No one is happy with the owners, least of all the players after the old guys basically told them recently “Here, we’ll give you two slices from this large buffalo chicken pizza, but if you don’t wash the dishes afterwards, next time you might only get the leftover crust.” Tomorrow is the most important day yet in the lockout, a chance for the players to (hopefully) vote and (hopefully… for our own selfish reasons) agree to a deal. If they don’t give the offer any consideration – which seems the most likely case – the sides will split further apart and the cancellations could eat up the majority of this season. Michael Jordan is in the middle of it all – finally – but as we called for him to get more involved, I don’t think the players expected him to do what he did.
Many figured Jordan could step in as a connecting force – someone who knows the ins and outs of both sides of the coin, someone who can be a calming presence. We called for him to get more involved, to settle the players down as only he can and to make the owners understand as only he can. When he didn’t do that, it was frustrating. It became even more infuriating when it was reported that Jordan was one of the 10-14 owners who were not only pushing for more and more, but wanted to completely kill the players by forcing them to take a deal centered on no more than 47 percent of the BRI.
The thing is, we all must’ve forgot who Michael Jordan is.
Jan Hubbard, a reporter who covered the Dream Team in 1992, wrote on Sheridanhoops.com today that he isn’t at all surprised by what’s gone down.
The trait that is signature Jordan is something critics have forgotten in the last week when Jordan has been widely condemned for taking a hard-line position in collective bargaining talks with the players.
Some have wondered loudly and harshly; how is that possible? Here is a guy who was the ultimate player. Here is a guy who once told an owner during negotiations to sell his team if he could not afford labor costs. And now he’s leading a group to force players to accept less money?
The answer to that riddle is not complicated.
Jordan is no longer a player.
He is an owner.
He has changed teams.
He plays for the other side.
And he is trying to win.
Okay, most people get that. Jordan is an owner now. He’s trying to protect his investment, and seeing that Charlotte isn’t exactly Miami or Boston or New York or the Lakers, MJ has to draw a pretty hard line in order to make a profit. Most critics, like myself, who have been a little frustrated by Jordan’s lockout stance in the past few weeks, never found fault with the former player covering his ass. But yet it seemed so unbelievable how he could go from being a player to not only switching sides, but basically putting it out there that he wants to rip the players’ hearts out. It’s one thing to try to win a negotiation. It’s another to go above and beyond to a place that will undoubtedly screw the players over and only cause problems in the future (Remember, this IS a business, but these two sides also have to work together from here on out. Many forget that. If there is no real negotiation and only demands, there could be massive negative effects in the future of the two parties).
[Related: Charles Oakley Tells All]
With Michael Jordan and his reasoning for doing this, it comes down to something simple: he loves to win while making you look bad in the process. As a player, that got him universal acclaim and the status as the game’s best ever. Hubbard recalled the infamous Jordan vs. Magic practice session on the Dream Team where MJ got upset, then beatdown Johnson’s team and staked his claim to alpha alpha dog. Hubbard writes:
Ultimately, however, it wasn’t enough that Jordan answered by bringing his team back to victory; he was intent on loudly shoving the triumph through their ear drums.
Grabbing a can of Gatorade, he raised it over his head and repeated the famous line from his commercial at the time, “Sometimes I dream!” He made a victory lap around the floor. The rest of the players from both teams could only watch the performance.
By the time Jordan finally sat, most of the writers had surrounded Magic and Barkley to get statements from the losers and for a moment, I was alone with Jordan. At that point, he seemed to snap out of the competitive trance he was in and almost got a little sheepish.
“How’s your boy,” he said, referring to his good friend Barkley.
I answered that Barkley, another legendary competitor, was pretty embarrassed and irritated.
“He’ll get over it,” Jordan said.
At that point, I shook my head and fumbled for words to ask him why he was making such a spectacle. All I could come up with was, “I guess you just have to win.”
Without pausing, Jordan snapped back, “I try to make a habit out of it.”
Jordan is only doing now what he’s always done: attempting to run up the score. If he played you in Madden, it wouldn’t be enough to beat you four times in a row. He’d want to beat you until you admitted he was better. If you played golf, he wouldn’t just take your dinner money. He’d take your breakfast, lunch and dinner money. Whatever it was, he’d find a way to emerge victorious, and shred your pride at the same time. We might not like it, but it should be easy to see why 50/50 isn’t good enough. Jordan wants 47, and if he gets that, maybe he’ll turn around and want more.
That doesn’t make it right, and maybe we don’t agree with what MJ is doing just because we would have a tough time doing it ourselves. But at least we should be able to understand it. When has MJ never not wanted to kill someone in competition? It’s no different this time.
How should Jordan be described during this lockout? Hypocrite? Selfish? Smart? Businessman?
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