Sports Frog has already mentioned this story (as has Sam Frank), but it’s worth highlighting again. Tom Socca writes in this week’s NY Observer about Michael Leahy’s When Nothing Else Matters : Michael Jordan’s Last Comeback, a none too favorable glance at Jordan’s calling (and taking most of) the shots for the Washington Wizards.
Mr. Leahy™s book tells how the Wizards cut off awkward interview sessions and routinely ignored N.B.A. rules about opening practice to reporters, how Mr. Jordan froze out and belittled writers who displeased him. And it told how the press kept writing what Mr. Jordan wanted.
In one recurring motif, Mr. Leahy shows young shooting guard Richard Hamilton stifling his annoyance and fielding leading question after leading question about how much he owed to Mr. Jordan™s talents: “Hamilton deftly changed the premise, keeping his answer short: ˜I think the big thing is that we™re learning to play off each other.™”
Mr. Hamilton was traded to Detroit after Mr. Jordan™s first season. Mr. Jordan, as Mr. Leahy describes him, preferred his teammates compliant”the same way he preferred his hand-picked coach, Doug Collins.
The Ripster, as we all know, won his first ring last June as a pivotal figure on the Detroit Pistons championship squad. The young Wizards, sans Jordan, Charles Oakley and Jerry Stackhouse, are having their best season in eons.
There’s also more than a bit of friction between author Leahy and Jordan confidante Michael Wilbon, a colleague of the former at the Washington Post and the inspiration for Malcom Jamal Warner’s most recent, abortive comeback attempt.
Leahy’s tome has been out since November. As Socca points out, the Washington Post has yet to review it. And I’ve yet to hear it mentioned on “Pardon The Interruption”.
I read this last month – one of the best basketball books in ages.
Leahy lost me on a couple passages crabbily wondering why people care about sports at all – which felt like a beat guy who had been traveling with a team for too long at that point.
But he paints a shocking picture of Jordan: a hypercompetitive coddled legend watching his otherworldly skills diminish with each passing day. You certainly dont feel sorry for him, but you get a feel for what’s making him tick. He’s falling back down to earth alongside the rest of the mediocrity, and it’s killing him.
Doug Collins comes off as a neutered retread for the most part. Seeing how he constantly rips the young players – Kwame Brown especially, who is no prize – while laying off Jordan is cringe-worthy. You can see why Rip Hamilton invited the trade to Detroit, and it shows why players cant own a piece of a team while they’re still in uniform – Dougie was MJ’s puppet for two years.
And the MJ/Courtney Alexander argument about oatmeal? Priceless!
Leahy lets Wilbon have it for being a reporter acting more like Jordan’s publicist. So enjoyable.
TH
Sounds like this is an expanded version of Leahy’s Washington Post Magazine piece “All The King’s Men: Why the Team That Jordan Built Fell to Pieces,” which is one of the finest selections found in “The Best American Sports Writing 2004.”