasmus High School, which has a reputation for producing special students. Among its graduates are actor Eli Wallach, singer Barbra Streisand, writer Bernard Malamud, playwright Betty Comden, and chess champion Bobby Fischer. And Reinsdorf, the son of lower-middle class parents, his father a sewing machine repairman, vividly remembers his high school graduation day. He was in a class of nearly 1,000 students and the school had given out literally hundreds of awards, for everything from proficiency in English and math to excellence in hall monitoring. Reinsdorf’s name hadn’t been called. He remembers walking home a long time in silence with his mother, Marion, who finally said, “Couldn’t you at least have gotten one?”
    He had been just another sports-crazed kid growing up in Brooklyn, but he went on to amass a fortune in real estate after moving to Chicago, eventually selling his business, Balcor, to American Express for $53 million. By then he had fulfilled his lifelong dream of running a baseball team by leading a group that bought the Chicago White Sox. But the White Sox were a financial drain, so much so that Reinsdorf sought to buy an interest in the Chicago Bulls so he could remain in sports if he lost the team. Basketball had never thrived in Chicago, where the Stags disbanded in 1950 and then the Packers/Zephyrs moved in 1963 to become the Baltimore (now Washington) Bullets. The Bulls came along in 1966, but were averaging just over sixty-three hundred fans per game in 1984 when Reinsdorf began negotiations. George Steinbrenner, then the New York Yankees’ principal owner, was a Bulls part-owner then and, by chance, mentioned to Reinsdorf that he was embarrassed by the team and wanted to get out. Reinsdorf said he wanted in, but didn’t say why. A deal was quickly put together; Reinsdorf would acquire more than half the team’s stock for about $9 million. He then watched as NBA revenues soared, aided in no small part by one player, Michael Jordan, who was just joining the Bulls when Reinsdorf bought in. Chicago Stadium was now a complete and constant sellout, and, all in all, Reinsdorf was feeling pretty good.
    Ed Nealy, the player the Bulls were about to lose, was a thirty-year-old barrel-chested forward from Kansas who had joined the team for a second go-round before the opening of the 1989–90 season. He was one of those players the newspapers liked to call “much traveled.” Coaches called him “smart.” Both were euphemisms for Nealy’s pokiness, his inability to jump very well, and the fact that he was rarely in demand. But he’d had a steadying influence on the Bulls, even a motivating one, for his teammates could look at Nealy and see what hard work could do for a player. Here was a guy