Celebrating the 20-year anniversary of Michael Jordan’s return to the NBA
It does feel like it has been 20 years since Michael Jordan returned to basketball. It doesn’t feel like it was just yesterday.
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It feels like it has been that long since Michael Jordan was enigmatic, a bit of a surprise, and unpredictable. It does feel like ages since Jordan seemed fallible, with no excuses to lean on. The various permutations of Jordan’s varied careers since then – dominant NBA champion, doting househusband, iffy NBA executive, aged and weary NBA player, NBA outcast, failed NBA executive, owner of a mediocre and then miserable and then middling once again NBA team – make it so Michael Jordan’s first return to the Chicago Bulls feels ever so long ago.
On March 18, 1995, a year and a half following his retirement from basketball and some 21 months following his last NBA game, Jordan’s representatives issued a brief statement:
The deducement that followed wasn’t difficult. MJ was a few weeks removed from walking out of Chicago White Sox spring training camp in the wake of the Major League Baseball players’ strike, and he had been practicing with the Chicago Bulls at the team’s suburban practice facility for most of March. The assembled media was not allowed to watch his work with the Bulls, a team he was still under contract to, but they could scamper after Jordan as his various Corvettes left the facility following the scrimmages. Left without answers to support their guesswork, media could only trudge back inside to the practice court to be greeted by a series of shrugged shoulders from Jordan’s would-be teammates – most of whom had never been a teammate of Jordan’s during his initial 1984-1993 run with the Bulls.
That run ended with three championships, the culmination of a wearying rise to become the lead player in the NBA’s first three-peat champion since the mid-1960s. Jordan and the Bulls had battled and lost time and time again to the Eastern Conference’s old guard – the underrated Bucks, the legendary Celtics, the much-loathed but damn-good Detroit Pistons – working through three coaches prior to Phil Jackson’s hire in 1989.
Jackson’s ascension meant that Jordan would have to adhere to the triangle offense; a stark contrast in style from his final weeks spent with former coach Doug Collins, who made Jordan a point guard late in 1988-89 in order to ensure that MJ’s imprint (and the resultant statistical glory) was left on every possession. Jackson’s Bulls fell yet again to the Pistons in 1990, but what followed were three long, grueling but glorious years of championship play. A turn spent on the 1992 Team USA Olympic team only added to the workload.
Rumors about Jordan’s retirement were already in place when the Bulls downed the Phoenix Suns to take the 1993 title, and the unending reports about Jordan’s staggering gambling losses also added to the fatigue. Jordan’s father James Jordan was murdered in July of that summer, a shocking development that unsurprisingly sent Michael reeling.
Later that fall the typically-cogent Phil Jackson failed to immediately come up with a substantive answer after Jordan asked his coach what he felt his player had left to accomplish with the Bulls. That brief pause from Jackson, after Jordan’s query, was enough to steel MJ’s decision. He was through with the NBA.
The next year and a half would be spent playing his way through a walking tribute to his father.
Jordan spent the winter of 1993-94 adapting to the baseball batting stance of the famed Charley Lau, whose pupil Walt Hriniak worked as Chicago White Sox hitting coach at the time. Jerry Reinsdorf owns both the Bulls and White Sox, and when Jordan asked Reinsdorf for a shot with the Sox, there was no hesitation to bring the 6-6 curio on board.
Infamously, Jordan struggled after being designated to the Double-A Birmingham Barons. A Sports Illustrated cover mocked Jordan initial turn as a right fielder, as several crusted baseball veterans criticized both Jordan and the White Sox for potentially taking a Double-A roster spot away from a potential prospect. Forgetting for a second that Major League Baseball was just five decades removed from denying roster spots to any player that shared Michael Jordan’s particular racial heritage.
What’s often lost amongst the mockery is the fact that Jordan, after barely touching a baseball bat for 13 years, managed to hit at the Mendoza Line for a pro team in a sport that relies on skill and timing as much as it does athletic gifts and hard training. That, at age 31, he was able to hit .252 working mostly against rising prospects in the Arizona Fall League later in 1994 was even more impressive.
That he endured the slings and arrows in order to pay tribute to his father, who had always envisioned him a baseball player, is telling.
The Bulls, in Jordan’s absence, were no longer considered championship contenders. Chicago games were still all over the national television lineup, and two Bulls (with Scottie Pippen winning the MVP, and Horace Grant being voted in as a reserve) were sent by popular vote to start the 1994 All-Star Game, but the team was considered second-tier until it finished 1993-94 with 55 wins – just two fewer than Jordan’s championship Bulls managed the year before.
Rallying around defense and the triangle offense, the Bulls eventually fell to the New York Knicks in a controversial and closely contested second round series. Trade rumors surrounding the soon-to-be 29-year old Pippen abounded the following offseason, as several of Jordan’s old teammates either chased free agent money to other teams, or retired from the game. By the time Jordan started practicing with the 1994-95 Bulls, only four former teammates – Pippen, B.J. Armstrong, Will Perdue, and Pete Myers (but just barely) – remained. Chicago was hovering around the .500 mark at the time.
It’s not apocryphal to suggest that Jordan’s practice presence put a little spark into Chicago’s game. The Bulls struggled to score at times, but they remained a top-flight defensive outfit, and had won six of seven games minus-MJ during Jordan’s practice run, all prior to what was decided would be his first contest back – a nationally televised showing against the Indiana Pacers, pitched in Indianapolis, during the height of March Madness.
Jordan would be given the start over Myers, who had ably served as a defensive bulwark in Jordan’s replacement for a season and a half, and he would continue his baseball tradition of wearing No. 45, seemingly in acknowledgment of a new chapter in his life.
Working against a championship contender from Indiana, Jordan struggled in his first game back:
Outside of his 7-28 shooting mark, Jordan’s 18 points, six rebounds, six assists and three steals were solid enough; but the mark of demarcation between Jordan’s Bulls and the Bulls team that had previously won six of seven was telling. Chicago overcame an 18-point deficit to force overtime mostly with Jordan either on the bench or off the ball. Indiana eventually prevailed 103-96.
Michael’s less-touted second game, a WGN-televised affair against a Celtics team trying to make the final playoff seed in the East, was better. Working within the familiar confines of the Boston Garden, MJ made more than half his shots on his way toward 27 points as the Bulls rolled in a blowout:
Faced with another title contender, a national TV setting, and Jordan’s first night spent in Chicago’s new United Center, the Bulls fell to the Orlando Magic in his third contest back. Jordan hit less than a third of his attempts as the Bulls struggled to keep up with a balanced Magic attack that featured former Bull Horace Grant hitting 7-11 shots from the field.
The next night went a little nicer. Following a one-on-one rejection of what could have been a game-clinching jumper by Steve Smith, Jordan responded with this:
Three nights later, back in Madison Square Garden and again on national TV (counting the WGN telecasts, each of Jordan’s comeback games had been nationally televised at this point), Michael pulled off the famous “double-nickel” against the beloved New York Knickerbockers:
Chicago ended up winning 12 of 14 contests following the Orlando loss. The team finished with a 47-35 record and a seeming batch of working knowledge of just how to work with Michael Jordan, Basketball Player. The Bulls frontcourt defensive fears were seemingly assuaged after it stole home court advantage and topped a burly Charlotte Hornets squad in the first round by a 3-1 mark, and though the dreaded Orlando Magic waited in the second round after sweeping Boston, to many this still appeared to be the same bunch of Magic youngsters that had been made to look foolish by a veteran Pacer squad in the postseason prior.
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The Bulls’ depth, Jordan-less offense, and defense created what seemed to be a safe 91-90 lead in Orlando late in Game 1, as another home court thievery seemed in order. Jordan was asked to ice the game, and he responded with this:
Embarrassed at the literal hand of Magic guard Nick Anderson, who grew up in Chicago idolizing Jordan, MJ famously reverted back to No. 23 against the wishes of the NBA’s marketing department (the league would go on to fine Jordan, as players are not allowed to switch jersey numbers midseason, much less mid-playoff series), and managed a sterling 38-point (on 17-30 shooting), seven-rebound, four steal and four-block performance. He had as many turnovers (two) in 43 minutes as he had managed in the final 18.1 seconds of Game 1.
The Bulls had home court advantage over the NBA’s Next Great Thing, and they had their old Michael Jordan back. What they didn’t have was an identity.
When Jordan first discussed returning with Chicago coach Phil Jackson prior to his return, he wondered if a return starting in the playoffs would best suit the needs of player, coach, and team. Jordan was worried about the loss of muscle memory he’d suffered during his baseball turn, and his personal training staff worried about the propensity to injury that a heavier Jordan (who had bulked up his upper-body in anticipation of 90 mile per hour fastballs) would submit himself to. Wouldn’t a month and a half of training be better than time spent traveling and playing actual contests?
With 27 games to go in the season, Jackson countered that Jordan would need 25 games to acclimate himself. MJ balked, and Jackson countered with 20. Jordan asked about 10 before eventually returning with 17 contests to go. Though Jordan and the Bulls would win 13 of those games and take the first four of six postseason contests, Jackson could see that the whole affair was a pound-foolish endeavor.
From his 1995 book, ‘Sacred Hoops,’ Jackson documented the distance that carried over from a star-struck cast of Bulls watching Jordan from afar in practice:
“Once Michael official joined the team and started playing in games, the situation didn’t improve. Some of the players were so bedazzled by his moves they’d unconsciously step back and wait to see what he was going to do next. And Michael was so absorbed in his struggle to prove himself that he still had the touch, he often made uncharacteristic misjudgments. To make matters worse, his teammates were reluctant to make demands on him. In one game, Michael missed Steve Kerr, who was wide open in the corner, and drove to the hoop, only to get clobbered by three defenders. Kerr was the best three-point shooter in the league last year. When Michael went to the free throw line, I asked Steve to inform Michael that he was open, and Steve looked at me and shrugged his shoulders. There was no way he was going to tell the great Michael Jordan how to play the game.”
Jordan wasn’t selfish, he wasn’t routinely trying to choose his own shot over a pass, and most of his turnovers were the result of poor communication as he attempted to feed teammates both familiar and unfamiliar. Teams have a hard enough time trying to implement pedestrian starters to new teams at the mid-February trade deadline. Jordan, instead, was pushed into service on March 19; and his 1994-95 usage rate would have led the NBA that season had he played enough games.
It was akin to this year’s Bulls team, very good but not great, acquiring Russell Westbrook to replace Derrick Rose for the year on March 19. Except for the fact that the 1994-95 version of Michael Jordan wasn’t as good as Russell Westbrook is currently. Mainly because Jordan never performed in the “1994” part of “1994-95.”
Chicago’s fitful attempts to balance both sides offensively proved unsustainable. Jackson and the team’s coaching staff also chose to double-team Magic center Shaquille O’Neal and hound the Orlando’s three-point shooters in an attempt to make former Bull Horace Grant beat the team with long two-point shots. Former Bull Horace Grant did eventually go on to beat the team with long two-point shots, as the Bulls fell to Orlando in six games.
From there, the glory returned. Chicago would lose B.J. Armstrong to the expansion draft, build Ron Harper back into shape, turn Will Perdue into Dennis Rodman, and swap out five other role players (including Pete Myers), and win 72 of 82 regular season games the next season. Jordan’s angry revenge tour would include a sweep of the Magic, a title won on Father’s Day, and two more NBA titles to come before he retired again in early 1999.
Jordan would, of course, return to the NBA as at first a general manager and then active, aging player with the Washington Wizards. Failing to make the playoffs in two seasons with the team, Jordan was let go by late Wizards owner Abe Pollin as both player and executive in 2003. After licking his wounds for three years, MJ then assumed GM duties of the then-Charlotte Bobcats, before moving on to own the team now known, once again, as the Charlotte Hornets. Divorced and re-married in the years since, Jordan seems content in his current role.
And that announcement feels like it was made so, so many eras ago:
Michael Jordan was always going to return to basketball. If he hadn’t retired following the withering 1992-93 season, he would have certainly retired the 1993-94 season; and he may have needed even longer to recover from his whirlwind existence as an NBA legend prior to the inevitable return.
The unpredictability that permeated his 27-game, two month stint between “I’m back” and the crushing Game 6 loss later evolved into the most predictable of storylines: Jordan worked on his game, he worked on his body, and he developed a rapport with an evolving group of teammates that had to learn how to treat Jordan as a leader, as opposed to a living legend.
And Jordan, finally back on a basketball court, had to re-learn how to be both.
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Kelly Dwyer is an editor for Ball Don’t Lie on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter! Follow @KDonhoops
