Free The Jordan Rules by Sam Smith Page A

with so little talent, yet he was still around after seven years in the NBA. It was tempting to look at him and think, “If he can play seven years, I ought to be able to play until I’m forty,” but it wasn’t as easy as that, as most would eventually learn. Nealy didn’t cruise the clubs at night and he was always the first one to practice or to work out in the weight room. He never complained when he didn’t play and he rarely shot when he did. Playing time and shots: Even more than money, they are the pro basketball player’s measures of self-worth. Nealy didn’t make an issue of either, so he was a favorite of both management and his teammates. And the Chicago fans took to Nealy because he personified their city—hardworking and blue collar (even though tickets had become so expensive that only the whitest of collars could afford them, assuming they could even find a ticket to buy).
    Yes, he worked hard. He set screens, boxed out, took on the strongest inside player. He did the basketball dirty work, even if his limited talent didn’t allow him to do it often enough. Still, he had had a 9-rebound, 9-point game in the playoffs against Philadelphia as the Bulls won without Scottie Pippen, who was home after the death of his father. Nealy took several rebounds away from Charles Barkley in the fourth quarter and was chosen player of the game by the CBS broadcasters.
    He’d come to Chicago that season unwanted. The Bulls had traded him to Phoenix the previous season for Craig Hodges, but even Suns coach Cotton Fitzsimmons, who had originally drafted Nealy as the 166th pick in 1982 for Kansas City, had no use for him. Fitzsimmons promised to find Nealy a spot in the NBA, and the Bulls agreed to take him back as a twelfth man. He played in little more than half the regular-season games, earning about $250,000, so the Bulls were stunned when he rejected their two-year offer of $400,000 per year; Nealy said he could get almost $700,000 per year for three years. Bulls coach Phil Jackson argued that the team should keep Nealy, but he understood it was impossible at that cost.
    Reinsdorf was laughing about the Nealy offer and shaking his head when he turned to Phoenix president Jerry Colangelo. “Somebody’s going to give Ed Nealy seven hundred thousand dollars,” Reinsdorf said. “Jerry, who’d do something that stupid?”
    Colangelo mumbled something about not knowing. The next day, Phoenix announced it had signed Ed Nealy for three seasons.
    Losing Nealy posed a problem for the Bulls. They were a young team, and Michael Jordan didn’t think young teams won titles. Jordan made that clear following their seventh-game loss to the Pistons in the 1990 playoffs. Rookie guard B. J. Armstrong shot 10 for 38 and averaged 4.4 points in fifteen minutes per game in the series, and rookie forward Stacey King went 9 for 28 and averaged 5 points in his fifteen minutes per game. Jordan had reserved much of his anger for King, screaming at him to rebound and “hit somebody” several times. “Management knows where we can improve,” said Jordan. “And I don’t think they’ll be looking at the draft.”
    Jordan respected Nealy, even if he doubted his overall athletic talent, for Nealy was the basketball version of rolling up your sleeves, spitting on your hands, and going to work. Jordan would always go to Nealy’s side of the court when they were playing together, no matter where Jordan was supposed to be in that particular set. “He’s the only one who’ll set a good pick,” Jordan said. “He’s a tough guy.”
    That kind of respect is hard to earn from Jordan, who can be as cold and demanding as a landlord on the last day of the month. Just ask Brad Sellers, whom Jordan regularly derided for his soft play and eventually helped evict from the team. In 1987, the Bulls drafted Sellers, a seven-footer from Ohio State