The Jordan Rules by Sam Smith Page A

Stadium and ruined the dreams of Bobby Hull’s Black Hawks. And now there were the Pistons. Detroit had made a habit of beating Chicago. It was a habit Michael Jordan was determined to break.
    But no matter how hard he tried against the Pistons, he couldn’t beat these guys. In earlier seasons, Jordan had some of his biggest scoring games against the Pistons: a 61-point mosaic in an overtime win in March 1987, an Easter Sunday mural on national TV in 1988 in which he’d scored 59 points. And Jordan was an artist, the ninety-four-by-fifty-foot basketball court being the canvas for his originals, signed with a flashing smile, a hanging tongue, and a powerful, twisting slam. Pistons coach Chuck Daly, a man who appreciated the arts, was not particularly enamored of Jordan’s work, and after the 1988 game the Pistons instituted “the Jordan rules” and the campaign to allow what the Bulls believed was legalized assault on Michael Jordan.
    The Pistons had two of the league’s best man-to-man defenders, Joe Dumars and Dennis Rodman, to carry out those assignments. Jordan grudgingly respected Dumars, with whom he’d become somewhat friendly at the 1990 All-Star game; Dumars was quiet and resolute, a gentlemanly professional. But Jordan didn’t care much for Rodman’s play. “He’s a flopper,” Jordan would say disdainfully. “He just falls down and tries to get the calls. That’s not good defense.” Rodman once “flopped” so effectively back in the 1988–89 season that Jordan drew six fouls in the fourth quarter to foul out in the last minute of a close loss to the Pistons.
    But Jordan’s frustration against the Pistons was much larger than his dislike for Rodman, his team’s lack of success against Detroit, or even his failure to score effectively since that Easter Sunday game. Detroit simply beat up Jordan, battering him through picks and screens whenever he tried to move. For Jordan, it was like trying to navigate a minefield of bullies. First he’d take a forearm shiver from Dumars when he tried to get past, then perhaps a bump from Bill Laimbeer and a bang from Rodman or Isiah Thomas. The Bulls were so concerned about some of these tactics a few years ago that they focused a camera on Laimbeer throughout the playoffs to see what he was doing and found that he was grabbing players at their pressure points to deaden their arms. They complained to the league, but got no action. And while Thomas is not generally considered a good defender because he doesn’t like to play a helping game, whenever the Bulls play Detroit he is quick to double-team Jordan. He knows Jordan despises him and he doesn’t care much for Jordan being the hero in Chicago, Isiah’s hometown.
    Jordan’s resentment toward the angelic-looking Thomas is deep. Much of it stems from an alleged freeze-out of Jordan in the 1985 All-Star game, when Thomas and several other players apparently conspired to keep Jordan from getting the ball—and their paths have continued to cross along with their swords. During the 1989–90 season, Magic Johnson suggested a one-on-one match between himself and Jordan. Jordan wasn’t too interested, but Johnson was looking at a big pay-per-view payoff and had already worked out a deal with a cable TV company. When word surfaced, though, the NBA voiced its disapproval, and Thomas, head of the Players’ Association, said it was not in the best interests of the players to have such unsanctioned off-season games. Suddenly Jordan was very interested. He said he always thought the Players’ Association “was supposed to be for the players.” And anyway, Jordan said, Thomas was just jealous. “He wasn’t asked,” snarled Jordan. “And do you want to know why? It’s because if he were in it no one would be interested enough to watch.”
    But the Pistons get their shots back at Jordan. They love